It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. William Blake's short poem "London", from his Songs of Experience collection which you can read online , starts as follows:. I wander through each chartered street, Near where the chartered Thames does flow, A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
My sense is that Blake is talking about ownership, and the idea that the natural rights of people to the land and its resources is restricted by the artificial laws of man. Charter noun formal written instrument bestowing privileges and rights, serving as legal evidence of them," c. This was a huge issue in the industrialization of England, where peasants were ejected from the land as herding replaced farming in many areas, and were forced into the cities to find work in restrictive, unnatural, and generally horrific, conditions.
I also suspect that there is a wordplay on "chart", in the sense that everything in the modern world is mapped, and that this rigid formalization restricts the sense of newness and wonder associated with discovery. Maps are, likewise, artificial representations, a means of definition and restriction. Chart verb , "to enter onto a map or chart," from chart noun s, "map for the use of navigators," from Middle French charte "card, map," from Late Latin charta "paper, card, map".
Charte is the original form of the French word in all senses, but after 14c. English used both carte and card 15c. It all falls under the theme of the " mind forged manacles ", which is the key line in the poem, thematically and rhythmically. Great question, btw.
The use of "chartered" in this poem is something I think about not infrequently. Log in. Install the app. JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. One of his last was his Vision of the Book of Job. The book edition by Joseph Wicksteed is highly recommended. Perhaps Tolstoy is the only other writer I can think of who has such depth.
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Share this: Tweet. Like this: Like Loading Act in a civil and safe manner at all times;. Owners and managers of public space have a responsibility to:. Respect and protect the rights of all users;. Keep spaces safe within the context of the actions of any reasonable person;.
Keep spaces clean and well maintained; and. Keep spaces open and unrestricted at all times or otherwise in line with regulatory stipulations. More sanguine than Minton, he argues that the pattern of land and property ownership in our cities is so layered and nuanced that we ought not to exercise ourselves about the actual ownership of our public spaces.
Fundamentally, what matters is rights that we have as the public to use it. The best way to do that, he argues, is with a charter. He concedes that this is unlikely to make it to legislation. It comes down to local policies and development management. Councils have not been good at negotiating how space is used. Any charter should be rejected on principle, counters Minton, regardless how broad the rights it enshrines.
Besides, it is an issue that has already been resolved.
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