Essentials of English and American Literature Lesson Plan by Yang Yang

LESSON PLAN

William Blake & LondonCourse Name: Essentials of English and American LiteratureLesson Topic: William Blake & LondonTime Frame: 45 minutes

Teaching aims:

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

1. acquaint themselves with the life of William Blake;

2. get to know some collections of William Blakes poems;

3. understand (1) the rhythm pattern and rhyme scheme; (2) the general idea; (3) the rhetorical devices and (4) the linguistic feature of London, and (5) the social reality revealed in it.

Teaching aids: VCD & computer

Materials: The poem London adopted from Selected Readings in English and American Literature (Gui Yangqing & Wu Xianglin China Translation & Publishing Corporation, 1985)

Teaching procedures

Step I: GreetingsStep II: Revision

In the previous lectures we discussed Pre-romanticism in English literature and one of its representative writersRobert Burns. As we know, Pre-romanticism is closely connected with the literary movement, the Romantic Revival which appeared in Europe in the latter half of the 18th century. Would you please tell the marks of the appearance of the Romantic Revival? It was marked by a strong protest against the bondage of Classicism, by a recognition of passion and emotion, and by a renewed interest in medieval literature.

In England this movement showed itself in the trend of Pre-romanticism in poetry which was represented by Robert Burns and William Blake. We had a detailed study of Robert Burns. This period we are going to discuss William Blake and one of his famous poems entitled London.

Step III: New MaterialsI. Early Life

William Blake was born in a business family in London in 1757. He never went to school and only educated himself through self-study. When he was 14, he was apprenticed to be an engraver and then made his living by engraving to illustrate the works for various publishers. During 1788-1793 he mixed with some revolutionary thinkers such as Thomas Paine and William Godwin and they all supported the French Revolution.

I think you must have got to know something about the French Revolution. It is a great historical event in Europe. It took place on July 14,1789 and from then on July 14 became the National Day of France. On July 14, 1789, the heavily exploited people in Paris rose up and stormed the Bastille, which is the symbol of feudalism. We can say the revolution destroyed the feudal economic base and its influence swept all over Europe. For example, owing to this influence, all social contradictions sharpened in England, and England was filled with different kinds of political conflicts. Do you know the slogan put forward during the French Revolution? Liberty, equality and fraternity.

Blakes first collection of poems is named Poetical Sketches, in which he was strongly opposed to the classical tradition in poetry composing of the 18th century not only in form but also in content. Poetical Sketches is a collection of lyrical poems, which are highly musical, and some of them sound like anvil music. An anvil is a large heavy block of iron on which a smith hammers heated metal into shape.

What do you think of the sound made by a smith when he strikes heated metal on an anvil?

It is quite rhythmic. It is short and brief.

At the beginning poetry was inseparable from music. In fact, poetry and music were once united as a single art. When we study the Chinese poems of Tang Dynasty, we can often see the pictures in which the poets sit at the tables drinking and playing musical instruments. Perhaps after they finish their drinking, some excellent poems will be composed, and in this way the poems must have something to do with musical patterns. As we know, a line of poem consists of several words with stressed and unstressed syllables, and when the stressed and unstressed syllables are arranged in a definite order, the line will rise and fall in a musical way. This musical flow of language is called rhythm. Lets have a look at the following two lines:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are.

Rhythm is a very important feature of poetry. Without rhythm there will be no poem.

II. Collections of Blakes Short Lyrics

The best of Blakes short poems of lyrics are collected in two volumesSongs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, published respectively in 1789 and 1794. These two collections reflect two contrary states of the human soul.

Since I have asked you to preview the materials before class, would you please say something about the different pictures described in the two volumes?

Songs of Innocence contains poems obviously written for children, who are usually considered nave and innocent. By using the language which even little babies can learn, Blake succeeds in describing the happy condition of a child before it knows anything about the pains of existence, or we can say, before it gets any experiences of life. Here everything seems to be in harmony. However, in some of the poems, we can also find racial discrimination and suffering.

In Songs of Experience, a piece of much more mature work, the atmosphere is no longer sunny but sad and gloomy. Evil is found everywhere in this world. The poet describes pictures of poverty and misery and shows the sufferings of the miserable. He implies the poor should save themselves through passionate rebellion, through revolution. Now he has set himself against the capitalist world.

