Blake

William Blake Grade Level:  9-12 In 2001, Tate Britain concluded its exhibition of English poet and artist William Blake's work. The online guide to the program, however, is still available. Designed to complement the exhibition, it features the same four sections: "One of the Gothic Artists" (biography), "In the Furnace of Lambeth's Vale" (Blake's London years), "Chambers of the Imagination" (the most important faculty of man, according to Blake), and "Many Formidable Works" (a presentation of some of the poems and engravings). "Learning Tools," a fifth section available only online, includes games and suggestions for further reading. Topic: Blake, William,--1757-1827 URL: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/blake.htm William Blake (1747-1827) Grade Level:  9-12 William Blake was an English artist and poet. He was born in London in 1747. On this Web site you will find a biography on this talented artist. The biography includes information about his early life, family, and career. Specific articles about his life are presented in a Timeline format. You must click onto the dates located at the top of the page for information about William Blake during that time period. A "Self-Portrait" of Blake is included here, as well as many other illustrations of William Blake's artistry. Topic: Blake, William,--1757-1827 URL: http://www.blakearchive.org/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=blake/documents/biography.xml&style=blake/shared/styles/wba.xsl Selected Poetry of William Blake (1757-1827) Grade Level:  9-12 The poetry collections Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) contain William Blake's most famous poems, "The Tiger" and "The Lamb." In addition to these, Representative Poetry Online at the University of Toronto includes forty-three other poems by Blake. Born in London in 1757, Blake was apprenticed to an engraver at fourteen. He had begun writing poetry two years before, and, in adulthood, he successfully combined the two talents, using his engravings and paintings to define or complete his poems. Topic: Blake, William,--1757-1827 URL: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/24.html Special Exhibitions: William Blake Grade Level:  9-12 In 2001, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted an exhibition of more than one hundred seventy-five of William Blake's works. The Met now maintains a virtual complement to the exhibition on its website, where online visitors can view sixteen images, read Blake's biography, and study a chronology of his life. As the introduction to the material indicates, "The broad range of Blake's artistic and poetic vision is represented [by the exhibition], with special attention to his innovative printmaking techniques, his visionary imagination, and the implications of his radical politics for his art." Topic: Literature URL: http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={6B4DE85F-20C3-11D4-9373-00902786BF44} William Blake Grade Level:  9-12 Humanities Web comprises such resources as biographies, timelines, chronologies, images, electronic texts of primary sources, articles, and recommendations for further research and reading, all of which "show the interconnections, the web, the links, between history, the arts, and culture--and how each plays off and influences the others." The entry on English poet, painter, and engraver William Blake features an image, brief biography, chronology, quotations, and images of many of his works. According to Blake, "The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind." Topic: Poets, English URL: http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=i&ID=97 William Blake Grade Level:  9-12 Humanities Web comprises such resources as biographies, timelines, chronologies, images, electronic texts of primary sources, articles, and recommendations for further research and reading, all of which "show the interconnections, the web, the links, between history, the arts, and culture--and how each plays off and influences the others." The entry on English poet, painter, and engraver William Blake includes an image, brief biography, chronology, quotations, and the complete text of Songs of Innocence and Experience, Poetical Sketches, and The Pickering Manuscript. According to Blake, "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." Topic: Poets, English URL: http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=i&ID=53 William Blake Grade Level:  9-12 Classic Reader's free online collection of classic stories currently comprises more than three thousand works of literature (including nearly two thousand short stories) by more than three hundred authors. New works are added regularly. The entry on William Blake, the British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver who illustrated and printed his own books, features a biographical sketch ("Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the eighteenth-century"), an image, and the complete text of Songs of Innocence and Experience. Topic: Poets, English URL: http://www.classicreader.com/author.php/aut.63/ The Artchive: William Blake (1757-1827) Grade Level:  9-12 The Artchive's entry on English poet and artist William Blake includes an excerpt from The A-Z of Art: The World's Greatest and Most Popular Artists and