Experience reading innocence: Contextualizing Blake's Holy Thursday

Eighteenth-Century Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 535-562

  Fairer, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950577188     PISSN: 00132586     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2002.0040     Document Type: Review

References (42)

1. Stanley Gardner, Blake's Innocence and Experience Retraced (New York: St Martin's Press, 1986)
2. The Tyger, the Lamb, and the Terrible Desart (Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1998)
3. Ironic readings of "Holy Thursday" include Robert F. Gleckner, "Irony in Blake's Holy Thursday," Modern Language Notes 71 (1956): 412-5
4. Harold Bloom, Blake's Apocalypse (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), 43-5
5. Eben Bass, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience: The Thrust of Design," in Blake's Visionary Forms Dramatic, ed. David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1970), 196-213 (205-06)
6. Zachary Leader, Reading Blake's Songs (Boston, London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 18-19
7. Stuart Crehan, Blake in Context (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), 64-5
8. and Edward Larrissy, William Blake (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 60-1
9. Andrew Lincoln balances the speaker's delight against the "unsettling questions" the poem gives rise to (Songs of Innocence and of Experience [London: The William Blake Trust / The Tate Gallery, 1991], 160-2)
10. D.G. Gillham, however, argues that "[W]e cannot look on the poem as an ironic exposé of the sentimental view" (William Blake [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973], 22)
11. other non-ironic readings include E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Innocence and Experience: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1964), 194-7
12. and S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 187
13. H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn in England, 1791-1795 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 173-4
14. "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18: 3)
15. Heather Glen has discussed how Blake's song both develops and transforms contemporary accounts of the anniversary ceremony; see Vision and Disenchantment: Blake's Songs and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), 120-9, 366-9
16. Martin Strong, The Great Duty and Necessity Of a Vertuous and Religious Education of Youth, Recommended in a Sermon Preach'd at Yeovill in Somersetshire, At the First Opening of a Charity-School there . . . September the 28th 1707, 14
17. Gardner's quotation is from Dorothy Marshall, English People in the Eighteenth Century (London: Longman, 1956), 162
18. See Donna T. Andrew, "On Reading Charity Sermons: Eighteenth-Century Anglican Solicitation and Exhortation," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43 (1992): 581-91
19. Bernard Mandeville's influential attack on the charity school system, "An Essay on Charity, and Charity-schools" (1723), was included in his Fable of the Bees, ed. F.B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 1: 253-322
20. For a wider perspective on the charity system see Donna T. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989)
21. The earliest version is sung by Obtuse Angle in Blake's An Island in the Moon. See William Blake's Writings, ed. G.E. Bentley, Jr. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 895-6, 1697-1700. Bentley convincingly dates the satire to Autumn 1784
22. Gentleman's Magazine 59 (1789): 370
23. The children of the charity school of St Anne's, Soho, took part in all three celebrations. See the descriptions in John Henry Cardwell, The Story of a Charity School: Two Centuries of Popular Education in Soho, 1699-1899 (London and New York: Truslove, Hanson & Comba, 1899), 53-7
24. [Thomas Hayter], Sermon preached by the Bishop of Norwich at the Anniversary Meeting of the Charity Schools in and about London and Westminster, May 1, 1755
25. Richard Coleire, The Education Proper for Charity-Children. A Sermon preach'd at Isleworth On Sunday the 10th of August, 1729. Being the Day on which the Yearly Collection was made for the Benefit of Sixty Charity-children, belonging to that Parish (London: John Pemberton, 1729), 3
26. [Lewis Bagot], A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London: On Thursday, June 5, 1788. Being the Time of the Yearly Meeting of the Children Educated in the Charity-Schools (London, 1788), 17
27. The State of the Ladies Charity-School, Lately set up in Baldwin-Street, In the City of Bristol, For teaching poor girls to read and spin; together with their rules, etc. (Bristol: S. Farley, 1756)
28. The rules and orders for the Lambeth girls' charity school (1794) include a pro-forma bequest form, and on p. 15 an advertisement that "Needle-Work sent to Mrs REED, at the School-House, High-Street, Lambeth, will be executed on the following terms ..." This is followed by a price list for individual items (napkins, shirts, tablecloths, etc.). Examples of the organizing of manual labour in the so-called "Working Schools" (which had become the norm by 1723) are given by W.K. Lowther Clarke, The History of the S.P.C.K. (London: S.P.C.K., 1959), 44-5
29. Edmund Gibson, Directions Given to the Clergy of the Diocese of London, In the Year 1724 (London, 1744), 140-3
30. Coleire, The Education Proper for Charity-Children, 12
31. Methods of Erecting, Supporting & Governing Charity-Schools: with An Account of the Charity-Schools in Ireland. The Third Edition, ivith Additions (Dublin, 1721), 10
32. Bisse, Publick Education, 24
33. Articles agreed upon ... to be the Standing Rides and Orders for the good Government and Management of the Charity-School, now Erected in the City of York (1706), rule 12
34. A Short Account of the Blue Coat Charity School, in St. Philip's Church Yard, Birmingham, from its institution in 1724 to 1817 (Birmingham, 1817), 13-14
35. Prayers, Psalms and Hymns, used by the Children at the Blue Coat Hospital (Liverpool, [c.1800])
36. Coleire, The Education Proper for Charity-Children, 8-9
37. Thomas Gibbons, Dedication of Ourselves to God argued from the Divine Mercies in a Sermon [on Rom. xii. 1] preached at St. Thomas's, January 2, 1764
38. For the Benefit of the Charity-School in Gravel-Lane, Southwark (London, 1764), 34
39. The Poetical Works of J. and C. Wesley, Reprinted from the Originals, ed. George Osborn, 13 vols. (London, 1868-72)
40. Robert Acklom Ingram, A Sermon [on Gal. vi. 9] Preached in the Parish-Church of St fames, Colchester, on Sunday the 24th of August, 1788, For the Benefit of the Charity School (Colchester, [1788]), 20-3
41. Laetitia Matilda Hawkins, Letters on the Female Mind, Its Powers and Pursuits (London, 1793), 168. She complained: "I feel it impossible, with any degree of comfort, or even security, to walk in London, unprotected by a gentleman. The levelling principle has rendered all persons, making an appearance at all above the common rank, obnoxious to the most galling abuse, and often to personal insult... 1 have found it so irksome lately, that I leave the pavé to the democrats" (166-7)
42. "And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting" (Acts 2: 2)