William Blake's "London"

Résumé du document

William Blake's version of the city of London is a rather negative picture. In his poem "London", the speaker shows a much damaged population. Though the description is one of a plagued eighteenth-century London, the poem is meant to relate the condition of more than a single city in a single time. The speaker intends, to criticize the way of living not only in London at that time, but also in every other place where people are suffering, using figures of speech.

Extraits

[...] William Blake's William Blake's version of the city of London is a rather negative picture. In his poem the speaker shows a much damaged population. Though the description is one of a plagued eighteenth-century London, the poem is meant to relate the condition of more than a single city in a single time. The speaker intends, using figures of languages, to criticise the way of living not only in London at that time, but also in every other place where people are suffering. [...]

[...] First, this term deprives the of its genuine significance of hope. All hope is seemingly gone along with the “blackning” of the “Church”. This image of a black church can also be a second reference to the devil. The divine institution is not holy anymore. The people's loss of hope is also portrayed on line 13, in “thro' midnight streets”. It seems that it is always midnight in the streets of London. The fact that everything is black illustrates again the lack of hope in the city. [...]

[...] As the speaker repeats the word he creates a visual aspect that makes the reader actually see those marks and hence feel the pain of the people who pass the speaker. Several words are used to make the reader nearly what happens in that city of London too. Using of course the word two times, plus some terms relevant to sounds, such as and the speaker really makes the reader part of the situation, since the latter can almost live what happens here. mark in every face I meet/ ( . [...]

[...] The words used by the speaker, limited by the regular form of the poem makes the reader feeling as trapped as the people in London. This poem, so skilfully written, can only be understood through a complete analysis. It is so layered with figures of language that it is rather difficult to appreciate the real meaning of it. The speaker does not criticise the society itself, but indeed the human being, whom he considers responsible for the bad situation in the city of London, which is an image used to describe any place in the world. [...]

[...] The speaker compares here the soldier to the inhabitants of London, who are not free either. Another figure is present on the last stanza of the poem: the “Harlot”. She is not a free character either, as she often belongs to a procurer to whom she must obey. The illustration of the trapped people as a soldier and a prostitute in this poem really intend to show how oppressed and controlled the persons feel. Another theme appearing in the last stanza, brought up by the presence of the is the attendance of sexually transmitted diseases among the entire city of London. [...]