N

ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS GUIDE (2014-2015)

M.E.G-1
Export Import Procedures
and Documentation
Disclaimer/Special Note: These are just the sample of the Answers/Solutions to some of the Questions given in the
Assignments. These Sample Answers/Solutions are prepared by Private Teacher/Tutors/Auhtors for the help and Guidance
of the student to get an idea of how he/she can answer the Questions of the Assignments. We do not claim 100% Accuracy
of these sample Answers as these are based on the knowledge and cabability of Private Teacher/Tutor. Sample answers
may be seen as the Guide/Help Book for the reference to prepare the answers of the Question given in the assignment. As
these solutions and answers are prepared by the private teacher/tutor so the chances of error or mistake cannot be denied.
Any Omission or Error is highly regretted though every care has been taken while preparing these Sample Answers/
Solutions. Please consult your own Teacher/Tutor before you prepare a Particular Answer & for uptodate and exact
information, data and solution. Student should must read and refer the official study material provided by the university.
Q. 1. Alternatively, you could write on a British poet of your choice. You may write on a poet discussed in the
units, i.e. on the syllabus, or even a poet we have not discussed in detail such as Robert Burns, G.M. Hopkins, R.S.
Thomas, Ted Hughes or Seamus Heanney. You may have heard some of our lectures on The Movement, Philip
Larkin and Ted Hughes on the EduSat. It may now be available on e-gyankosh on www.ignou.ac.in You have yet
another choice. Write an essay on a famous poem in English literature, Having decided upon your topic, do your
research and then read section 36.5.
Ans. William Blake (1757-1827): Blake was the great English poet, talented painter and graphic artist. The son of a
rather poor London merchant, he had not received the inheritance and was compelled to earn his living as an engraver. In
the field of poetry Blake was a revolutionary classicist, and then (during the years of French bourgeois revolution) the
first revolutionary romanticist of England. Blake be rhymed the American and French revolutions. During the reaction he
remained faithful to ideas of sovereignty of people (democracy), wrote verses and poems, in which prophetically predicted destruction not only to sovereigns, but also to all proprietorial world. Like the ingenious prophet Shelly, Blake
asserted, that there will come the dawn of human day, on fire of revolutions will be created perfect classless society of
the future. Blake was the successor of traditions of the English anti-feudal revolution of 17th century.
He expressed his revolutionary ideas in Bible images. Blake was the follower of the most revolutionary sect of
puritanical revolutionaries antinomies, who expressed the interests of the poor peasants and urban lower classes.
Antinomians denied the god. They considered that the god is a man, if he cares of the public boon. From here in Blakes
poems we can see ruthless criticism of Gospel and the Bible.
At Blakes lifetime his creativity was almost unknown: the Royal academy of applied arts did not allow organizing an
exhibition of his pictures and engravings, and Blake didnt have enough money for the edition of poetical works. He also
illustrated his work by himself. Only in many years after his death Blake received recognition in the English-speaking
countries. In 1957 under the decision of the World Peace Council Blakes bicentenary was celebrated.
He created a new process called illuminated printing through his Songs of Innocence. His indignation against the
hypocrisy can be felt in the Songs of Experience.
We have already gone through a little bit understanding of Blake, but to understand Blake as a man and as an artist it
needs a lot more attention than that. So now, we are going to concentrate in the making of the Blake as a poet. And also
we will take some of his poems for a detailed study.
While he was alive, he was known to limited people, and that makes him pretty much a solitary figure. It was Dante
Gabriel Rossetti who brought him under public attention by publishing his edition of Blakes poem. A.C. Swinburne and
W.B. Yeats played a major role in making Blakes work known to the general public. As it may be clear that during his
lifetime he could not possibly have influenced his contemporaries.

