Blake and the pastoral

Blake definitely does criticize society in “Songs of Innocence” and the biggest way he did that was in the way he “remixes” the pastoral.

Although Blake does not use pastoral imagery through all of the poems, the beginning and other parts of the poems show he changes pastoral elements. The pastoral form alludes to the Golden Age in classical antiquity where shepherds would lounge around, sing and write poems all day, and it was later adopted into Christian thought too with the obvious similarities of Garden of Eden, the return of Christ etc. In the beginning, he follows the convention of shepherds writing poetry, but then “The Shepherd” talks about how the shepherd follows the lambs! This alludes to his belief that God is part of everyone and would have definitely stood out as unorthodox. He only briefly mentions pastoral elements in other poems until the “The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl Found” poems, where he alludes to the parable of the lost sheep, but with a dramatic twist because the lion takes care of the “lamb” until it is found.

Blake’s twisting classical concepts and biblical stories in “Songs of Innocence” definitely demonstrates his criticism of society.