SOURCE: Richardson, Alan. “Colonialism, Race, and Lyric Irony in Blake's ‘The Little Black Boy.’” Papers on Language and Literature 26, no. 2 (spring 1990): 233-48.

In the following essay, Richardson contends that William Blake's poem “The Little Black Boy” cannot simply be categorized as either a fine abolitionist poem or an example of latent racism in English antislavery literature. Rather, the critic suggests that Blake intended to critique English mass education while also offering children and adults an alternative, more positive depiction of Africa than was typical of the age.

Blake's “The Little Black Boy” offers a particularly rich site for examining relations of lyric and ideology, with its obvious relevance to such contemporary social and political issues as colonialism, the antislavery movement, the question of religious education in the colonies, and its more subtle engagement with concerns over mass schooling and what Richard Altick calls the “literacy crisis” in England...