Проект “Storyboarding as a tool to understanding the symbolic language of William Blake’s verses” (“The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence & “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience).

Good afternoon …..My name is Dasha ,I am a student of gymnasium 144. The theme of my project is “Storyboarding as a tool to understanding the symbolic language of William Blake’s verses” (“The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence & “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience).

William Blake is one of the brightest representatives of the leading literary movement Romanticism in England of the18 century. The Romanticists expressed their emotions caused by great social and economic changes in poetry . They had a great desire to get away from the present. Their motto was: “Close to nature and from nature to God”, because they believed that religion put man at peace with the world.

William Blake invented his own mythology to express his ideas. His symbolic pictures and visionary poems are not always easy to understand. His pictures and poems reveal a powerful artistic imagination, which is not only the simplest and most efficient connection to God, but also the force that connects the gap between the soul's  human and divine natures.

His most famous collection of poems "Songs of Innocence and Experience" reflected  the dark and light sides of the human's life as he tried to represent the human soul as a complex source of spirituality and to show the readers that good cannot exist without evil.

Two contrary poems  "The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence and “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience have deeply impressed me with their deep symbolic significance and subconscious value. Obviously, it was difficult to identify the symbolic meaning of these poems and interpret them from the first sight because of  figurative language.

So, it  wasn't surprise when students of my gymnasium couldn't understand  what the poems are about. The understanding of the verses was based on their titles.   Only 23% of  students could recognize the Jesus and a religious theme in the poem "The Lamb" and 17 % of  students thought about a divine creature which has the image of evil in the poem "The Tyger"  . 

So, there is a problem. how to understand the deep symbolic significance and subconscious value of William Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” and “The Tyger.

We  had to  refer to a storyboard method which is widely used in the modern world. It can be used as a tool to convey messages from the poets of the past to the modern readers on condition that we understand the meaning of archaic words and symbols. 

That is why, the theme of my project is “Storyboarding as a tool to understanding the symbolic language of William Blake’s verses” (“The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence & “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience).

You can see the object, subject of my project on the slide.

the Aim of my project is to apply a storyboard method for Blake's poems “The Lamb,” and “The Tyger” in order to understand symbolic significance and subconscious value of these two pieces of poetry of the XVIII century.

To achieve the aim it was necessary to study the origin and the use storyboard method in the contemporary society, find out the role of stylistic devices in the creation of the poetic image; Visualize archaic words and symbols of Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” and “The Tyger” through creating a storyboard.

Well, what is storyboarding. According to the dictionary of contemporary English,    storyboarding is a set of drawings that are done before a film is made in order to show what will happen in it.

Storyboard method was developed at the Walt Disney studio in the early 1930s.  

The Disney animator came up with the idea of drawing scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinning them on a board to tell a story in sequence. Later, the idea  spread to other studios.  Nowadays Storyboards are  an essential part of the creative process. They are widely used in different spheres of people's activity: in cinemas, theatres, business, advertising, software. In literature, storyboards appear in many forms, from brochures with emergency instructions on airplanes to technical textbooks. Storyboards are becoming more and more popular with novelists because pictures combined with text offer a rich synthesis of information that can entertain and inform. Storyboarding may become a great way to study the vocabulary.

1) Vocabulary of the poems “The Tyger” and  “The Lamb”   is unusual for contemporary readers. They were written over 200 years ago, and have archaic, specialized terms and poetic expressions. Some words, like  ........are not used now or have multiple meanings.

 After studying the definitions of these words I tried to visualize them through creating a storyboard.

2) Storyboarding is also an excellent way to focus on figurative language. Blake does not directly state his topic in “The Tyger,” “The Lamb,” but relies on symbolism  to convey his message. We tried to determine the symbolical meaning of the tiger and the Lamb  in order to understand the poem and explain their significance through images and text.  Blake describes the tiger as a symbol of evil while The Lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. Black compares the God with a blacksmith when he made a tiger. Wings represent the daring spirit of the creator.

3) Another great way to study poems is through the creation of storyboard that examine Tone, Word Choice, Imagery, Style, and Theme. This activity is referred to with the acronym “TWIST”. In a TWIST, we can demonstrate an understanding of the way poetic devices work together to convey the poems' messages. With the TWIST method, we looked for and analyzed the following terms: tone, word choice, imagery and detail, style, and theme.

tone Both poems are interdependent and they are in relation to each other but the tone is very different. The tone of the poem “The Lamb” is positive. On the contrary, the tone of the poem “The Tiger”  is sorrowful.

word choice Comforting and mild words in “The Lamb” against to strong powerful words in “The Tyger”.

imagery the first two lines of the poem “The Tiger” Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;   help me to create its image. In the poem “The Lamb, the line "By the stream & o’er the mead;" enables the readers to imagine a field of grass, with a small lamb and everything is looking peaceful.

William Blake uses metaphors such as "clothing of delight", " such a tender voice' for the lamb,  in the lamb poem  and ' burning bright” Burnt the fire of thine eyes in "the tyger".    Next storyboard  illustrates this comparison.

Style  Poem “The Tiger”  is a series of repeated questions posed in six regular stanzas which  remain unanswered at the end of the poem. The poem “The Lamb” contains two stanzas with simple language and short syllables. The first stanza asks a question and the second stanza answers it.

tone The theme for the two poems is that the world is balanced into good and evil. Lamb is a good being while Tiger symbolizes the evil which was made by the same creator but what for.

      In conclusion I'd like to say  The hypothesis: storyboarding can be used as a tool to convey          messages from the poets of the past to the modern readers (to understand the meaning of archaic words and symbols  - is justified.

Further development of the project may be  connected with analyzing other poems of William Blake and also the works of literature of great Russian and English writers.

The final product of the project is the creation of various storyboard charts visualizing the symbolic language (in stylistic deices) of William Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” and “The Tyger”.