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William Blake's Religious Views
Summary: William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience" reveal his own religious beliefs and his views of the established Catholic Church. Blake rejects the established Church as repressive, and says that true holiness is found in each individual.
Blake is a holistic poet, he writes by not only exploring the "two contraries" of innocence and experience, but by studying them together, as he believed that "without contraries there is no progression" and that they are "necessary to human existence." This view extended beyond his titles, into all areas of life. This is why elements of religion can be extracted from almost all of his poems. Religion is inseparably intertwined with morality and therefore with every decision made, or view owned, by a person or even society. Blake was seen as having very unusual religious views in his own time, both `The Garden of Love' and `The Little Vagabond' were censored and repressed for their heretical messages, so it is no surprise that he had unorthodox opinions on the Established, normal, Church.
One of these unusual beliefs that he held was that people themselves were holy. This...
This section contains 1,106 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |