William Blake’s Songs of Innocence: A Natural State of Childhood

Abstract

Childhood is an innocent stage of human life. Whatever is said and done in childhood is mostly expressed through natural state of thought and experience. This paper has applied psychoanalytical approach to interpret some poems from William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’, basically based on Lacanian model of psychoanalysis. This is qualitative research and it has used both inductive reasoning, retrospective and introspective methods in analysis and interpretations of evidences as represented in the poems. It has endeavored to uncover particularly the elements and images of innocence, simplicity and naturalness in some poems from ‘Song of Innocence’ part, which have not been interpreted applying Lacque Lacan’s psychological perspectives. Further, the paper has attempted to explore associative images of ‘oral stage,’ ‘symbiotic relationship’ as well as underlying latent content of symbols in the selected poems. Keeping all these psychoanalytical views in analysis, the paper proposes Blake not a poet of children or poet of childish verse but a close observer of innocent and natural states of human soul, and an explorer of human psyche, particularly focusing on characteristics of Lacanian concept of mirror stage of childhood. It is found that most of the poems in Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ represent purity, innocence and symbiotic association of the body, mind and outside objects a child experiences. This asserts that Blake is an acute observer of human psyche.