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Articles

Vol. 48 no. 2: Fall 2014

“Did he who made the Lamb make the... Tyger”?

  • Eliza Borkowska
DOI
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.139
Submitted
7 October 2014
Published
07 Oct. 2014

Abstract

None of the “duets” Blake included in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience contains more questions than the pair of lyrics that will be the focus of this essay, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” And none of these questions provokes more critical speculation than the experienced speaker’s “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” It is just one of the unanswered queries of “The Tyger,” but it catches the eye and inflames the pen the most. Though other questions precede and follow it, critical intuition or simply sensitivity to sense and structure suggests that this is the climax of the poem’s (or indeed the poems’) questioning.