The Lamb

William Blake is associated with the Romantic period of English literature. Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in late-18th and early-19th century Europe that challenged the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, science, and logic, favoring instead intense emotion, subjective experience, the innocence of childhood, the sublimity of nature, and the rejection of bourgeois values. Blake himself exemplifies many of the characteristics of this literary movement, as he was an iconoclastic figure who rejected the conventional religious and political views of his time while crafting poems and paintings that challenged 18th century’s critical standards.

His poem “The Lamb” fits into this framework of Romanticism while not quite conforming to the period’s typical artistic tenets. The poem partakes in Romanticism’s celebration of passion and feeling over rationality, as shown by the speaker’s childish enthusiasm and associative—as opposed to logical—thinking. The poem also finds beauty in nature, using the bucolic setting to represent an escape from the corruption of industrialized society. Nevertheless, Blake’s poem has a nearly naive sensibility that distinguishes it from more conventional Romantic poems.

Although Blake is now considered one of the preeminent figures of the Romantic period in England, he was relatively obscure in his lifetime.