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Psychoanalytical Criticism - Michel Foucault

In this Newsletter, we turn our attention to one of the most formidable and influential thinkers of the twentieth century: Michel Foucault (1926-1984). A French philosopher, historian, and social theorist, Foucault’s work relentlessly questioned the very foundations of our society—our institutions, our knowledge, and our identities.

Our specific focus will be on his seminal work, Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (History of Madness), first published in 1961. We will use this text as a keystone to explore the profound and often unsettling interconnections between literature and the discourses of insanity. We will examine how writing becomes a site for identity formation and dissolution, and how what we call ‘madness’ is not a timeless medical fact but a construct woven from social, medical, and historical threads. We will pay particular attention to the intricate dance between selfhood, language, and gender.

This research will necessitate a deep dive into Foucault’s unique terminology. Fear not; we shall unpack each concept with care, illuminating the path through this challenging but rewarding intellectual landscape.

The Foucauldian Foundation – Key Concepts

To understand Foucault's approach to madness, one must first be equipped with his philosophical set of tools. His methods give a radical new way of seeing the world.

• Archaeology (of Knowledge):

Ø  Explanation: This is Foucault’s method of historical analysis. Unlike a traditional historian who might seek a continuous narrative of progress, Foucault acts as an archaeologist of ideas. He digs down through layers of historical epochs to uncover the unspoken rules that governed what could be said, thought, and known in a particular period. He is less interested in what people thought and more interested in the underlying system that made certain thoughts possible and others unthinkable. He calls this underlying system the épistème.

• Épistème:

Ø  Explanation: A French term meaning a "historical a priori" or the fundamental stratum of knowledge peculiar to a specific time and place. It is the unconscious, foundational structure that defines the conditions of possibility for knowledge. It determines what is accepted as a valid scientific statement, a philosophical proposition, or even a rational thought. The épistème of the Renaissance (c. 15th-16th centuries) was different from that of the Classical Age (c. 17th-18th centuries), which was, in turn, ruptured by the modern épistème. Madness, according to Foucault, was experienced and constituted differently within each.

• Discourse:

Ø  Explanation: This is a crucial term. For Foucault, a discourse is not just a conversation or a speech. It is a socially constructed body of language and practice that systematically forms the objects of which it speaks. Discourse is a form of power. For example, the medical discourse on insanity doesn't just describe madness; it actively creates it as a category of illness, complete with symptoms, treatments, and experts (doctors) who have the authority to diagnose and manage it. Literature is itself a powerful discursive field, one that can reinforce or challenge dominant discourses.

• Power/Knowledge (Pouvoir/Savoir):

Ø  Explanation: Foucault famously argued that power and knowledge are inextricably linked. He condensed this into the term pouvoir/savoir. It is not that knowledge is power in a simple sense. Rather, the exercise of power creates new objects of knowledge (e.g., the "hysterical woman," the "sexual deviant"), while the accumulation of knowledge (e.g., clinical studies, case files) inevitably creates new mechanisms of power and control. There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, and no knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute power relations.

• Genealogy:

Ø  Explanation: A method Foucault adopted later, complementing archaeology. If archaeology examines the conditions of knowledge, genealogy examines its effects and its murky, contested, and often violent origins. It is a history of the present, seeking to show that what we accept as natural, inevitable, or objectively true (like our concepts of justice, madness, or sexuality) is actually the result of historical struggles, accidents, and the will to power. It "greyifies" what was seen as pure history.

A History of Madness -

Foucault’s History of Madness is a genealogical project par excellence. He traces a dramatic shift in how European society perceived and treated the mad.

• The Renaissance (c. 15th-16th Centuries): The Dialogue with Unreason

Ø  The Discourse: In this period, madness (folly) was not yet fully separated from reason. It held an ambiguous, even sacred place. The figure of the Fool could speak truths to power that no sane person would dare utter. Madness was seen as a part of the human condition, a tragic wisdom, a window into the divine or the apocalyptic. It featured prominently in art (e.g., Hieronymus Bosch) and literature (e.g., Shakespeare’s fools in King Lear or Twelfth Night), where it served as a critical commentary on society's follies.