Their Works. "A powerful imagination is evident in every aspect of Blake's work," contend the authors, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson. Nine images, all of which can be enlarged, are offered at this site, including "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun," which figures prominently in a contemporary novel and a recent film, both entitled Red Dragon. Topic: Blake, William,--1757-1827 URL: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/blake.html The William Blake archive Grade Level:  9-12 Visit the William Blake Archive and get an opportunity to view some of the famous works of the late William Blake. This archive contains fully searchable and scalable copies of his visual arts as well as literary works. Read many of the actual poems along with analysis and commentary about his writings. Also included is brief biographical information about William Blake. Topic: Poets, English URL: http://www.blakearchive.org Webmuseum, Paris: Blake, William Grade Level:  9-12 Born in London in 1757, poet, artist, and son of a shopkeeper William Blake attended school only long enough to learn how to read and write, according to Webmuseum's biography. The young Blake first worked in his father's hosiery shop, and then was apprenticed to an engraver at fourteen. Although Blake later used his artistic skills to illustrate his poetry, his reputation as an engraver and artist grew primarily from the twenty-one etchings he prepared to complement an edition of the Old Testament. Webmuseum has collected nine images of Blake's artwork at this site, all of which can be enlarged. Topic: Blake, William,--1757-1827 URL: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/blake/ Blake Digital Text Project Grade Level:  9-12 The English department of University of Georgia/Athens maintains the Blake Digital Text Project, which includes The Complete Prose and Poetry of William Blake (edited by David V. Erdman), a graphical hypertext version of Songs of Innocence and Experience, and a hypertext version of "The Everlasting Bible." William Blake, English poet and artist, was born in London in 1757. He served as an apprentice to an engraver when he was fourteen, and as an adult, he combined his artistic skill with his writing talent. Topic: Literature URL: http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake/home1.html Wm Blake's Life Grade Level:  9-12 Divided into four sections, this site discusses English poet and artist William Blake. The section entitled "Man" includes a biography, an image of Blake, and a timeline of his life. "Artisan" describes the engraving process Blake used. In the twenty-first century, he is celebrated as a poet, artist, and thinker, but in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Blake, who was apprenticed to an engraver at fourteen, earned his living by printmaking and engraving. "Thinker" includes images and text, including this observation: "While Blake was the Poetic Genius defined, he was also a philosopher, radical, and great thinker." Topic: Blake, William,--1757-1827 URL: http://www.vu.union.edu/~blake/life.html The Web Museum, Paris: Artist Index Grade Level:  9-12 This artists index of the WebMuseum, Paris web site is an extensive list of over 200 artists providing links to biographies and examples of their work. The index includes peoples such as: William Blake, Mary Cassatt, Jan van Eyck, Michelangelo, Claude Monet, Leonardo de Vinci, Vincent van Gogh and many more. Topic: Artists URL: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/ Gothic Literature Read by the Romantic Writers Grade Level:  9-12 The relationship between Gothic literature and the novelists and poets from the age of Romanticism is the focus of this site, which provides a look at the Gothic novels read by the major writers from 1780-1830. Reading lists are provided for the following poets and novelists: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. In addition, comments about the novels are available from many of the writers. Topic: Shelley, Percy Bysshe,--1792-1822 URL: http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/gothic.htm Break of Day in the Trenches Grade Level:  9-12 The English writer and artist Isaac Rosenberg published the poem "Break of Day in the Trenches," one of many written about his experiences in the First World War, in the American journal "Poetry." This Web site contains a critical analysis of the poem featuring links to passages of commentary describing the structure, theme, and other poetic elements. There are also page sections comparing this poem to other works by Rosenberg, as well as the work of more traditional British poets such as Jonne Donne and William Blake. Topic: World War, 1914-1918--Poetry URL: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/rose/hyppoem.html Wystan Hugh Auden Grade Level:  9-12 The opening lines of Wystan Hugh Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" are probably familiar: "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come." PoemHunter.com features the complete text of this and seventy-two other poems by Auden, who, according to the biography that complements this entry, was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. Topic: Poets, English URL: http://www.poemhunter.com/wystan-hugh-auden/poet-39229/