Samuel Taylor Coleridge Flashcards
1772
born in Devonshire
1791
enters Cambridge University
1794
leaves Cambridge University w/o a degree
- plans “Pantisocracy” a utopian democratic community in rural Pennsylvania w/ Robert Southey (doesn’t come to fruition)
1795
befriends Wordsworth
1798
publishes Lyrical Ballads w/ Wordsworth and spends winter in Germany w/ him
- where he studied German philosophy and literary criticism
1800-01
becomes reliant upon laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) for physical pain
1808
begins lecturing on literature and poetry in London, especially for female audiences who couldn’t attend university
1810
falling out with Wordsworth
1817
publishes Biographia Literaria (an autobiography that also includes critical essays on lit and poetry)
1834
passes away
From Biographia Literaria: Fancy and the Imagination & On the Imagination
Fancy and imagination as distinct
“Repeated meditations led me..and the same power” (pg 495)
- most humans have a little of both => what differentiates one from another?
The imagination (on the imagination)
“The imagination…are essentially fixed and dead” (496)
- “agent of perception” => helps you interpret the world
- primary = human perception => create something from scratch
- secondary = agent of conscious world, a memory of the primary => contemplate emotions and try to evoke it in the audience, recreating something of the original act
- “eternal act of creation” = power to create in our minds, build something new
- imagination creates originality, but maybe an imitation of something already there
- create something out of thin air
- not everyone possesses imagination
Fancy (on the imagination)
“Fancy..from the law of association” (496)
- if God is imagination then fancy would be man’s actions
- fancy applies to material things => bound to concrete reality
- “Law of association” => using what you already have to build something (reconfigures, combines, rearranges)
- putting two things together => might not end up as the same thing
- bring out pre-existing materials and reconfiguring it into something new
From Lectures on Shakespeare: Fancy and Imagination on Shakespeare’s Poetry
Shakespeare’s imaginative and fanciful writing
” Shakespeare possessed the chief..upon an extended prospect” (504-05)
- bringing together two things that coexist
- imagination creates things out of the blue that doesn’t compare to fancy
- what romantic poets are doing is similar to Shakespeare
Movement and motion in Shakespeare
“Thus the flight of Adonis…over inanimate objects” (505)
- “He in the night from Venus’ eye” => fancy
- poetry about movement and how it’s constantly shifting
- Shakespeare pushes specific poetic language to its breaking point
Shakespeare’s originality
“is Shakespeare a great…true imitation of the essential principles?” (506)
- in first question: is Shakespeare great b/c he resembles older poets?
- second qs: or do we like him b/c he’s different from them? => marks departure from them
- does he have a free imagination or just obeying status quo
- for Coleridge: part of what Shakespeare’s originality is that he breaks from tradition
Shakespeare’s genius and freedom
“For it is even this..under laws of its own origination” (506)
- using rules to spur invention
Mechanic vs. Organic Form
Organic form
“The form is mechanic…wisdom deeper than consciousness” (507)
- organic: raw materials that hasn’t been pressed on by man, a convention that’s not rigidly bound to poetic convention => in poetry: blank verse, free verse
- put into poetic convention 2 unlike things => a disservice to the muse
- choose a poetic form that’s most appropriate => choose a topic
- mechanical form: dictates what you write
- subject matter should determine what you write about, what you convey in the poem (Coleridge)
- organic => writing in a style that the muse dictates
- shouldn’t start w/ poetic convention first but subject first
Eolian Harp
Embodied contact b/twn nature and the harp
“And that simplest Lute…is music slumbering on her instrument” (lines 12-33)
- exchange b/twn human imagination and nature
This Lime Tree Bower My Prison & Kubla Khan
- both explore the power of creativity and the imagination
-“This lime tree bower” creates realistic visions of people based in reality - “Kubla Khan” imagines speculative, extraordinary landscapes => divorced from reality
Mi Metic
imitation of real world through art, realistic
This Lime tree bower my prison
Solitude and imagination
“Well they are gone…of the blue clay-stone” (lines 1-19)
- bower: pleasant shady place underneath a tree etc.