N
2

No matter whether he influenced his contemporaries or not, there isnt any doubt that he was a genius, a genius who
distinguished himself not only in poetry, but also in engravings and paintings. Unlike many other poets of his time he
preferred to live in London. Although he did not have any sort of formal education, he taught himself, got himself a
platform to stand. He was steeped in the Bible, Elizabethan Literature and Milton. He was well versed in many languages
like, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Italian.
Blakes Visions
Blake started to see visions at the early age of four. As he was a child so he screamed when God would press his face
against the window. He saw Ezekiel at the age of eight and angels on tree at the age of nine. Blake was perhaps gifted with
the power of vision and imagination, as he could clearly see anything he imagined. Such a gift of experiencing visions and
imagery are called eidetic imagery. Perhaps, because of this power he started relating things, normal physical things with
mystical meaning. Physical objects like rose and tiger had mystical meanings for him.
Unlike rationalists who can have only one vision, he claimed to have twofold or threefold vision. And not to say these
visions influenced and impacted his poetry and paintings to a great extent.
Blakes Revolutionary Views
Blakes views on the politics, literature, religion and science were different from that of his contemporaries to such
extent that it would not be unjustified to say that his views were revolutionary. He found himself unable to accept the
mechanist view of universe which was prevailing in the 18th century. He believed not in the analyzing but in synthesizing.
He makes mockery of Voltaire and Rousseau in the following stanza:
Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:
Mock on, Mock on, tis all in vain
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
He did not approve the reason because he was of the view that reason does but imprisons the mind.
Blake as an Anarchist
From the very beginning of his life was attracted by revolutions. At the age of eighteen he saw the declaration of
Independence by American colonies coming out and inspiring idealists all over the Europe. He was one of the eyewitnesses
of the burring of the Newgate Prison (1780) as an expression of revolt or action against authority. He had sympathy for
French revolution and got outraged when there was an attack on Tom Pain in 1798. In short, he was a sort of an anarchist.
He was against the political system and liked freedom. He also was an admirer of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft and
was a friend of several radicals of his time.
Blakes Views on Christianity
Blakes views of traditional Christianity were radical too. He sort of hated the traditional Christianity values. For him,
all the churches were kind of prison. The Romantics attempted to re-evaluate the Christian values after French Revolution.
He also attacked the lack of individual freedom in Church, in his poem The Garden of Love.
Blakes Anti-classicism
Blake was anti-classical; he hated the classics and thus reflected the common trait of being a Romantic, as the
classical ideals were shattered by the Romantics. And the new culture that was in its way was giving way to primitivism
and Orientalism. This was almost akin to the Protestant rejection of classics in Paradise Regained.
For Blake the classics represent intellect and show the adult world of experience but he favoured an intuitive and
imaginative view of the world. This is one reason for his distaste of classics.
Blakes Interpretation of History
Blake rejection of traditional Christianity also influenced his interpretation of history. We are already aware of the
fact that he did not receive any formal education, which makes his study very uneven. He got himself acquainted with
works by Quakers and Gnostics. He also read mystics like Swedenborg, Jakob Bohme and also the new Platonists. Much
of his theory on history was based on his reading of religious literature. He talks about the three stages in history which in
fact corresponds to the three stages of human life. The first of that is the garden of Eden or of the primal innocence. The
second stage is that of the eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree or the fall. And the third stage is the achieving of the
higher state of innocence or redemption. He also divided history in the number of periods which corresponds to the
historical division of the Bible.
Blakes Triadic Division of Poetry
Blake believed that the function of the poetry is to recreate the oneness with life which has been lost. For him the 18th
century represented the fall, the period or the age of reason was for him, equivalent to the eating of forbidden fruit. It

N
3

seemed that he was against the intellect, for he thought that the intellectual ways of seeing things have destroyed the
earlier perception about the world, and poetry is the medium that can restore the earlier perception and can in the reviving
of the heart. He presented his views on the role and the function of the poetry in Auguries of Innocence.
Approaches To Blakes Poetry
Blakes poetry is very simple and short. He does not use sentimentality to make his poems distasteful. There is
possibility that one may think of him as a child or a scholar. The shortness of his poems makes them enjoyable for children
as well. But in order to understand his poems and getting a level higher than just enjoyment we need to take a deep
analysis of his poems. His use of imagery is significant while understanding his poems.
His poems are prone to various reading and understandings. One can take his poems as direct statements or indirect
statements or as a cluster of images. Therefore understanding of his poems is in the hands of the reader.
Four Levels of Meaning
Blakes poems can be read on the same four levels which Dante suggested for his Divine Comedy. The four levels
are:
(a) Literal: This involves reading of the poem just as the sequence of actions, events and description.
(b) Moral: This level involves reading of the poem as the series of the moral commands, which can be either negative
or positive or both.
(c) Allegorical: This level involves the interpretation of the images used in te poem in terms of some dogma.
(d) Analogical: This level involves a mystical reading of the poem.
All these four levels help us in the understanding of his poems. The literal meaning is usually very simple in Blakes.
The moral interpretation of his poems is mainly concerned with criticism of the social evils in his poems. At allegorical
level some of his poems can be understood better, but it is the analogical level which completes the understanding of
Blakes poems as his poems were written primarily on the basis of mystical experiences.
Blakes Search for New Forms
Though Blake did live in age which we call neo-classical but he did not approve the poetic themes and forms and
techniques of the age. He went on to look for new themes, verse forms and techniques. He looked back to Elizabethan and
early 17th century poets to seek an inspiration for his lyric model. He used partial rhymes and new rhythms and also used
some daring figures of speech.
THE DIVINE IMAGE
To Mercy, pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues to delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Merch, Pity, Peace and Love
Is Man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love human form,
Is heathen, turk or jew;
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
This poem talks about love, pity, peace and mercy. Some of the quality of the poem is akin to the hymns of Isaac Watts
and other hymn writers who influenced Blake, some of which would be the simplicity of the statements and the ballad
metre used in the poem. The poem relates the four virtues with God and his child, man. God lies in men and that makes
human form divine. Loving men is therefore like loving God.

