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A Critical Analysis Of Blakes, Songs Of Innocence And Experience Versus Whitmans Song Of Myself

A Critical Analysis of Blake's, "Songs of Innocence and Experience" versus Whitman's Song of Myself"


Although William Blake and Walt Whitman are writers of the so called "Romantic" period, their work in "Songs of Innocence and Experience" (Blake, 1794) and "Song of Myself" (Whitman 1855, 1856, 1860, & 1867 in various versions) provide very contrasting views of their individual perception of mankind's being and state of spirituality in relation to man and God. Also while both named songs, neither is but instead are poems focusing on the same topic; namely the human experience in relation to a greater self. In "Innocence", Blake starts out with advocating the innocence and joy of the natural world and a closer relationship with God, he changes that view in "Experience" creating an opposing perspectives of the world. He goes so far as to seemly loosing faith in the goodness of mankind insinuating that good can only be found in children or our child state. Whitman on the other hand argues throughout his poem that that the ideal spiritual state is one that goes beyond the physical and observed being and can only be realized through the individual's inner self.
Blake's 2 works when taken as a whole, explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world contrasting good versus evil and the perception of joys and sorrows. On one side he states the need for a closer relationship with God especially after describing a loss of innocence that seems to happen after exposure to the material world and all of its mortal sin during adult life. On the side he argued for "free love", and the rejection of the Church as a closer relationship with God. (Free love was a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage, especially for women. Much of the free-love tradition has a civil libertarian philosophy that seeks freedom from State regulation and Church interference in personal...

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