Enlargement of Vision: The Power of Dialectical Opposites in William Blake’s Poetry Faith Neece College

A defining characteristic of William Blake’s poetry is that his poems are intended to be in conversation with one another. Blake allows his poetry to speak by using dialectically opposite images. Blake prominently uses Christian images in his poems to show different perspectives of faith. Two such examples of dialectically opposite poems are “The Lamb,” featured in “Songs of Innocence,” and “The Tyger,” featured in “Songs of Experience.” “The Lamb” speaks to a child-like faith, whereas “The Tyger” features the questionings of a more experienced person. Blake hinges these two poems on each other to push us past our limitations on faith into a deeper understanding. In using these opposite Christian images, Blake plunges us deep into our imaginations, the only place where we can comprehend a complex God who embodies both the tiger and the lamb. Thus Blake launches his view that only in our imaginations can we fully experience the complexity of the Divine, which is the pathway to Blake’s understanding of salvation.

Blake commonly uses voices of children to embody his poetry. “The Lamb” caters to the understanding of a child and serves as a representation of the simple faith of children. The poem takes on the form of a Bible lesson....