William Wordsworth

William Blake was a visionary artist and poet who expressed his ideas in words and images, which he combined in his rare, hand-coloured and hand-printed books. Blake was born in Soho, London, in 1757, the son of a hosier. From an early age he saw religious visions.

The Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and trace their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of the poems are written from the perspective of children, while others are about children as seen from an adult perspective.

William Blake is a romantic poet. In Romanticism, a piece of work could become, as Blake described, “an embodiment of the poet’s imagination and vision.” Many of the writers of the Romantic period were highly influenced by the war between England and France and the French Revolution. …

Blake and formal religion It changed spirituality into a system of moral laws which bound people in shame or in fear of punishment. This made them obedient to society’s laws and rules. Organised religion was, therefore, an agent of social control, instead of a source of life and liberation.

Romanticism is often fixed within a period running from the late-18th to early-19th century. But Romanticism as a cultural movement and as a set of ideas influencing visual art, literature, philosophy and politics, bleeds out beyond these designated boundaries. Indeed, its influence continues in the 21st century.

The Romanticism era had many attitude characteristics that were directly opposite to the Enlightenment period. The romantics believed that using emotion over reason was the more valiant choice. They presented this idea throughout the period in many of the works of the time.