The Significance Between William Blake's "The Sick Rose" and Northrop Frye's .
Literature always has comparisons of other literature. The conventions and framework of a piece of literature always reflect other pieces of literature because there are no longer any original genres. However, variations to a storyline can create a new story. Poems are no exception to this rule. There are no new literary devices that any poems obtain, nevertheless learning the purpose and effect of different literary devices can allow a person to critique or create poems. .
In Northrop Frye's essay, Giants in Time, he explains the significance of poetry as a form of literature, as well as the usage of literary devices in poetry. William Blake's The Sick Rose,' which is also in Frye's essay, is an excellent example of a poem that utilizes different forms of literary devices and for a good purpose. In fact, this short poem utilizes imagery, symbolism and as a whole it is also an allegory.
Imagery serves a large purpose in this specific poem and in all poems overall. According to Frye, "There's always some literary reason for using [imagery], and that means something in human life that they correspond to or represent or resemble" (Frye 25). Imagery is very prevalent in Blake's poem as he deeply describes, "O Rose, thou art sick!/ The invisible worm/ That flies in the night," (Blake 1-3). The rose and worm are images that everyone can picture. The rose commonly associates with love, since love cannot be physically seen, it is very .
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effective. The worm commonly associates with an infection. Since infections, physical or emotional, are virtually impossible to see, it is also an effective image. In fact, Frye adds to this idea and says, "I spoke of the magic in Blake's poem: that's usually a very vague word in criticism, but magic is really a belief in identity of the same kind:" (Frye 31). Beyond imagery, it is the symbolism of the image that produces the message the reader acquires.