The Notion of Duality of the Human Soul in William Blake’s...

The Notion Of Duality Of The Human Soul In William Blake’s Songs Of Innocence And Experience Tembong Denis Fonge Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience generally subscribe to the main stream appreciation that they present the reader with two states of the human condition - the pastoral, pure and natural world of lambs and blossoms on the one hand, and the world of experience characterized by exploitation, cruelty, conflict and hypocritical humility on the other hand. However, Blake’s songs communicate experiences that go beyond the ordinary, to demonstrate that the human soul essentially, is like a two sided coin. This makes it difficult to give the poems simplistic treatment as may be suggested by the simplicity of†¦show more content†¦Thus, where mercy, pity, peace and love duel there God dwells too. The existential question - â€Å"who made thee?† posed in â€Å"The Lamb† by the child is crucial because it taps into the deep and timeless questions that all human beings pose, about their own origins and the nature of creation. Of course through this Bl ake creates the traditional Christian belief where (man) the creation must be linked somehow to (God) the creator. The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children, and the Bibles depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless and vulnerable. These are also the characteristics from which the child-speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. If we consider John Holloway’s opinion in â€Å"Blake: The Lyric Poetry†, we understand clearly the notion of the duality of the soul, where he refers to The Human Abstract as a poem which asserts that the conventional Christian virtues like Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love are parasitic on evil and bring it about. He contends that The Human Abstract, and A Divine Image, must be read together. Read together , I suppose, our sense of the constituent parts of the soulShow MoreRelatedEssay on History of Childhood2207 Words   |  9 PagesChildhood is usually understood as a set of experiences and behaviours, gained in the early stages of the human existence, considered as the preparation for the adult world. However, the history of childhood is a very complex topic and it has become a very influential area of study in recent years. In 1962, the ‘Centuries of Childhood’ by Philippe Arià ©s introduced the idea that childhood was a new creation developed in recent centuries and as a concept it was believed to be nonexistent before the