• The Classical Age (c. 17th-18th Centuries): The Great Confinement

Ø  The Discourse: Foucault identifies a profound rupture in the mid-17th century. This was the age of Reason (Le Grand Siècle), and with it came a powerful need to silence what it defined as its opposite: Unreason (déraison). The founding of the Hôpital Général in Paris in 1656 was a seminal event. It was not a medical establishment but a quasi-judicial structure of authority. The mad, along with the poor, the vagrant, the unemployed, and the debauched, were interned—locked away not to be cured, but to be morally condemned and excluded from the social order. Madness was silenced. It was no longer a dialogue with reason but its absolute negation, its shameful secret.

• The Modern Age (c. 19th Century onwards): The Birth of the Asylum & the Medical Gaze

Ø  The Discourse: The figure of Philippe Pinel in France and William Tuke in England are traditionally hailed as humanitarians who "liberated the insane from their chains." Foucault offers a radical reinterpretation. He argues that this was not a liberation but a transformation of power. The chains became psychological. The asylum was born, and with it, the medicalisation of madness. The mad were now constituted as "mental patients" to be studied, classified, and normalised under the "medical gaze"—the authoritative eye of the doctor who objectifies the patient. The key mechanism of control was no longer physical restraint but constant moral judgment and the internalisation of guilt. The patient had to confess their madness and submit to the figure of the Doctor, who became a "father" and a "judge."

Literature, Writing, and the Madness of Selfhood

This historical framing allows us to see literature not merely as reflecting attitudes to madness but as a primary site of discursive struggle.

• Literature as a Counter-Discourse:

Ø  Where the medical and social discourses of the Classical and Modern ages sought to confine and silence unreason, literature became one of the few spaces where the voice of madness could still be heard. From the inside of characters like Ophelia (whose fragmented, floral songs signify a world beyond masculine, political rationality) to the narrators of works like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (a direct critique of the 19th-century "rest cure" for women), literature gives form to the experience of being labelled ‘mad’. It challenges the official story.

• Writing and Identity-Formation:

Ø  Foucault forces us to ask: is the self a stable, coherent entity we discover, or is it constructed through the discourses available to us? The act of writing, particularly confessional writing (diaries, autobiographies, certain forms of fiction), is a key technology of the self. We use language to tell ourselves into being. But what happens when the available discourses are limiting or pathological? A woman in the 19th century, for instance, might only have been able to articulate deep anguish or rebellion through the discourse of "hysteria" or "nervous exhaustion"—the very labels used to control her. Her identity is formed in the tense space between her experience and the limited, often damaging, language society gives her to express it.

• The Inter-relationship of Constructions:

Ø  Foucault shows that you cannot separate the social (poverty idleness as moral failings), the medical (the diagnosis of madness), and the historical (the rise of the work ethic and capitalism). The "Great Confinement" was an economic and social policy as much as a medical one. The "lazy" poor and the "unreasonable" mad were lumped together because both were seen as unproductive and disruptive to the new social order. Their construction was intertwined.

 Gender and Madness – A Foucauldian Perspective

The construction of madness is deeply gendered. Foucault’s work, particularly his History of Sexuality, provides a framework for understanding this.

• Hysteria: The Archetypal Female Malady:

Ø  Explanation: The very term hysteria (from the Greek hystera for womb) pathologises the female body. For centuries, a vast array of women's emotions, desires, and rebellions were diagnosed as symptoms of a "wandering womb." This is a prime example of pouvoir/savoir: the medical profession gained power and authority by creating this category of knowledge, while women were subjected to its controlling effects (from rest cures to forced institutionalisation).

• The Pathologisation of Female Identity:

Ø  Traits associated with femininity—passivity, emotionality, sensitivity—were often medicalised as signs of inherent weakness and a predisposition to nervous disorders. Conversely, traits that deviated from prescribed gender roles—ambition, sexual desire, intellectualism—were also seen as symptoms of madness. The discourse of madness became a powerful tool for policing gender boundaries. A woman’s struggle to form an identity outside of the narrow roles of wife and mother was often interpreted not as a political or social struggle, but as a psychological pathology to be treated.

• Writing as Resistance:

Ø  Many female authors used writing to fight back against this pathologisation. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a stark narrative of a woman driven mad by the very "cure" imposed upon her. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar explores the suffocating pressure of 1950s feminine ideals and the intimate connection between creative expression and mental fracture. These works do not just describe madness; they perform a counter-discourse, using the master’s tools (language and narrative) to dismantle the master’s house (the patriarchal medical establishment).

Conclusion:

Michel Foucault teaches us that our most cherished concepts—sanity, reason, the self—are not solid, timeless truths. They are historical artefacts, built upon the silent exclusion of their opposites. The mad were not always ‘sick’; they were first made ‘other’, then ‘patient’.

