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A song of innocence and of experience: rewriting Blake in Brodkey's "Piping Down the Valleys Wild." (William Blake, Harold Brodkey)

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From: Studies in Short Fiction
Date: 19940322
Author:Bidney, Martin

Harold Brodkey reexamines the relationship between innocence and experience that was a common theme of Romantic poets in his story 'Piping Down the Valleys Wind.' The tale shows that the themes of innocence and experience as examined by William Blake are not exclusive to one another, but that the maintenance of innocence is to an extent reliant on the knowledge borne of experience.

Harold Brodkey's book of short stories, First Love and Other Sorrows, shows his remarkable affinity with first generation Romantic poets. "The State of Grace," which opens the volume, is an ironic ...

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