Summary AQA English: Protest - Blake Songs of Innocence and Experience A* Notes

AQA A-LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATRE (B): PAPER 2
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROTEST
WILLIAM BLAKE: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

BLAKE CRITICS AO5

Bernard O’Keefe Repetition of “every” and
Repetition in London “cry” accentuate the
universality of the pain and
suffering
George Norton Religion is active in the
Anti-religious message of The children’s oppression
Chimney Sweeper because it makes them
(innocence) – Marxist reading promises about the afterlife
rather than dealing with
injustice on earth
Nicholas Marsh The poems call for a
Social protest of the poems as a fundamental change, they
whole are revolutionary works
Stephanie Metz Blake uses children as a
Use of children point of contrast to a world
he views as having gone
badly astray
Andrew Green Encapsulates the
On the “locked up in coffins of black” inescapability of their plight,
imagery and symbolises the deadly
in The Chimney Sweeper (innocence) nature of their work

OVERVIEW:
 Blake was a rebel and an outsider, sympathetic to both the
American and French Revolutions. The poems address two key