For the student of literature, this is transformative. A text is no longer a simple mirror but a battleground of discourses. When we read a character like Bertha Mason, the "madwoman in the attic" in Jane Eyre, we must ask: who is truly mad? The enslaved colonial subject screaming in rebellion, or the colonial order that locked her away? Foucault gives us the tools to hear the voices from the archive that history has tried to silence.

To study the interconnection of literature and madness is to understand that writing is always an act of identity-formation, always political, and always engaged in a struggle over who gets to define what is real, what is rational, and what it means to be human. 

Psychoanalytical Criticism - Mikhail Bakhtin

Psychoanalytical Criticism - Mikhail Bakhtin

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Psychoanalytical Criticism - Mikhail Bakhtin

The Dialogics of Madness: Language, Identity, and the Unravelling Self

Introduction:

The Newsletter Psychoanalytical Criticism - Mikhail Bakhtin aims to enlighten the profound and complex ideas of the Russian philosopher and literary theorist, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975), and to demonstrate their enduring relevance to contemporary literary and cultural studies. Our focus in this edition is a particularly resonant one: the complex relationship between literary discourse and the constructions of insanity.

Literature has long been a privileged space for exploring the fragile boundaries of the human mind. From Shakespeare’s tormented Prince of Denmark to the confined narrators of Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Sylvia Plath, the ‘mad’ character or voice challenges our stable notions of self, reason, and society. But how does language itself, the very stuff of literature, participate in constructing what we understand as madness? To examine this, we must turn to Bakhtin, whose revolutionary concepts provide not a diagnostic manual, but a linguistic and philosophical framework for understanding how identities—including those believed ‘insane’—are formed and contested in the dialogic clash of voices.

This newsletter will guide you through key Bakhtinian terms, explaining them in detail, before applying them to the complex interconnections between literature and the discourses of insanity. We will examine the relationship between writing and identity-formation, and investigate the interplay of social, medical, and historical forces that shape our understanding of the ‘mad’ self.

Key Concepts:

To fully grasp Bakhtin’s contribution to this topic, one must first become comfortable with his unique vocabulary. These are not merely jargon; they are precise tools for dissecting the nature of language and narrative.

• Dialogism (The Dialogic Principle)

Ø Explanation: This is the cornerstone of Bakhtin’s entire philosophy. He argued that language is inherently dialogic. This means that no word, utterance, or text exists in isolation. Every utterance is shaped by the words that have come before it and is anticipating a response. It is always addressed to someone and is part of an ongoing, unfinished conversation.

Ø  Example: When a novelist writes a sentence, they are in a dialogue with the entire history of the novel as a genre, with other writers, and with the anticipated responses of their readers. Similarly, an individual’s thought process is not a solitary monologue but an internal dialogue, filled with the voices of parents, teachers, cultural figures, and past selves.

Ø  Relevance to Madness: If a stable self is formed through a harmonious (if complex) dialogue with society, then madness, from a Bakhtinian perspective, might be seen as a breakdown in this dialogue—a situation where the internal voices become cacophonous, where the individual can no longer successfully answer or integrate the external social voices, or where their own voice is silenced or pathologised by powerful authoritative discourses (e.g., medical, patriarchal).

• Heteroglossia

Ø Explanation: Literally meaning “multiple-languagedness,” this term describes the central fact of social language. Any national language (e.g., English) is not a single, monolithic system but a living tapestry of many different ‘languages’ or social dialects. These are stratified according to profession (the language of lawyers, doctors, mechanics), generation (teenage slang), class, region, and ideology.

Ø  Example: A single novel can contain the heteroglot voices of a wealthy industrialist, a socialist revolutionary, a pious vicar, and a cynical journalist. The artistic genius of the novel, for Bakhtin, lies in its ability to orchestrate these diverse social languages without reducing them to a single, authorial viewpoint.

Ø  Relevance to Madness: The discourse of insanity itself is a powerful social language, often wielded by medical and institutional authorities. A Bakhtinian analysis would examine how this professional ‘language of psychiatry’ interacts with, labels, and attempts to overwrite the individual’s own social language and personal voice within a literary text.

• Authoritative vs. Internally Persuasive Discourse

Ø  Explanation: Bakhtin distinguishes between two ways in which we internalise external voices.

