Blake, the Church, and the Alehouse

By
Both poets for our readings have an uncanny knack for making even a sad topic seem cheerful. One poem in particular caught me off guard. "The Little Vagabond" both gave me pause and a big laugh. The image of a cold church is something I am sure was common in those days. Following the poem, can you imagine what the church would be like? A church serving ale during the services, what a thought. Indeed, the people would be warm and happy. Praises would be sung to the Lord, but for what, I must veture to ask. Would it be in genuine praise for God, or for the fact that they are not having to sit in a cold church?
The big absurdity for me is the image of God and Satan getting along like the prodigal son returning home. Since I know this would never happen, I see it as slightly funny. What are your thoughts, everyone?

I will be commenting on Darby and Carmen's posts.

Comments

  1. Carmen KnowlesOctober 9, 2017 at 10:12 PM

    I was throw off on this one as well. Blake seems to imply God as drunk. Please tell me I read this wrong! How can one go from some other poems so seemingly centered on God to this? I think sometimes poets try to write things from different viewpoints, but this is just not an area to be changing mindsets on. But what do I know? I am definitely not a poet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ty GoramOctober 9, 2017 at 10:49 PM

    I found it really strange that it would be serving ale during services, as the Bible says to be control of yourself at all times, and ale kinda...gives the opposite affect if you have too much of it. Especially in the church, where you're supposed to worship.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Will BradyOctober 10, 2017 at 7:53 AM

    I'm unfortunately familiar with cold churches… I really doubt ale would ACTUALLY improve them in the long run. When half the congregation is unconscious and the other half are in drunken brawls, there won't be many praises sung.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Honest Reaction to Reading "Honest to God"

By
Originally I said in my last blog post that I liked this book, but I have sort of changed my mind. It is not that I hate it or anything, it is just weird and I don’t really agree with what John Robinson is saying most of the time. I appreciate that he is trying to write something different and new, but my problem is that some of the ideas are just a little too radical for my taste, and I disagree with him a lot. In the seventh and last chapter of the book, Robinson himself acknowledges his radicalness and writes about how he knows that this type of thought on religion is controversial. He goes on to write how all great thinkers were seen as controversial when they first started and says, “Every new religious truth comes as the destroyer of some other god”. To further prove this point, he uses the example of how Socrates was condemned as an atheist for not believing in multiple gods, and while it is true that Socrates was a great philosopher who was not seen as so when he was alive, I ...
Read more

Raphael and a man walk into Eden...

By
I'll just start off by saying Raphael is one of the three named archangels in Scripture we hear the least about, and I thoroughly enjoy just reading and seeing his name pop up. Regardless, I want to touch on Adam's recounting of his own..."birth". Take that with a grain of salt as Adam was not physically born, but rather he simply became. In truth, we should all be able to give a similar account to their first memory of consciousness and fully aware. Adam was created, but he realized he could walk, talk, and speak without first learning. Imagine being able to think clear thoughts in your native language and be a functioning individual right out of the womb. It's an incredible thought, and Adam can give a recall of this like it were yesterday...which it might have been, who knows? Aside from that, Adam could even give an account to Eve's creation. The Bible says nothing pertaining to this matter so this is where Milton does a bit of adlibbing and writes around ...
Read more

Extra blog

By
OK so, honors project! Honestly I really loved it as a whole. I said this already in the video, but I feel like I personally could've done better. I just feel like I didn't have enough time to completely process some questions and be able to give my best responses. I really enjoyed reading the O'Connor piece, which I think was everyone's favorite anyway. I love narrative stories like that, but honestly I'm glad I got to be in the Russell group. I feel like that group was the easiest to argue and answer from, honestly. As a whole, I would love to do a project like this again in later semesters. It was a lot of fun and time FLEW by.
Read more