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William Blake Critics
Timothy Vines:

- "Blake's writings are an endeavour to loosen or break society's 'mind forg'd manacles'
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- "Calling for the liberation of human energy and creativity, Blake's songs are scathing in their criticism of

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the prevailing mood of enlightenment rationality
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"Experience was born out of the political troubles both in England and abroad which, to Blake, exemplified
the struggle of spirit against oppression
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"Anything that came between the soul and God was appalling to Blake
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"Experience is often shown as a dark forest in which mankind find himself lost and alone
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Felicity Currie (Feminist Critic)

- Praises Blake for highlighting in his poems (such as "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence) that children are
not corrupt or hypocritical like adults
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" She says and she adds that is he unlike the "crap
versifiers of his time
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- "What the Songs never allow us to forget is how vulnerable children are
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Links to childhood
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there was no easy transmission of Blake's songs
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reach, at best, only a few
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Alexander Gilchrist (one of Blake's publishers):

- Said that Blake was, "
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" Blake was evidently against the monarchy and
he wanted social reform and a revolution
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This may explain why he was so concerned about other
children
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S
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S
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" Eliot praises Blake for being ahead of his time
and daring to question authority and be open about his views when most others kept their heads down
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Northrop Frye:

- Frye said of Experience, “Contempt and Horror have never been more clearly spoken in English poetry”
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D
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Rosetti's:

- Referred to some of Blake's poems from the songs as "cryptic", and indeed many are ambiguous
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

- Says that he was "perplexed" by some poems such as "The Blossom" and a "Little Girl Lost"
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Perhaps he felt sorry for Blake because he was an
intellectual man with radical ideas but nobody agreed with his views
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According
to critics, Wordsworth and Coleridge's "Lyrical Ballads" are the closest equivalent to Blake's "Songs"
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"
J
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Garth Wilkinson

- Blake's poems reveal, "
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" This is evident in the original
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copies of his poems and shows how Blake did not how to write completely correctly and also this shows
his poetry
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Praised Blake's poems in Innocence as they "abound with the sweetest touches of that pastoral life
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Joseph Wickstead

- Referred to Blake as "childlike" and said, "he [Blake] has so much to say (like a child he wants to say it all
at once)
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" Of Blake's poetry
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Andrew Motion (former Poet Laureate)

- Says that Blake, "
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" By slant he means obliquely
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David Punter

- Tells us that Blake's poems cannot be fully understood without looking at the visual material supplements
which accompany them
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- Tells us that Blake was a Romantic but he is of a different mould to the other more typical Romantics like
Wordsworth and Coleridge whom he "precedes" - Blake was the generation before them

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