1. Authoritative Discourse: This is the language of authority, religion, parents, or political dogma that demands to be accepted and incorporated wholesale. It is static, finished, and hierarchical. We recite it; we do not genuinely dialogue with it. It operates as a monologic force—seeking to shut down dialogue.

2.  Internally Persuasive Discourse: This is language that we engage with, wrestle with, and make our own. It is open, dynamic, and enters into a dialogue with our other beliefs and experiences. It is the basis for authentic, organic identity formation.

Ø  Relevance to Madness: The process of diagnosis and institutionalisation can be seen as the imposition of an Authoritative Discourse (“You are hysterical,” “You suffer from neurasthenia”) upon a person’s Internally Persuasive Discourse. The literary depiction of madness often revolves around the conflict between these two forces, as the character’s own sense of self is threatened or dismantled by an authoritative medical or social label.

• Polyphony and the Carnivalesque

Ø  Explanation:

1.   Polyphony (“many-voicedness”): Bakhtin used this term specifically to describe Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels. He argued that Dostoevsky created a new type of novel where the author’s voice does not dominate those of the characters. Instead, the characters are fully realised, independent "consciousnesses" whose voices interact on a seemingly equal footing with the author's and with each other. The novel becomes a playground of competing ideologies and worldviews.

2.  Carnivalesque: Drawing on the medieval tradition of carnival, Bakhtin identified a literary mode that subverts and liberates. Carnival involves the temporary suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. It is a world of grotesque realism—focusing on the body, its lower strata (defecation, copulation), and its materiality—which debunks high-minded ideals and official culture through humour, chaos, and parody.

Ø  Relevance to Madness: The carnivalesque can be a powerful literary strategy for representing madness. The ‘mad’ character often behaves in a carnivalesque manner: they break social taboos, speak the unspeakable, and invert logical hierarchies (the fool becomes the wise one). Their discourse can carnivalise the sober, rational, ‘sane’ world, exposing its hypocrisies. A polyphonic novel allows the ‘mad’ voice to exist with its own integrity and challenge the reader’s assumptions, rather than being neatly contained and explained away by a dominant authorial or narrative voice.

The Dialogic Self: Writing and Identity-Formation in the Shadow of Madness

Bakhtin’s view of the self is not as a fixed, essential core, but as a project that is perpetually under construction through dialogue. The self is a meeting point of myriad social voices. We are who we are through our constantly evolving relationship with the words of others.

This has profound implications for understanding the nexus of writing, identity, and madness.

Ø  Writing as Self-Authorship: The act of writing, particularly in first-person narratives like diaries, confessions, or autobiographies, is a potent tool for identity-formation. It is an attempt to organise the internal dialogue, to take the chaotic multitude of influencing voices and craft them into a coherent narrative of the self. It is a process of making the Internally Persuasive.

Ø  The Fractured Text of the ‘Mad’ Self: When the social dialogue breaks down—when the authoritative discourses of medicine or family become overwhelmingly oppressive and monologic—the project of self-construction can falter. The literary representation of this is often a fractured text: a stream-of-consciousness that jumps between voices, a diary that reveals paranoia and disintegration, or a narrative where the protagonist’s voice is constantly interrupted and re-defined by the diagnostic language of doctors (as seen in The Yellow Wallpaper). The writing does not create a coherent self but documents its unravelling, showcasing a failed dialogue.

The Inter-relationship of Social, Medical, and Historical Constructions

A Bakhtinian approach insists that ‘madness’ is not a transhistorical, biological given. It is a discursive construction—its meaning is created and fought over within language and culture, across different historical periods.

Ø  Social & Historical Constructions: The ‘village idiot’ of the 17th century, the ‘nervous hysteric’ of the Victorian era, and the ‘schizophrenic’ of the 20th century are all products of their specific time and place. Each era has its own heteroglot array of voices (religious, judicial, medical, familial) that compete to define what constitutes unreasonable behaviour. Literature is a key archive of these competing discourses.

Ø  Medical Discourse as Authority: The rise of psychiatry and psychoanalysis saw the medical profession’s language become a supremely authoritative discourse in defining insanity. Literary texts often stage a clash between this clinical, objectifying language and the subjective, experiential language of the sufferer. The question becomes: Whose voice gets to define the reality of the experience? The patient’s internally persuasive, but chaotic, account? Or the doctor’s authoritative, diagnostic label?

