ABSTRACT
In chapter 1 I argued that Blake's greatest debts to children's literature were structural and functional in nature: that Songs was at once alphabet and guide to doctrine (Innocence), and reader or workbook (Experience). The tests Experience poses the newly initiated visionary (the reader, that is, who comes straight from Innocence) are often subtle and difficult. But they are also, as I have tried to suggest, meant to be recognized and overcome. The ultimate source of the most difficult of these tests is the Bard himself, a guide who unwittingly lapses into the very experienced tendencies he means to expose and overturn in others. The problem I want now to examine is that of the Bard's own fate. Does his story – that of an artist's growth into innocent visionary and subsequent lapse into experienced prophet – contradict the visionary aspirations excited and tested by Songs as a whole? Is the reader to succeed where the Piper-Bard fails? Is the Bard throughout Experience a victim to the confusions betrayed in the opening sequence?
