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From Anna Barbauld's Hymns In Prose to William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

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From: Philological Quarterly
Date: 19980922
Author:KENNEDY, THOMAS C.

When Northrop Frye refers in Fearful Symmetry to the relationship between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience as mutual satire with "double-edged irony," he uses the term "satire" in an unusual way. Frye argues that pastoral poetry traditionally satirizes "the artificiality of the court or city."(1) The notion, however, that two texts satirize each other seems to stretch the common meaning of the term. Whether satire is directed at contemporary society or, as in burlesque and parody, at another text, it is usually a oneway street.

Most subsequent criticism has focussed ...

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