Ø  Gender and the Female Malady: This power dynamic is intensely gendered. Historically, medical and social discourses have often pathologised female rebellion, sexuality, and intellectual ambition as forms of madness (‘hysteria’ derives from the Greek for ‘womb’). A Bakhtinian reading of a text like Jane Eyre would not just analyse Bertha Mason as a ‘madwoman in the attic’; it would analyse the authoritative discourses (Mr. Rochester’s patriarchal voice, the medical voice of restraint) that label and confine her, silencing her own voice and rendering her a monstrous, grotesque figure. Her muffled roars and violent acts can be read as a desperate, non-linguistic, carnivalesque attempt to break back into the dialogue from which she has been excluded.

Conclusion:

For Bakhtin, the human being is always unfinalisable. There is no final word that can be said about a person; the dialogue of identity is always open to new responses and reinterpretations. This is a profoundly humane vision.

Applying this to the discourse of insanity in literature allows us to move beyond simplistic readings of ‘madness’ as a plot device or a tragic flaw. Instead, we can see it as:

1. A dialogic breakdown between the individual and the world.
2. A site of struggle between authoritative and internally persuasive discourses.
3. A carnivalesque force that can challenge and expose the limitations of ‘sane’ society.
4. A construct shaped by the heteroglossia of its specific historical and social moment.

Literature, in its highest polyphonic form, does not give us answers about madness. Instead, it preserves the complexity of the dialogue, allowing the myriad voices—the sufferer, the doctor, the family, society—to sound together in all their conflict and confusion. It refuses to let the authoritative discourse have the final word, keeping the conversation, and thus our understanding, provocatively and productively open.

Psychoanalytical Criticism - Michel Foucault

Emily Dickinson - "Because I could not stop for Death"

 

Emily Dickinson - "Because I could not stop for Death"

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Welcome to this exploration of one of American literature's most enigmatic and brilliant voices: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830–1886). A prolific poet who penned nearly 1,800 poems, Dickinson lived a life of profound seclusion in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Contrary to popular myth, her reclusiveness was not born of disappointment but was a conscious, chosen state that allowed her to cultivate her immense intellectual and creative powers. Her work, largely unpublished and unrecognised during her lifetime, was discovered after her death by her sister, Lavinia, and has since secured her place as a foundational figure in poetry.

Dickinson’s poetry is characterised by its piercing insight, its compression of thought, and its fearless exploration of the fundamental themes of existence: death, immortality, faith, nature, and the self. Her distinctive style—with its use of dashes, unconventional capitalisation, and slant rhyme—creates a unique rhythm and immediacy, challenging readers to look beyond the surface of things. This newsletter will delve into the core of her work, analysing two of her most defining poems, "Because I could not stop for Death" and "The Soul selects her own Society," to unpack her unique poetic vision.

The Poem – "Because I could not stop for Death"
Text of the Poem:

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Analysis of "Because I could not stop for Death"
Summary:

The poem narrates the speaker’s posthumous recollection of her journey with a personified Death. Death is not a terrifying figure but a "kindly" and civil gentleman who arrives in a carriage to collect her. The speaker, accompanied by Immortality, is taken on a leisurely ride through the landscape of her life, passing symbols of childhood (the School), maturity (the Fields of Gazing Grain), and the end of life (the Setting Sun). The journey culminates at her grave, described as a "House" with its roof "in the Ground." The final stanza reveals that centuries have passed, yet the memory of that day feels shorter than the moment she realised the journey's destination was Eternity.

Style and Form:

• Form: The poem is composed of six quatrains (stanzas of four lines each).
• Rhyme Scheme: It uses a loose ABC rhyme scheme with frequent use of slant rhyme (also known as half-rhyme or near rhyme). This is a type of rhyme formed by words with similar but not identical sounds. For example, in the first stanza, "me" and "Immortality" are a true rhyme, but later, "Ring" and "Sun" (Stanza 3) or "Chill" and "Tulle" (Stanza 4) are slant rhymes. This technique creates a sense of unease and incompleteness, mirroring the poem's unsettling subject matter.
• Meter: The poem is primarily written in iambic meter (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, e.g., "be-cause"), though it frequently varies, often falling into a ballad meter rhythm (alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter). This creates a slow, rhythmic, and almost hypnotic pace, mimicking the carriage's motion.
• Diction: The language is deceptively simple yet rich with symbolic meaning. Words like "kindly," "Civility," and "Gossamer" soften the macabre subject, while "quivering," "Chill," and "Swelling" introduce a subtle undercurrent of dread.

