query [Robed figure in “The Little Boy Found”]
begin page 6 | ↑ back to topResponse to David V. Erdman: I’m afraid I agree with the PMLA authors on the robed figure in the design accompanying “The Little Boy Found,” although I disagree with their reading of the poem as a whole. In fact, for several years in my classes I have been pointing out that the figure is a fusion of the mother to whom the lost child is returned and the supernatural rescuer who returns him. Such an observation has important critical implications which are perfectly justified in the context of both Songs of Innocence and of Experience and Blake’s later work.
(Further discussion appears on page 7.)[e]