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영어

It is remarkable that Blake chose the genre of children’s hymn as a medium for his first ambitious work, Songs of Innocence. Why on earth did he turn to such a conventional, comparably minor genre, though it enjoyed enormous publications and popularity among the polite class? This paper is an attempt to answer this question, and in the course of its argument it was finally revealed that Songs was intended as an implicit, if forcible, criticism of the conventional hymns that were intent on imposing fierce puritanic morals on children, and that children’s verse was the very form he needed indeed since child seemed an exemplar of the visionary imagination he treasured and stressed so much. Thus Songs is a poetic expression of his views on child, its education and its characteristic imagination. Hence the independent value of Songs, that continued to be issued separately from its counterpart after its first combined edition in 1794. This view of Songs can serve to address or elucidate the most controversial issue of irony in ‘Holy Thursday’ or ‘Chimney Sweeper.’ Given Songs is a positive exaltation of childlike innocence and vision, we may well read them innocently. Songs, ironically read, might cease to be a contrary to its counterpart.