N
4

Songs of Experience: Study of Some Poems

The Sick Rose
O Rose, Thou art sick
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm,
Has found out the bed
Of Crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy
In this poem Blake makes uses of symbols in order to connect sensual with emotional. Blakes subtle use of symbols
further defines his being a visionary poet. Such poems are difficult to understand. The physical level, emotional level and
the moral level can be experienced at the same time. On the surface the poem seems to be about a rose and a worm but
underneath the surface there are hidden meanings which are disguised in the symbols used by Blake. Not only the
meanings and theme but also the situations and things are described symbolically. The poet makes use of contrast as a
poetic devise to convey his meaning. Thus we have rose and worm as joy and destroy paired off. The symmetry of
the meanings is to be noticed here. The second word of both the pairs suggests evil and the first beauty, and happiness.
While the rose exists as a beautiful natural object that has become infected by a worm, it also exists as a literary rose, the
conventional symbol of love. The image of the worm resonates with the Biblical serpent and also suggests a phallus.
Worms are quintessentially earthbound, and symbolize death and decay. The bed into which the worm creeps denotes
both the natural flowerbed and also the lovers bed. The rose is sick, and the poem implies that love is sick as well. Yet, the
rose is unaware of its sickness. Of course, an actual rose could not know anything about its own condition, and so the
emphasis falls on the allegorical suggestion that it is love that does not recognize its own ailing state. This results partly
from the insidious secrecy with which the worm performs its work of corruptionnot only is it invisible, it enters the
bed at night. This secrecy indeed constitutes part of the infection itself. The crimson joy of the rose connotes both
sexual pleasure and shame, thus joining the two concepts in a way that Blake thought was perverted and unhealthy. The
roses joyful attitude toward love is tainted by the aura of shame and secrecy that our culture attaches to love.
The two quatrains of this poem rhyme abcb. The ominous rhythm of these short, two-beat lines contributes to the
poems sense of foreboding or dread and complements the unflinching directness with which the speaker tells the rose she
is dying.
London
I wander thro' each charterd street
Near where the charterd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban
The mind-forged manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And halpless soldiers sigh?
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
This poem is about how commerce and industrialization in the early 18th century damaged everything. The industrial
England during that time was expanding its empire and was in immense need of the colonies for the raw materials to fuel
up the new factories and also as market for manufactured products. During this whole process England and specifically
London changed a lot. One of the important changes which occur due to industrialization was that the residential home
became the home of commerce.

N
5

A great deal of Blakes anger in this poem originates from the consequence of wars between England and France. The
French revolution created a kind of fear among the English elites that same can possibly happen in England as well which
resulted in Pitts energy getting diverted toward the suppression any such happening in England. However, a lot of public
feeling was in favor of radical changes.
Prostitution was another change or consequence that erupted out of poverty. It was not a difficult thing to find a child
prostitute between the ages of 7 to 10 years. In this poem Blake attempts to connect prostitution and marriage. Marriage
in the middle and upper-classes were generally without any love or affection, in fact they were more like commercial
transaction and this made them comparable to rape or prostitution or a violation of natural coupling. Blakes shows his
contempt about such relationships in this poem. For him such relations were deathlike.
In the poem it is the angry and solitary Bard who shows us the blindness and apathy of rich people. He makes us see
more than the natural features man-made structures that he appears to be talking about. He first appeals to our sight and
then to sound with words like cry, sigh, curse, which conveys the pervasiveness of misery more than that of the sight
which is in a way restricted to what is before one whereas the sound comes from all around. As the poem proceeds the
picture of London becomes both literally and metaphorically darker. We see evil culminating in the images of sexual
sickness.
In Blakes satiric list, streets, river, faces, cries of men, cries of infant, the cries of chimney-sweepers, voices, bans,
soldiers sigh, commercial houses, church, palaces are united as oppressor and oppressed; images of prison, of unnatural
buildings, recur. The number of oppressed who are human (infants, man, chimney-sweeper, harlot, soldier) are greater
than that of the oppressor.
The Tyger
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what soulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of Thy heart?
And when Thy heart began to beat
What dread hand, & what dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars thew down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
One of the most noticeable things about the poem is the spelling of the word Tyger. According to
Dr. Johnson it is the alternative form of the more common spelling. But there is little doubt that Blakes spelling of the
word reflects a unique feeling. Here one thing is important to remember that Blakes poem is not just the putting of words
together on a piece of paper but it is visually very strong. His engraving and paintings are to be seen as the part of this
visual art. Thus considering this it becomes necessary that one should not only read the poem but also see it.
The poem is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets. The metre is regular and rhythmic, its hammering beat
suggestive of the smithy that is the poems central image. The simplicity and neat proportions of the poems form perfectly
suit its regular structure, in which a string of questions all contribute to the articulation of a single, central idea.