Critical Appreciation and Literary Terms:

• Personification: This is a figure of speech in which a thing, an idea, or an animal is given human attributes. Dickinson personifies Death as a genteel suitor or carriage driver. This transforms the traditional horrific image of the Grim Reaper into something more ambiguous and intriguing, making the concept of death more approachable and examineable.
• Symbolism: This is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. The journey is a powerful symbol for the transition from life to eternity. Each stage of the ride is rich with symbolic meaning:

1. The School represents childhood and the playful, striving nature of life.
2. The Fields of Gazing Grain symbolise adulthood, productivity, and ripeness.
3. The Setting Sun signifies the end of life.
4. The House or grave is a symbol of the final resting place of the body.
5. The Horses' Heads pointed toward Eternity represent the soul's journey into the afterlife.

• Theme: The central theme is the confrontation and acceptance of mortality. Dickinson explores the tension between the physical finality of death (the grave) and the spiritual concept of Immortality. The poem questions whether death is an end or a transition to a new state of being.
• Imagery: Dickinson uses vivid imagery to appeal to the senses. The "Dews drew quivering and Chill" creates a tactile sensation of cold, while the visual of her inadequate clothing ("Gossamer" gown, "Tulle" Tippet) emphasises her vulnerability in the face of death's reality.
• Oxymoron: This is a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. The description of the grave as a "House" is a gentle oxymoron, domesticating and familiarising the unknown and frightening concept of burial.

The Poem – "The Soul selects her own Society"
Text of the Poem:

The Soul selects her own Society –
Then – shuts the Door –
To her divine Majority –
Present no more –

Unmoved – she notes the Chariots – pausing –
At her low Gate –
Unmoved – an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat –

I've known her – from an ample nation –
Choose One –
Then – close the Valves of her attention –
Like Stone –

Analysis of "The Soul selects her own Society"
Summary:

This compact poem is a powerful declaration of autonomy and exclusivity. The Soul, personified as a feminine entity, exercises her absolute right to choose her company. Once she has made her selection, she shuts the door on all others, including the "divine Majority" (the rest of the world). The poem emphasises her unwavering resolve ("Unmoved") as she rejects even the most tempting offers from the powerful ("Chariots," an "Emperor"). The final stanza concludes that from a vast world of possibilities ("an ample nation"), the Soul may choose just "One" and then seal her focus as impenetrably as "Stone."

Style and Form:

• Form: The poem consists of three quatrains.
• Rhyme Scheme: It employs a more pronounced slant rhyme scheme (e.g., Door/Majority, Gate/Mat, One/Stone). This creates a sense of finality and certainty, echoing the Soul's resolute decisions.
• Meter: The meter is irregular but forceful, often using iambic trimeter and tetrameter, which gives the poem a declarative, almost ritualistic quality.
• Diction: The language is regal and absolute. Words like "selects," "shuts," "divine Majority," "Emperor," and "Valves" convey a sense of power, exclusivity, and mechanical finality.
• Personification: The core device here is the personification of the Soul as a sovereign queen. This empowers the abstract concept of the soul, making its internal, private actions seem like grand, deliberate statements of policy.

Critical Appreciation and Key Literary Terms:

• Metaphor: A metaphor is a figure of speech that directly compares one thing to another for rhetorical effect. The "Valves of her attention" is a brilliant metaphor that compares the mind's focus to a mechanical or biological valve (like that of a heart or clam), which can be shut with absolute, irreversible finality. This suggests that the soul's attention is not just a preference but a vital function that can be controlled.
• Imagery: The imagery is that of royalty and exclusion: "Chariots," "Emperor," "kneeling," "low Gate." This contrasts the external world's grandeur with the Soul's superior internal power. The final simile, "Like Stone," is a powerful image of impenetrability, coldness, and permanence.
• Theme: The central theme is the supreme autonomy of the individual self. The poem celebrates the soul's right to absolute privacy and selective engagement with the world. It is a manifesto for intellectual and spiritual independence, reflecting Dickinson's own chosen seclusion. It aligns with Transcendentalist ideas of self-reliance and the inner world being more significant than the external one.
• Hyperbole: This is deliberate exaggeration for emphasis. The rejection of an entire "ample nation" and even an "Emperor" is a hyperbole that underscores the immense, uncompromising value the Soul places on its own chosen society.