Many poems in the two collections contradict each other. They have the same title in the two books, but are opposite in meanings. For example, in both collections therere poems entitled The Chimney Sweeper, but the tone and atmosphere are entirely different. Do you know chimney? It is long, narrow and dirty. Who usually act as the chimney sweeper? Children who are short and thin. Why? Because the chimney is long and narrow, only short and thin children can climb into the chimney to sweep it. They usually come from poor families. They make a living by sweeping the chimney for whom? For the factories and houses owned by the rich and also the churches.

The chimney sweeper in Songs of Innocence is really innocent. He works very hard but earns little, however, he does not pay any attention to that. He forgets his misery because he is told God will come to him and promises him that Hed have God for his father and never lack joy. In Songs of Experience, the chimney sweeper is no longer innocent but experienced. He is quite conscious of his miserable living condition and the causes. Now he curses at God and priests and the king who made up a heaven of their misery. I hope after class you look for some more information on the Internet and make a contrast between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.III. Collection of Blakes Long Poems

Under the influence of the French Revolution, Blake wrote a series of long poems, which he called Prophecies. Theyre highly symbolic and difficult to understand, but the gleams of revolutionary thought are shown in many pages.

One poem entitled The French Revolution is included in this collection. Blake wrote it at the moment of the very outbreak of the French bourgeois revolution, in which he predicts the final victory of the revolution. It is considered the most significant because it describes an important revolutionary event in modern European history with a true progressive tendency.

I. Later Years

In his old age Blake gave up poetry to devote himself to painting and engraving. In 1809 he put on a one-man exhibition but it was a total failure because few people could understand his pictures.

In 1827, Blake died in poverty and loneliness.

V. Detailed Study of London

London is selected from Songs of Experience. William Blake wrote a number of poems to show his support to the French Revolution. After the French Revolution broke out, the English government felt so alarmed that it strengthened the suppression of democratic activities in England. London, the English capital appeared quite different from before. It was filled with gloom, terror and misery. It was also full of cry, sigh and curse. When the poet wandered through the London street during the night, he was greatly shocked by what he saw and what he heard. When we study the poem London, we should notice how the whole picture of the miseries in London is described in it. Questions for discussion:

1. What is the rhythm pattern and the rhyme scheme of the poem?

2. What do you think of the setting of the poem?

3. What does the poet see and hear in the midnight London street?

1. I think you must be familiar with the term the rhythm pattern. As you know, the rhythm pattern used in William Shakespeares Sonnet 18 is iambic pentameter. Then what about the rhythm pattern of the poem London? It is iambic tetrameter. That is to say, each line of the poem consists of four feet, and each foot has two syllables. The first syllable is unaccented and the second is accented. Now lets read the whole poem together Have you found there is some exception to the rhythm pattern of the poem? In fact, some lines are written in trochaic tetrameter. Would you please make some further study about the rhythm pattern of the poem after class?

What do you think of the rhyme scheme used in this poem? aabb, cdcd, efef, dgdg.

2. When and where does what is covered in the poem take place?

After reading the poem we can see the poet talks about what he sees and hears in the midnight London street.

From the first two lines of Stanza I, we know the poet wanders through each chartered street. Here the past participle charterd is used before both street and Thames to indicate the whole London city is monopolized.

In William Blakes time, commerce and industry was quite developed in England. The whole London city was governed by capitalists. The street was rented out to private companies for their exclusive use. Thats to say, it was monopolized by them. Even the Thames river, which flew through London was also monopolized by private business.

*Since the poet is wandering through the London street, he must have seen something and heard something. What does he actually see?

We may get the answer in the next two lines of Stanza I. And mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe. Here we must pay attention to the different part of speech of the word mark. The first mark is used as a verb meaning notice while the next two as nouns meaning sign or indication. He sees that everyone he meets is weak and sorrowful. He notices not only their physical condition but their mental state of mind.

*In the first stanza, the poet sees something. Now in Stanza II, he hears something. What does he hear in the street? This stanza consists of only one sentence. What do you think of the sentence structure? Whats the subject, predicate and object or some other parts of the long sentence?

