I'm dissagreeing with my professor regarding the interpretation of this poem by William Blake

This poem is just realism? Really? Cmon now.

you can both be right obviously. its really just a pissing challenge with the winner being the one that is more convincing. i kinda like your interpretation even though i hate the whole camus absurd bs and actually enjoy reading things by analyzing underlying ideology.

but fuck, i can say this is a racist piece just by applying race theory to this.

critical theory is great and shit at the same time

it's about the joy of God being greater than any earthly woes

>but mostly it's just a nice poem

You could apply race theory to it, but I'd argue wouldn't be as true as other interpretations.
It really depends on what your definition of "truth" is. Which is a whole other discussion.

Sadly "it's just a nice poem" won't sue for the paper I have to write.

I'm taking an English Romantics course this semester and my professor mostly agrees with . He also says, though, that there's an element of Blake's "innocence--experience--second innocence" framework going on here. The idea is that the boy is a child and children deserve to be innocent; their innocence deserves to be protected. Society is failing the chimney sweeps by not allowing them to enjoy childhood innocence.

OK - ignore my first claim and just pay attention to my greentext - that's fine too.

Does her surname end in -stein or -berg?

>who is right

fuck you. interpretations aren't right or wrong, but arguments can be better or worse depending on how well it's supported by the text. you cant dig blake up and ask what he intended, and even so it wouldn't matter bc meaning extends beyond the artist's original intent. that's what makes the study of literature interesting you fucking pleb, the proliferation of meaning and viewpoints, not who "won" the analysis jfc

Depends. If you subscribe to the Barthelme memes then authorial intent is meaningless. In that case a Marxist reading is just as valid as an existentialist one.

If you don't then obviously the stories are more existentialist because Blake predated Marx. The actual communist philosophy would be too intricate to be fully expressed: only a few rudimentary humanitarian platitudes like "the poor should be looked after"

Do you mind going into more detail about what you mean by "God" in the implications of it/him?

Veeky Forums's most recent imaginary friend.

No.
It's Rosenthal.

I think there are a lot of proto-marxist undertones in Blake's work, so I side with your teacher.

...

lol thats jewish too

I'd simply point out that ascribing a marxist interpretation doesn't fit in with the resignation found in the last few verses.
Also, it definitely critiques working conditions, and it's definitely a religious text. I'd suggest analyzing the idea that Tom's white hair cannot be dirtied when it's shaved and the idea of death in the poem.

>William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827)

>Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883)

tell her that she's a dumb bitch and that when people say blake's writing is prophetic, they don't mean literally

THIS. Just make a convincing argument based on textual evidence dude.

You guys must see you're being trolled right?

Doesn't matter, it's an excuse to talk about Blake. I'll take that any day.

Yeah regardless of what you think, ou can't deny that Blake was a fantastic poet and a visionary in every sense of the word

They layer in your profs interpretation that you're missing is that she sees God as a man made creation, and the laws of god as having little to donwith the truth about the good life, but everything to do with maintaining hierarchical power imbalances (viz capitalism). Blake clearly believes in God; your prof clearly does not, and sees religion as a tool by which the upper class compels the lower classes to do their bidding and accept their subordinate place in the social hierarchy. Your prof makes Blake the unwitting tool of solving capitalists. He is using a poem and the idea of God to justify the inequitable conditions of a capitalist society, basically saying, "you might think this is unfair, you might have revolutionary ideas about upsetting the order, but what God wants is for you to keep spacing away for your capitalist overlords." Your prof refuses to read Blake on his own terms, and chooses instead to read him "against the grain" "suspiciously".

Fuck your prof.

Wolvish, not solving; slaving away, not spacing

>she
>Marxist
>she's a Jew

Why are Veeky Forums retards so desperate to believe blatant bait?

Interesting that you use the phrases "against the grain" and "suspicion because those were her exact phrases when referring to me in an email exchange.

She's not Jewish.
But she does teach gender studies and intergroup relations (social justice by its own definition) in addition to English.

The humanities are really going to shit at universities aren't they.

>your hermeneutics of suspicion

Ffs, even a Marxist interpretation would be the opposite (the "coffins of black" represent the chimney soot, ie the conditionns of labor that constrict and imprison them, the angel then releases them from those conditions representing some kind of revolutionary change).

>bait

Notice the narrator of the poem, how they disappear during the dream and then come back within the "our" in the last few lines.

It's actually equivocal whether the dream is even supported as a serious ideal; the poem's title, for instance, doesn't make reference to the dream. Ultimately, there's a bleakness that readers aren't really addressing about it: the whole dream came because the narrator, in his attempt to console Tom, gives him the idea that there's an innate sense of purity in a person that stays and remains so long as the outside world can't contact it. It's worth wondering whether this is true, but in any case, the fact that it was said to a young boy (and by another young boy, I think), who was in need of any little reassurance, should make one question it's weight and, thus, the impact of the dream.

