SOURCE: Gillham, D. G. “Blake's Criticism of ‘Love.’” In Blake's Contrary States: The Songs of Innocence and of Experience as Dramatic Poems, pp. 148-90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.

In the following excerpt, Gillham discusses Blake's treatment of sexual love in the Songs as a way of demonstrating the common features of all modes of love.

It is generally agreed that Blake wrote the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience at different periods: in 1789 and 1793, although the evidence that they were written at just this interval is by no means conclusive.¹ Yet even if this interval in composition is accepted, it should be recognized that the two sets, which lend significance to one another, form an artistic whole, and it is as a whole that they must have been conceived. Each series has its own title-page, but in bringing the two series together under the comprehensive title and...