“The Tyger”

by William Blake
Anglo-American literature Class
L1S2
Prof.: Ms. Olivier
 Songs of Innocence and of Experience
• published in Songs of Experience (1794)
• “Songs” à lyrical rhythm of children’s songs
• Innocence à the songs are not meant for
children but are about idyllic states
• At that time, children were not automatically
considered innocent and virtuous
• poems not meant to be didactic but to
enhance the imagination
Let’s READ line by line
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
l. 1-5
 Form and meter
• Six stanzas of quatrains
• Trochaic meter / x
• Rhyming pattern à perfect end-rhymes
Even « eye » // « symmetry »! [aɪ]
The repetition creates a chanting mood
àa children’s song
àmany questions… why?
What about that « fearful symmetry »?
• Metaphor of « burning bright »
what is burning « in the forests
of the night »?

àThe tiger’s mystery, inner

energy and force « framed »

à // can you frame the Sublime?

 The Sublime
Derives from a conjunction of two Latin terms:
• the preposition sub, meaning below or up to
• the noun limen, meaning limit, boundary or
threshold.
• Limen = ‘lintel’, the heavy wooden or stone
beam that holds the weight of a wall up above
a doorway or a window. (This sense of striving
or pushing upwards against an overbearing
force is an important connotation for the word
sublime)
 « what immortal hand or eye… »

Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1500. Daniele Ricciarelli, Michelangelo

Buonarroti, ca. 1544.
Raffaelo,

Lo sposalizio
della Vergine

(Le Mariage
de la Vierge)
1504

Symmetry:

classic artistic
representation
of beauty and
characteristic
of the divine.
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?
l. 5-8
 Contrary motions

On what wings dare he aspire? ì

What the hand, dare seize the fire? î
à ascending vs. descending.

Is creation (of a tiger for instance) an evil thing

or a divine inspiration?
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
l. 9-12
Muscular force, « what shoulder » (l. 9) to
« twist the sinews of thy heart »
≠ « fearful symmetry » ?

« What dread hand and what dread feet? »

à metapoetical
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
l. 13-16
Velasquez, La fragua de Vulcano, 1630
Metaphor of the blacksmith as the poet and his
furnace and anvil as tools of creation

Rhythm itself is being « hammered » into the

reader’s mind:

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?
l. 17-20.
SATAN, THE FALLEN ANGEL
W. Blake,
illustration of
Milton, Paradise
Lost.
Gustave Doré,
depiction of
Satan. c. 1866.
Can it be that the same God created Satan
and…
Jesus, the « lamb of God » (John 1:29)?
 W. Blake,
« The Lamb »,
Songs of
Innocence,
1789.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
l. 21-24
 From « Could » to « Dare »

àoscillation between ability and defiance.

àCyclical structure of the poem. The « fearful

symmetry » is the poem itself.