The Power of Institutionalized Religion
William Blake’s The Garden of Love and Edmund Burke’s Reflections of the French Revolution both paint a vivid picture of the power of social hierarchy in the Romantic era. Blake’s poem allows the interpretation of the speaker losing the right to his own expression through the power of the institutionalized religion. In Burke’s text, by contrast, institutions, such as organized religion, prove to produce peace and order in society.
William Blake’s The Garden of Love portrays a speaker returning to a beautiful place he knew well during his youth, yet, was now unrecognizable. The speaker can hardly envision the old garden where he “used to play on the green” (Longman 3). He reminisces on the garden that …show more content…
Memories of the garden that provided the freedoms that accompany childhood and innocence. The speaker gazes upon the garden, and sees an unfamiliar “chapel in the midst” (3) Blake highlights the rules and regulations brought by organized religion, the orthodox Christian church, by providing a sign on the chapel that reads “thou shalt not” (6). He displays the speaker’s loss of freedom the church brings through his use of specific, dark words regarding how he now views the garden. The speaker now sees “graves” and “tombstones” instead of beauty and flowers (9-10). Blake uses “graves” to represent the community surrounding the church.
In The Garden of Love, Blake illustrates the sadness the speaker feels to enter reality and lose the innocence of childhood to the restrictions of the corrupt church. He states the speaker examining “priests in black gowns” and how they are “binding with briars” all of his “joys and desires” (11-12). Throughout the poem, Blake’s use of “joys and desires” represents the speaker’s attitude towards sexuality (12). He considers sexual desires to be part of human nature and a form of self-expression. In his youth, the speaker used to fulfill his desires in
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William Blake’s The Garden of Love and Edmund Burke’s Reflections of the French Revolution both paint a vivid picture of the power of social hierarchy in the Romantic era. Blake’s poem allows the interpretation of the speaker losing the right to his own expression through the power of the institutionalized religion. In Burke’s text, by contrast, institutions, such as organized religion, prove to produce peace and order in society.
William Blake’s The Garden of Love portrays a speaker returning to a beautiful place he knew well during his youth, yet, was now unrecognizable. The speaker can hardly envision the old garden where he “used to play on the green” (Longman 3). He reminisces on the garden that …show more content…
Memories of the garden that provided the freedoms that accompany childhood and innocence. The speaker gazes upon the garden, and sees an unfamiliar “chapel in the midst” (3) Blake highlights the rules and regulations brought by organized religion, the orthodox Christian church, by providing a sign on the chapel that reads “thou shalt not” (6). He displays the speaker’s loss of freedom the church brings through his use of specific, dark words regarding how he now views the garden. The speaker now sees “graves” and “tombstones” instead of beauty and flowers (9-10). Blake uses “graves” to represent the community surrounding the church.
In The Garden of Love, Blake illustrates the sadness the speaker feels to enter reality and lose the innocence of childhood to the restrictions of the corrupt church. He states the speaker examining “priests in black gowns” and how they are “binding with briars” all of his “joys and desires” (11-12). Throughout the poem, Blake’s use of “joys and desires” represents the speaker’s attitude towards sexuality (12). He considers sexual desires to be part of human nature and a form of self-expression. In his youth, the speaker used to fulfill his desires in
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