First Paper Assignment.

Due Wednesday, February 2, at the start of class. Letter-graded assignment worth 10% of your final grade.

 

You will be interpreting art  by William Blake. Since Blake is a multimedia artist, each of his works has to be considered for both its text and its images. Choose one of the following letter categories  to work on. Either a) ONE of the poems in its pictorial context from Blake's Songs of Innocence, or ONE from Songs of Experience OR  b) TWO of Blake's poems that share the same title (e.g. The Chimney Sweeper) and have versions in both the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience OR c) part  or all of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.  Your choice reflects a scale of difficulty, with option a easier and option b harder, and c hardest, especially if you take on all of Marriage; I will weigh that in the grading. 

Whatever you pick, you will then write a close-reading analysis, your interpretation of the poem and the picture(s). Consider what you think the poem means, and then if the picture works as a direct illustration to it, an alternative image of it, a counterpoint to it, etc. Blake does not always use his images as simple illustrations of the ideas, and that makes him both interesting and challenging. However, they tell us that "visual literacy" is much more common among your generation than mine, so reading and interpreting Blake's works for both their words and images should be more in your comfort zone than just having to argue about words. You do not need to do any further research for this interpretive paper, and I much prefer to see what you make of these illuminated books than what you gather from other critics about them. If you do consult other criticism you must reference it in a Works Cited page in MLA format. As you see here you should follow your text's standard procedure and italicize the title's of any of Blake's works.

You do definitely need to look at the color reproductions of your chosen poem(s) in the Blake Archive (www.blakearchive.org  --> US Home. . Bear in mind that each hand-produced Blake work is unique, and that's why for Blake's illuminated books there are multiple copies listed by single capital letter, with slightly different pictures in each. You may choose whichever edition/version you like, but be sure to say in the paper which version (e.g. Copy C) you chose to use so I can then look at the same pictures you did.  The texts of all the poems are in your anthology text.

 

An example of one of Blake's illuminated poems, The Tyger:

 

Feel free to discuss your developing ideas with me.