N
6

The opening of the poem enacts what will be the single dramatic gesture of the poem, and each subsequent stanza
elaborates on this conception. Blake is building on the conventional idea that nature, like a work of art, must in some way
contain a reflection of its creator. The tiger is strikingly beautiful yet also horrific in its capacity for violence. What kind
of a God, then, could or would design such a terrifying beast as the tiger? In more general terms, what does the undeniable
existence of evil and violence in the world tell us about the nature of God, and what does it mean to live in a world where
a being can at once contain both beauty and horror?
The tiger initially appears as a strikingly sensuous image. However, as the poem progresses, it takes on a symbolic
character, and comes to embody the spiritual and moral problem the poem explores: perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly
destructive, Blakes tiger becomes the symbolic centre for an investigation into the presence of evil in the world. Since the
tigers remarkable nature exists both in physical and moral terms, the speakers questions about its origin must also
encompass both physical and moral dimensions. The poems series of questions repeatedly ask what sort of physical
creative capacity the fearful symmetry of the tiger bespeaks; assumedly only a very strong and powerful being could be
capable of such a creation.
The smithy represents a traditional image of artistic creation; here Blake applies it to the divine creation of the natural
world. The forging of the tiger suggests a very physical, laborious, and deliberate kind of making; it emphasizes the
awesome physical presence of the tiger and precludes the idea that such a creation could have been in any way accidentally
or haphazardly produced. It also continues from the first description of the tiger the imagery of fire with its simultaneous
connotations of creation, purification, and destruction. The speaker stands in awe of the tiger as a sheer physical and
aesthetic achievement, even as he recoils in horror from the moral implications of such a creation; for the poem addresses
not only the question of who could make such a creature as the tiger, but who would perform this act. This is a question
of creative responsibility and of will, and the poet carefully includes this moral question with the consideration of physical
power. It is important to note that in the third stanza, the parallelism of shoulder and art, as well as the fact that it is not
just the body but also the heart of the tiger that is being forged. The repeated use of word the dare to replace the
could of the first stanza introduces a dimension of aspiration and willfulness into the sheer might of the creative act.
The reference to the lamb in the penultimate stanza reminds the reader that a tiger and a lamb have been created by
the same God, and raises questions about the implications of this. It also invites a contrast between the perspectives of
experience and innocence represented here and in the poem The Lamb. The Tyger consists entirely of unanswered
questions, and the poet leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of Gods power, and the
inscrutability of divine will. The perspective of experience in this poem involves a sophisticated acknowledgement of
what is unexplainable in the universe, presenting evil as the prime example of something that cannot be denied, but will
not withstand facile explanation, either. The open awe of The Tyger contrasts with the easy confidence, in The Lamb,
of a childs innocent faith in a benevolent universe.
BLAKES CONTRIBUTION
We are already aware of the fact that how Blake makes use of symbols in his poems and also his use of compressed
and concise statements. Blake developed these techniques and integrated them in to an elaborated system of his own. As
he said, I must create a system, or be enslaved by another mans. The development of his system has been dealt in his
prophetic book Jerusalem. His prophetic books deal with biblical themes like fall of men, salvation, etc. One of the most
unique things about these books is that all these themes are presented in visions which follow the modeling of the Book
of Revelation in the Bible. According to Blake, the violence which predicted in the Book of Revelation was manifested in
the American War of Independence and French Revolution and such violence gives way to the redemption of the world.
In Blake, we get a good example of revolt against the traditional ideas. He was against the Classics, the mechanistic
view of the universe and the tyranny of political system. He deconstructed the Christian beliefs in a very private and new
manner. His ideas about the Christianity are evident in his poems.
He was almost unknown when he was alive. Three decades after his death the Pre-Raphaelites considered his as their
precursor. Later in early 20th century the mythology and symbolism took a new dimension in the works of modernists.
And at this time the works of Blake were recognized specifically because of the importance given to myth and symbols in
the poetry of Yeats and Fictions of James Joyce.

N
7