The normal order of the sentence should be: I hear the mind-forgd manacles in The mind-forgd manacles refers to fetters or chains forged by the mind of the ruling class. In fact the chains are painstakingly devised and made by the London government to prohibit people from rebelling against them.

*Are they frightened to silence?

No. They cry, they curse, and they sigh. Anyway, they utter different kinds of voices and they include not only the adults but infants.

We know people cry for different reasons. Some cry with dissatisfaction, some cry with fear, some cry with surprise, joy, excitement, protest, and so on. You can imagine the reason or reasons for the cry the poet hears in midnight London street.

*In Stanza I and Stanza II, we can find the repeated use of the word every. What do you think of the poets purpose of repeating every for five times?

To emphasize no one of the poor may be free from sufferings. And they cannot endure the miserable living condition any more. They cry for calm and peace. They cry for food and clothes.

*In the second stanza, the poet hears something, but he does not clearly tell who utter the voices. However, from the next two stanzas, we can learn the origins of some of the voices. The cry is from the Chimney-sweeper, the sigh from the hapless/unfortunate Soldier and the curse from the youthful Harlot/prostitute.

*Why do the Chimney-sweepers cry, the unfortunate Soldiers sigh and the youthful Harlots curse? /Whatre the causes of the Chimney-sweepers cry, the unfortunate Soldiers sigh and the youthful Harlots curse?

Before answering this question it is necessary for us to be clear about the sentence order of Stanza III. The complete sentence in the normal order should be: How does the chimney-sweepers cry appall/shock deeply every blackning church and how does the hapless soldiers sigh run in blood down palace Walls?

The chimney-sweeper cries because he realizes he has suffered a lot and he cannot endure that any longer.

*How does his cry appall every blackning church?

Here church does not refer to a specific church but refers to the clergymen living in the church.

What figure of speech is used here?metonymy e.g. He likes Shakespeare.

Pay attention to the usage of the word blackning. Here it is used in both its physical sense and moral sense. Physically, the outward appearance of the church is blackening because of the pollution. Morally, it refers to the hypocrisy and corruption of the church. What rhetorical device is used here? Metaphor.

The clergymen are greatly shocked by the chimney-sweepers cry because they have never expected the chimney-sweepers would cry and rebel against them.

*Why is the soldier unfortunate and standing in the street at night?

He is forced to join the army to be involved in the aggressive wars. It should be fortunate for him to have come back alive from the battlefield. Why does he still utter sighs?

He must have been badly wounded in the war. Now he becomes disabled and cannot make a living by himself. He has to be a beggar standing in the street asking for something from passers-by even late at night.

*How does his sigh run in blood down palace walls?

Hearing the sigh of the miserable soldier, the picture of many soldiers blood running along the Palace walls is brought into the poets mind.

What figure of speech is used here?synaesthesia (The stimulation of one sense produces a mental impression associated with a different sense. In these two lines we can find the association of the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. Some other examples: sweet voice, icy look, sour remark, oily-tongued.

*When he wanders through the street, what does the poet hear most?

The youthful Harlots curse. They curse because they are forced to betray their heart and soul by the rich man, the ruling class of the society.

*How can her curse blast/destroy the new born Infants tear?

As we know, the first thing a child does when it is born is to cry and burst into tears. But here no tear comes out of the eyes of the newly born infant. Why? Because it has got prenatal blindness, resulting from a venereal disease by earlier infection from its mother, the harlot. Thats to say, it is blind soon after it is born.

*How can the harlots curse blight/ruin with plagues the Marriage hearse?

Why is marriage put together with hearse? Marriage is a kind of happiness while hearse is connected with sadness. The rhetorical device used here is called oxymoron.

It implies the harlots curse ruins the newly married people with plagues, most probably venereal disease. It turns the wedding into a funeral. The marriage coach therefore becomes a funeral hearse.

The general idea of the last three lines in Stanza IV is that young girls are forced to be prostitutes, and their curses covers the love and marriage of the whole society with gloom and darkness, then the wedding is turned into a funeral. The whole London city is filled with miseries.

Up till now, we have finished studying the poem London. Have you got any questions in understanding the poem?

Step IV: Assignment1. Discuss the linguistic features of the poem.

2. How do you think the anvil music is brought about in the poem?

3. Preview the corresponding materials concerned with Romanticism and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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