William Blake on the Imagination

Well, whether you are an artist of some kind, and I hope you are, or a reader who seeks to enrich your life with the treasures of literature, as I know many of you are, there are several important lessons to learn from the life and works of William Blake. This lecture is going to introduce you to the artist himself, and we'll closely read some of his work. But the main goal of this lecture is to introduce you to the role of the imagination in the art of William Blake with the aim of encouraging the exercise of your own imagination to look to the works of William Blake as a guide to help rouse yourself and awaken your own creative responses to art. So, we're doing two things in this course, which is something I've never done before.

Usually I'm much more on the academic side of things where I present um lectures in an academic way, but I actually crafted this one with eye with an eye toward um helping you all because I know there are many poets on here and practicing artists of different kinds um and many interested readers in that way. So this is a bit different and as we take our as we as we begin I do want to draw our attention to the poem the voice of the ancient bard. I'm just going to share this this screen here. Here we have on the left the engraving with the poetry and on the right some clearer text.

The voice of the ancient bard youth of delight come hither and see the opening mourn image of truth newborn. Doubt is fled and clouds of reason dark disputes and artful teasing. Folly is an endless maze. Tangled roots perplex her ways.

How many have fallen there? They stumble all night over bones of the dead and feel they know not what but care and wish to lead others when they should be led. This is a poem from Songs of Experience. The first poem in that section.

You remember Songs of Innocence and Experience published together. So this poem serves as a bridge between the songs of innocence and the songs of experience. It calls the youth to embrace newborn truth of the morning sun and to avoid the endless maze of doubt, uh, reason and folly. Readers in the 18th ...