The Analysis of Blake's Structural Use In "The Divine Image".
Blake created many visually driven works that incorporated his ideas as a philosopher and artist. Both his philosophical ideas and artistic vision play a major role in his creation of "The Divine Image". When analyzing this work the reader must pay attention to the complicated array of principles and elements of its structure. The elements and principles of the poetic work are built up with literary tools that Blake uses to convey what he feels as the important message in which the reader must obtain.
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Elements are the "building blocks" of art, as putting the "blocks" or elements together create the principles. The elements of art can be broken down into simple things such as the shape, form, and structure of the piece. When these more simpler things are placed together in a particular arrangement the principles are created that express the movement, focal point, and background. When these things are brought into the world poetry the elements and principles are adapted to what makes up a poem's structure .The elements become relative to poems and thus are meter, punctuation, and word choice and placement. The principles are applied to poetry in the same way and become a series of poetic terms that are rhyme, tone, and line treatment.
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When analyzing the elements and principles in " The Divine Image" the reader is presented with the capitalized words: " Mercy, Pity, Pease, and Love". The capitalization is done so that these words and there meaning will filter through the reader's mind as the piece is verbally consumed. The capitalization technique is a thoughtful process in which Blake applies to this poem in a rather blatant way. Blake also takes a step further by using the " capitalization emphasis" in the word "God" but in the original publication the word "Man" is capitalized as well. By doing this Blake is trying to express that "God and Man" are not as different as the dominant church during this time period had chose to lead people to believe.