William Blakes Infant Joy and Infant Sorrow Essay

â€Å"Infant Joy† from â€Å"Songs of Innocence† by William Blake is a simple song that highlights the joy of childbirth from a mother’s perspective. The mother asks the child what she should name the newborn child. The newborn names itself Joy, because that is all it knows. In contrast â€Å"Infant Sorrow† from â€Å"Songs of Experience† by William Blake is a simple song that focuses on childbirth from the infants perspective. It is a much less pleasant experience compared to that of the mother’s. The newborn struggles as it leaves the comfort of its mothers womb and enters the world. Romanticism is defined by Margaret Drabble from and emotional perspective as â€Å"an extreme assertion of the self and the value of individual experience†(Drabble 842-43). The†¦show more content†¦The poet highlights the personal experience and emotions that the infant feels during childbirth, which is an essential aspect of Romanticism. The po sitive personal experience that the newborn expresses is a result of its innocence being intact due to the lack of interaction it has had with the real world. The newborn child in â€Å"Infant Joy† is given the opportunity to name itself, which allows the child to determine its own destiny through personal experience, rather than its destiny as determined by religion or reason which is expected in the Enlightenment period. The newborn experiences happiness through childbirth, and as a result, it is allowed to decide its own nature by naming itself. The newborns nature is not determined by reason or religion, but rather through personal experience which is essential in the Romantics. The poem â€Å"Infant Joy† in â€Å"Songs of Innocence† highlights imagination which is â€Å"a watchword† for Romanticism (Drabble 842-43). The newborn in the poem is encouraged to use its own imagination when naming itself. The newborns opportunity to name itself shows that the parents are encouraging the newborns imagination, rather than attempting to stifle and repress it. The infants imagination is encouraged because it has the opportunity to see the best aspects of the world due to its lack of experience. The mother is also having anShow MoreRelatedWilliam Blake s Songs Of Innocence And Experience1268 Words   |  6 PagesWilliam Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, printed in 1794, â€Å"represents the world as it is envisioned by what he calls ‘two contrary states of the human soul’† (Greenblatt, 1452). This collection of poetry is accompanied by pictures, which create a mutually reliant relationship that allows for com plete understanding of Blake’s works. â€Å"To read a Blake poem without the pictures is to miss something important: that relationship is an aspect of the poem’s argument† (1452). 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