Does the narrator even believe it? The final line seems like another line from Tom's telling of his dream to the other sweepers, rather than it being a natural conclusion of the narrator's thought process. Since it could very well be Tom's conclusion, does that not further undercut the message of hope?

Your teacher is an idiot. Most people you meet in life will be idiots. Move on.

>Who is right?
Both of you if it's just a lit course.

I think both of you are "reading between the lines", when you don't need to.

The angel isn't a metaphor - it's an angel.

A key tenet of Christianity is that your human suffering is short compared to eternal life with god, for those that lead a good life.

When you take a text like this at such a surface level, you lose so much potential meaning that it has.

That's not how Marxist crit works, and you might want to look into Blake's politics and other mental problems.

I completely understand what you're saying, but sometimes the author wrote it to be surface-level and blatant, and there isn't anything to interpret.

The problem I have with most literary critiques, especially in poetry, is the intellectual circlejerk of people creating an entire narrative based on nonexistent evidence from a piece of work because they believe it makes them deep or profound.

There's the wider contextual meaning of the poems appearance in Experience over Innocence you could look at OP

For example, at how the children in this poem are forced to find an idyllic childhood life only in their dreams, whereas in Innocence's 'Nurses Song' the joy the children experience is real.

just write what she wants to hear if it's for a paper

how fucking unsurprising, since marxist claim a monopoly on history

youre being trolled you retard

...

>Who is right?
So long as the text satisfy's both your interpretations, there is no "right" answer. There are stronger answers, however. Does your teacher argue her interpretation better than you do, or do you do it better than her?

Blake was a mystic.

Your teacher was right.

Kekk

its seems to me to be about some people being born into poor desolate lives and its a demonstration of the times where a lot of people were in extreme poverty. your marxist professor is predictable. just agree and go on with your life, there is nothing to be gained from these interactions. you only have so much time don't be wasting it on these people.

i don't see it as a call to action as some here say

>There is nothing to be gained from these interactions
I appreciate the advice. I really do.
But I dissagree. This paper I'm writing (and my whole semester with her in general) is a chance for me to wrestle with ideas that I don't agree with and test my persuasive prowess.

Nice dubs.
But I couldn't do that. I'd rather write what I believe and receive a poor grade than write what she wants and get a good grade.

also adding that its about the curious motivations of those surviving under similar hardships. again, not a call to action.

you'll learn to simply avoid and fight the battles where you can make a difference and noticeably move the needle in the right direction

there is a second poem which is intended to parallel this, which deals with the same circumstances from a different perspective, and shows the true hopelessness of their situation.

How about you go with your professors interpretation, but interpret along the lines of "Marxism as a utopian delusion, into which the no longer plausible belief in a loving God who will right all wrongs is projected"

Are you first or second year at Uni? Because you don't seem to have a comprehension of how lit crit works at all. Maybe she doesn't either if she insists it's the only way to read it.

Either way, you're both retarded.

Of course the Jews always throw their favorite Jew Marx around even though it's the other Jew Jesus.

Nice author psychology fag.
You have obviously never actually engaged literature on a critical level outside of high school.

Honestly it's entirely fair to have a Marxist view on this considering Blake's stance about child labor and the industrial period. However there's still the innocence/experience dichotomy that Blake is consciously writing from.

>It's a MARXIST THEME YOU SHITLORD

(Marxism didn't even exist at the time of Blake's writing)

>THERE IS ONLY ONE INTERPRETATION TO A COMPLEX LITERARY WORK YOU WHITE MALE

Why are literature professors so awful these days?

>muh intentional fallacy

kys pomofag

Karl Marx was nine years old when Blake died. Perhaps there is a more socialist bent to the passage but it can't be strictly marxist if we are speaking of authorial intent.

>if we are speaking of authorial intent.
the unfortunate ideologically conditioned idiots you find in English lit departments these days will tell you that texts need to be viewed as "self-contained cultural artifacts".

The biggest tip-off for how much of a joke freudian, marxist, feminist and deconstructive literary theories are is that they define the value of poetry in regards to their own political cause, under the unspoken and unjustified assumption that that cause is an objective unit of measurement.
"This poem supports our good cause without even realizing it. It is prophetic of the utopia we are working toward, once again proving that the great works of art of all time - in so far as they are great works of art - were on our side. But of course if a poet opposes our thought that is because they are products of their environment, and it is our duty to point out their barbarism."

This charade reminds me of the way theologians read into passages in the old testament as prophetic of the coming of Jesus, and turned them into "proofs of the legitimacy of their god", which takes the shape of ideology, dogma, absolute truth. Being materialists they like to harp on religion a lot, but they're far more presumptuous and authoritarian than the gods of our forefathers. Regardless of what Christianity was turned into, Jesus made a point of telling his disciples that god was *in them*, that the law was something they themselves created. Marxism tells you that you are nothing more than material, the product of your environment, and that the law is something that creates you. Well, if the law creates us, where does it come from? If words speak us how did language develop?