The Garden of Love

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1794

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context: Romanticism

Romanticism, or the Romantic era, was an artistic and intellectual movement that began in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, with its peak in the mid-1800s. Its characteristics were based on the idealization of nature, on emotion and individualism, on glorification of the medieval past, and suspicion and criticism of both the Age of Enlightenment (with its emphasis on science and rationalism) and the Industrial Revolution (with its mechanization of work and move towards modernity). The visual arts, music, and literature were strongly represented in the Romantic movement.

Blake wrote his poems before the period recognized as the English Romantic movement, a period most scholars date as beginning with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Henry Taylor Coleridge in 1798. However, Blake’s poetry and visual art (with his use of images, symbols, metaphors), and his revolutionary spirit combined with simple form and vocabulary, as well as his spontaneous expression of thoughts and emotions place him as a typical Romantic poet. He has been called a pre-cursor to the Romantics because Blake emphasized the importance of the imagination, and his own visionary experiences contributed much to his work. The role of nature and its connection to human liberty and pleasure is a key theme in Blake’s work and aligns closely with the Romantic attitude, as do his political and spiritual beliefs.

“The Garden of Love” reflects several key elements of Romantic poetry. The emphasis on nature, as opposed to the church or industrial society, as the cradle of human development is represented by the green. The view of children as connected with nature and innocence was central to the Romantics. The speaker in the poem expresses emotion at the changed state of the garden, and the last few words “my joys & desires” (Line 12), reflect the importance of emotions in the human experience. The overall message of “The Garden of Love,” with its stance against organized religion, is a key Romantic ideal, as are the love of liberty, mysticism, and spiritual freedom Blake expresses in the poem.

Socio-historic Context: The 1700s

William Blake read extensively on and was very much involved in discussion of the great societal and historical changes of his time. The French and American revolutions of the late 1700s influenced his political thought, and he was a close associate of the American revolutionary thinker Thomas Paine. Blake’s influences also included the Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Blake published the works of many of the intellectuals and political thinkers of his time, as well as tracts by writers interested in spirituality and theologians who challenged the conventional doctrines of the established churches. Blake was also critical of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on rationalism and science as opposed to the imagination and mysticism. Some critics and historians place Blake as a forerunner of the reformist free-love movement, which grew in the 1820s, and whose proponents sought to abolish marriage as a form of slavery and the removal of all state restrictions on sexual activity, including gay love and adultery. While Blake is not known to have supported such ideas as having multiple partners, he was critical of the marriage laws of his day and the Christian emphasis on chastity as a virtue.

This combination of revolutionary influences and free-thinking models led Blake to his position against all forms of authoritarianism and repression of the individual. The poem “The Garden of Love” expresses Blake’s position on such agents of oppression as the Church and The Old Testament. The poem’s depiction of the happy individual bathed in nature prior to the appearance of the Chapel in their life is a criticism of the destruction caused to the human spirit by its exposure and subjugation to the restrictions and prohibitions of Christian law. Thus, the poem reflects the thinking of the non-conformists, like Blake, of his period.