Benefactors and Builders: A reading of The Lamb and The Tyger
In this piece I would like to summarize the interpretation of The Lamb and The Tyger that I have tried to work through in my IH 52 classes. Since my interpretation—and these remarks—were influenced by Billy Grassie’s interpretation and the commentary on it, all of which is at the main IH web site, you might want to read it first and then return here. The key question in interpreting these two poems is, I think, raised in The Tyger, when the speaker asks “Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” If we think about why anyone would raise this question, another, prior question comes to the fore. Lambs and tigers are extraordinarily different animals. But are they so different that we would wonder whether God might have made them both? Is there a greater difference between lambs and tigers than, say, between… Continue reading