An analysis of the language used in William Blake’s Songs of Innocence.
This paper examines how throughout the Songs of Innocence collection William Blake presents a variety of images that reflect the innocence and naivety, of both child and adult, in regard to religious and spiritual understanding. It looks at how the deliberate ambiguity of the recurrent images serves as an extension of his beliefs and how, influenced profoundly by the French Revolution and the Romantic period, he presents images of the unity of the human race.
Blake’s deliberate ambiguity presents the image of the lamb as a submissive creature and an unsuspecting victim of the corruption of Christianity. This is reflected in the monotonous rhythm and the lambs na’ve and innocent acceptance of the institutionalized teachings. He questions the exploitation of a child imposed by figures of authority in the way the lamb is told of his creator according to the Christian view of God, He is meek and he is mild. However, the fact that the lamb does not query what has just been said, Blake suggests that one can only accept God if they exist in a childlike state of innocence and if they are in tune to the harmony of nature.