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William Blake - The Lamb , The Tyger

This Newsletter is dedicated to the profound and complex genius of William Blake (1757–1827). Blake was not merely a poet; he was a visionary artist, engraver, and printmaker whose work defied the conventional boundaries of his era. Operating largely outside the mainstream literary and artistic circles of late 18th and early 19th century London, Blake created a deeply symbolic and personal mythology, integrating text and image in a manner that was utterly unique. His philosophy was built on a fierce opposition to rigid institutional control, whether religious, political, or artistic, and a celebration of imaginative freedom. To understand Blake’s poetry, one must appreciate his methods: he invented a technique called illuminated printing, whereby he etched his poems and accompanying illustrations onto copper plates, printed them, and then hand-coloured each page. This process ensured that every copy was a unique work of art, where the visual and textual elements were inseparable and of equal importance. This newsletter will delve into two of his most famous and contrasting poems from his seminal collections, Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794): "The Lamb" and "The Tyger."

The Poem – "The Lamb"

Text of the Poem:

Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

Analysis of the Poem
Summary:

"The Lamb" is a poem from Songs of Innocence. It takes the form of a gentle, catechistic dialogue between a child and a lamb. The child poses two simple questions to the lamb: "Who made thee?" and "Dost thou know who made thee?" The poem then proceeds to answer these questions, describing the gifts bestowed upon the lamb by its creator: life, sustenance, a soft fleece, and a tender voice. The second stanza reveals the answer: the creator is God, who in the Christian tradition is embodied in the meek and mild form of Jesus Christ, the "Lamb of God." The poem concludes with a blessing, reinforcing a sense of benevolent, protective love that unites the child, the animal, and the divine.

Style and Form:

1. Form: The poem is comprised of two stanzas (groups of lines forming a metrical unit) of ten lines each.
2. Rhyme Scheme: It employs a simple and song-like AABB rhyme scheme (thee/thee, feed/mead, delight/bright, voice/rejoice). This nursery-rhyme quality reinforces the theme of childlike innocence.
3. Meter: The poem is written in trochaic meter (a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, e.g., "Lit-tle Lamb"), which creates a gentle, rocking rhythm, reminiscent of a lullaby. This is often softened further by a catalectic final foot (omitting the final unstressed syllable), which gives the lines a tender, incomplete feel.
4. Diction: The language is simple, repetitive, and soft, using words like "softest," "tender," "meek," "mild," and "rejoice." The repeated questions and answers mimic the pattern of a child’s learning or a religious catechism.

Critical Appreciation and Literary Terms:

1. Symbolism: This is a literary device where a person, object, or event represents a larger idea. The lamb is a potent symbol of innocence, purity, vulnerability, and gentleness. It is also a direct allusion (a brief reference to a person, place, thing, or idea of historical or cultural significance) to Jesus Christ, referred to in the Bible as the "Lamb of God" who takes away the sins of the world.
2. Theme: The central theme (the central topic or idea explored in a text) is divine creation and innocence. The poem presents a world view that is secure, benevolent, and easily understandable. The creator is presented as a loving, knowable, and gentle figure.
3. Imagery: Blake uses imagery (language that appeals to the senses) that is pastoral and serene: the "stream," "mead" (meadow), and "vales" (valleys) create a peaceful, idyllic setting.
4. Speaker: The persona or speaker of the poem is a child, whose voice embodies the state of innocence—a state of trust, naivety, and unfiltered joy within Blake’s philosophical system.

The Poem – "The Tyger"

Text of the Poem:

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 shoulder, & 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 threw 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?

Analysis of "The Tyger"

Summary:
"The Tyger," from Songs of Experience, is a stark contrast to "The Lamb." It is a series of awe-struck, fearful questions addressed to a tiger, a creature of immense power and beauty. The speaker is not a child but an experienced observer, bewildered by the paradox of creation. How could the same divine power that created the gentle lamb also forge this terrifying, fiery predator? The poem does not provide answers but instead explores the process of this fearsome creation through imagery of a blacksmith's forge (hammer, chain, furnace, anvil). It culminates in the central, unanswerable question: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

Style and Form:

1. Form: The poem consists of six quatrains (stanzas of four lines each).
2. Rhyme Scheme: Like "The Lamb," it uses a regular AABB rhyme scheme, but the effect is utterly different. Here, the rhythm is pounding, forceful, and relentless, mirroring the beating of a hammer on an anvil.
3. Meter: The poem is primarily in trochaic tetrameter (four trochaic feet per line: Ty-ger! Ty-ger! burn-ing bright). This creates a powerful, marching rhythm that embodies the tiger's fierce energy.
4. Diction: The language is explosive and intense, filled with words evoking awe, fear, and industrial creation: "burning," "fearful," "dread," "dare," "hammer," "chain," "furnace," "anvil." The repetition of the opening stanza with the crucial change from "Could" to "Dare" intensifies the poem's terrifying wonder.

