THE TYGER

WHAT IS THE TYGER ABOUT?

• Opening
• Background
• The Songs of experience
• The Songs of innocence
• The Tyger and The Lamb
• The history

THE TITLE

• It could be a symbol Blake uses to make a far deeper point than something like "Tigers are scary."

WILLIAM BLAKE

• An English poet, painter, and printmaker.
• He was unrecognised during his lifetime
• Blake is now considered a seminal figure in history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

WHY?

• Published in a collection of poems called Songs of Experience in 1794, Blake wrote "The Tyger" during his more radical period.
• He wrote most of his major works during this time, often railing against oppressive institutions like the church or the monarchy, or any and all cultural traditions – sexist, racist, or classist – which stifled imagination or passion.

STRUCTURE

• 1st stanza - opens the central question
• 2nd stanza - where was he created
• 3rd stanza - how the creator formed him
• 4th stanza - what tools were used
• 5th stanza - why?
• 6th stanza - restates central question

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE TYGER?

• "The struggle of humanity is based on the concept of the contrary nature of things, Blake believed, and thus, to achieve truth one must see the contraries in innocence and experience. Experience is not the face of evil but rather another fact of that which created us."
• Rather than believing in war between good and evil or heaven and hell, Blake thought each man must first see and then resolve the contraries of existence and life. In "The Tyger" he presents a poem of "triumphant human awareness" and "a hymn to pure being".