The Echoing Green - William Blake
Pastoral Literature
William Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience
- Created by: Sabina
- Created on: 29-05-14 17:41
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- The Echoing Green: William Blake
- A storybook village, security
- Pastoral Imagery:Pastoral imagery with the innocence of childhood
- 'Old John' = Pastoral Figure
- 'When we all' = Nostalgia - reminiscing
- 'Sun, merry, happy, cheerful, laugh, joys' = Golden Age
- 'They laugh at our play/ And soon they all say' = Innocence - Don't realise their luck - they're free how Blake wished them to be - before they enter a world of experience.
- 'Like birds in their nests' (simile) =similar to 'The Schoolboy', emphasising their innocence.
- Natural Freedom: Advantages of freedom provided by the pastoral landscape.
- The way the children are free to play on the green - no restrictions apart from darkness which can be seen as the intrusion of experience.
- Countryside and Children
- Adults often seen to watch benevolently over children's play - much indulgence. little interference 'old John with white hair'. Adults needed for protection? Especially as they're aware that this is the place where their innocence gradually decayed? 'Darkening Green'.
- Sense of closure in London - Blake concerned about this being lost.
- Expresses the pastoral idea of leisure time and is reminiscent of the lives of Virgil's shepherds, in a pre-lapsarian enjoyment of nature.
- This is paralleled by the nursery rhyme feel caused by the semantic field of happiness ('happy' 'merry' 'cheerful'). The dimeters and simple AABBCC rhyme scheme.
- Terry Gifford: 'Intermediate environmental inter-relatedness' is a crucial element of the pastoral genre, and is evident on the poems personification of the 'happy...skies' and the 'merry bells'.
- This is paralleled by the nursery rhyme feel caused by the semantic field of happiness ('happy' 'merry' 'cheerful'). The dimeters and simple AABBCC rhyme scheme.
- Key Quotes
- 'Does laugh away care' - Old Johnn is able to forger his worries and pressures of life e.g. money, food, illness
- 'Old John, with white hair' - loss of innocence with age.
- Old John as a pastoral figure imitating a shepherd. The use of Old John signifies that 'under the oak' and 'happy skies'; we are able to forget the pressures of everyday life.
- 'Such were the joys/ when we all...were seen/ on the echoing green.
- Nostalgia - looking back to a ritchel which has gone on enables people to remain connected to one another.
- When we grow up we won't be playing - loss of innocence.
- 'On the darkening green'
- symbolising ending of life - death of green itself as well as natural life circle.
- Threat of traditions being lost.
- Modern world people have moved away from the stable 'oak' and children will not be given the luxury of 'the joys...on the echoing green'.
- This is supported by the distortion in regular rhyme scheme when 'the sun does descend'.
- Links to Genesis with idea of loss and destruction within humanity - tree of knowledge.
- Blake uses the 'green' as a ymbol for Eden serving as world before the snake ruins the harmonious ideal - 'green' now way of life which is under threat.
- Links to Genesis with idea of loss and destruction within humanity - tree of knowledge.
- This is supported by the distortion in regular rhyme scheme when 'the sun does descend'.
- Modern world people have moved away from the stable 'oak' and children will not be given the luxury of 'the joys...on the echoing green'.
- Threat of traditions being lost.
- symbolising ending of life - death of green itself as well as natural life circle.
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