Critical Appreciation and Literary Terms:

1. The Sublime: This is a key concept in Romanticism. Unlike beauty, which is harmonious and pleasing, the sublime is the quality of immense, awe-inspiring power that evokes a mixture of terror, wonder, and astonishment. The tiger is the perfect embodiment of the sublime—its beauty is "fearful."
2. Symbolism: The tiger symbolises experience, energy, force, revolution, and even the darker, more terrifying aspects of the divine creative power. Some critics interpret it as a symbol of the violent energy of the French Revolution or of the sublime power of the artist's imagination.
3. Themes: The central theme is the nature of creation and the character of the Creator. The poem explores the dichotomy between good and evil, innocence and experience, and the terrifying, dualistic nature of God, who can be both a gentle shepherd and a mighty, inscrutable blacksmith.
4. Imagery: The dominant imagery is of fire ("burning bright," "fire of thine eyes," "furnace") and industrial creation ("hammer," "chain," "anvil," "furnace"). This forges a vision of God not as a pastoral shepherd but as a mighty, relentless artisan working in a cosmic smithy.
5. Allusion: The line "When the stars threw down their spears" is a possible allusion to the war in heaven between the angels led by Michael and those led by the rebellious Lucifer (Satan), as described in Milton's Paradise Lost. This reinforces the connection between the tiger and powerful, rebellious, or fallen forces.
6. Rhetorical Questions: The poem is built entirely on a series of rhetorical questions (questions asked for effect rather than to elicit an answer). Their function is to express overwhelming awe and to highlight the unanswerable mystery at the heart of existence.

Multiple Choice Questions-

1. What was the name of the innovative printing technique developed by William Blake?
a) Etching
b) Illuminated Printing
c) Lithography
d) Woodblock Printing

Ans- b) Illuminated Printing

2. From which of Blake's collections is the poem "The Lamb" taken?
a) Songs of Experience
b) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
c) Poetical Sketches
d) Songs of Innocence 

Ans- d) Songs of Innocence

3. In the poem "The Tyger," the speaker wonders in what "distant deeps or skies" the fire of the tiger's eyes burnt. This is most commonly interpreted as a reference to:
a) The sea and the clouds
b) Heaven and Hell
c) England and France
d) The past and the future

Ans- b) Heaven and Hell

4. What is the primary metre used in the poem "The Lamb"?
a) Iambic Pentameter
b) Trochaic Meter
c) Anapestic Meter
d) Free Verse

Ans-b) Trochaic Meter  

5. According to the biography, which of the following was NOT a contemporary thinker that William Blake associated with?
a) Mary Wollstonecraft
b) Thomas Paine
c) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
d) William Godwin

Ans- c) Samuel Taylor Coleridge

6. The central, unresolved question posed in "The Tyger" is:
a) "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
b) "On what wings dare he aspire?"
c) "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
d) "In what furnace was thy brain?"

Ans- c) "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

7. In "The Lamb," the speaker reveals that the creator is called by the lamb's name because:
a) The creator is also innocent and meek.
b) The creator is also a powerful animal.
c) The lamb is a symbol of the devil.
d) The creator lives in a pasture

Ans- a) The creator is also innocent and meek.

8. The biography mentions that Blake's artistic leanings were influenced early on by sketching in which location?
a) The Royal Academy of Arts
b) The British Museum
c) The London Zoo
d) Westminster Abbey

Ans- d) Westminster Abbey

9. Which of the following best describes the dominant imagery used in "The Tyger" to describe the act of creation?
a) Pastoral and agricultural (e.g., planting, shepherding)
b) Industrial and artisanal (e.g., blacksmith's forge)
c) Academic and scholarly (e.g., writing, reading)
d) Natural and organic (e.g., growth, evolution)

Ans- b) Industrial and artisanal (e.g., blacksmith's forge)

10. Blake's first book of poetry, funded by Harriet Matthew and John Flaxman, was titled:
a) Songs of Innocence
b) The Book of Urizen
c) Poetical Sketches
d) Jerusalem

Ans- c) Poetical Sketches