William Blakes The Tyger Essay -- The Tyger Philosophy Literature Pap

William Blakes The TygerTerror, in the eighteenth century, was commonly considered the highest revelation of sublimity. Indeed, writes Edmund hit in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and bewitching (1757), panic is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime.(1) In Section VII of his aesthetic treatise, Burke tries to explain why this is so Whatever is fitted in any sorting to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant(predicate) about terrible objects, or operates in a manner uniform to terror, is a source of the sublime that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is fitting of feeling (39). The chief effect of the sublime, according to Burke, is astonishment--that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror, and in which the mind is so entirely filled with its object , that it cannot entertain any other (57). These effects are produced when we contemplate dangerous objects which we know cannot harm us. Burke finds examples of this that immediately set about William Blakes poem The Tyger to mind We have continually about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not pernicious. Amongst these we never look for the sublime it comes upon us in the gloomy forest, and in the scream wilderness, in the form of the lion, the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros (66). The Tyger is, indeed, a poem that celebrates the effects of that sublimity which Burke calls the concomitant of terror (66). In this aspect, the poem is reminiscent of one of Blakes Proverbs of Hell The roaring of lions, the howling of ... ...lake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, British lit 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Forth Worth Harcourt Brace, 1996) 289. backrest (3) William Blake, The Tyger, British Literature 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth Harcourt Brace, 1996) 301. All further quotations from this poem are given over parenthetically in the text by line number. back (4) William Blake, The critical Girl Lost, British Literature 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth Harcourt Brace, 1996) 282. back (5) William Blake, The Lamb, British Literature 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth Harcourt Brace, 1996) 278. back (6) William Blake, The Divine Image, British Literature 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth Harcourt Brace, 1996) 280. back