- “this lime tree bower my prison” => tone is dramatic and emotional (like he’s in a prison), feeling of isolation, all hope is lost, trapped in his body and can’t get up (being sick is like incarceration)
- missing out on his friends wandering nature
-shift fr. own imagination to friends doing something => virtual knowledge of what friends are up to (imagining, putting himself in their position)
- physically captive to a certain area but his mind is wandering => transcend his physical body
- in the beginning, very detailed as if writing himself into the scene => laying down the scene
Picturing his friends in present tense
“Now, my friends emerge…and strange calamity” (lines 20-32)
- invoking city/country tension => nostalgia going on
- picturing what they’re doing but we don’t know for sure
- Coleridge’s imagination => system where nature brings you back, emotions are restored
- nature is a site of social exchange (“Intercourse”)
apostrophe
a figure of speech in which a speaker addresses an abstraction, object, or dead/absent person
- ex: prayer that addresses an abstract personification of something
- Coleridge addressing his friends => creativity takes place of his body
Addressing nature
“Ah! slowly sink…spirits perceive his presence” (lines 32-43)
- nature is good and peaceful (how Marianne relates to nature)
- why is speaker addressing sun or the blue ocean? => sun and the ocean are the most “organic” forms we have in the world, thinking of nature leads to thinking of other people
- creating something that’s not literally in front of them (active imagination)
- some kind of personality trait that links you to natural phenomenon
Imagined, virtual pleasures
“A delight…asI myself were there” (lines 43-45)
- poem becomes surrogate experience => substitute for real life experience
- ability to create virtual experiences
Nature as a friend
“Henceforth I shall know…the joys we cannot share” (lines 59-67)
- imagining the joys not shared w/ him
- personifies nature => “never deserts” “may lift the soul”
- nature can teach us about love and beauty
-“keep the heart awake to love and beauty” => keeps us receptive
Kubla Khan
- the imagination possesses a power that is omnipotent and godlike
- transport and altered states
Paradise Lost by John Milton
- mind is its own place => can be in the beautiful place in the world and have a fight w/ someone and ruin it
- can make something terrible into something great
- imagination can give you freedom => reign supreme
Kubla Khan:
The opium induced vision
“In the summer of the year…that are here preserved” (pg 464-465)
- go from real life to having elaborate dream sequence => describing and transcribing a dream sequence
The ephemeral vision
“though he still retained…which a stone had been cast” (pg 465)
- poet trying to hold onto a flighty vision that fades away
The autonomy of art
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan…enfolding sunny spots of greenery” (lines 1-11)
- mythical location essentially Garden of Eden
Kublai Khan more info
- founder of the Yuan dynasty of China (1271-1368)
- emperor of the Mongol Empire (1260-1294)
- Xanadu based upon Shangdu, Khan’s summer palace
- elaborate fantasy of the racial politics => summer house as a refuge of imagination
- Khan associated w/ beauty, decadence
Orientalism
- term coined by Edward Said
- study of the “Orient” (the “Middle East”) by the “Occident” (the “Western World)
- notice the relational geography of these terms => the East only acquires meaning in relation to the West
- Said’s study Orientalism explores discourses related to the “Orient” (literature, philology, painting) and how they influence/justify colonial and imperial domination
Abyssinia
“A damsel with a dulcimer…singing of Mount Abora” (37-41)
- Abyssinia is what Ethiopia used to be called
- cross racial politics: from asia to ethiopia
- Mount Abora: a product of fantasy but also rooted in Ethiopia => creating extravagant, supernatural version of it that crosses over different traditions
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Edward Said on Orientalism
“Taking the late 18th c. ..during the post-Englightenment period” (1978)
- discourse refers to idealogical purpose, politicized
- literary representations of the world => Orient
- “What it means to be European, Western etc.”
Medieval Romance
- a verse narrative that depicts a chivalric age in which a hero embarks upon a quest (usually a knight in order to gain a lady’s favor)
- emphasizes chivalric traits of courage, loyalty, honor, and manners
- often includes supernatural occurrences
- modifications of the epic
- similar estrangement happening in Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan => set in geographically remote places, tapping into historical drama
The opening
“There was a ship…the bright eyed Mariner” (lines 9-20)
- “thus spake” - sound shakespearean
- “cannot choose but hear” = last poem in Lyrical Ballads
- waiting for wedding ceremony to start => minstrel, kind of like a ballad, telling a story
The mariner, marriage, and modernity
“The wedding guest here beat..the merry minstrelsy” (lines 31-36)
- institutional forms of attachment
- marriage is a sign of futurity or keeping alliance b/twn two bloodlines
- Mariner is an outdated figure that can’t be assimilated into structure
The Mariner as a poet-minstrel-troubadour
“I pass like night…which biddeth me to prayer” (lines 582-596)
- circularity => ends w/ man teaching us a story
- Mariner is like a romantic poet => only select people that can evoke language, alone b/c he ‘passes from land to land’ (isolation to romantic poet)
- maybe something incompatible b/twn isolation and heterosexual institution
Style
- deliberately archaic, antiquated style of Rime invites readers to consider the continuities b/twn the medieval and the contemporary era
Gothic
- genre interested in pleasurable terror and horror
- mystery, supernatural, and the macabre
- emphasizes emotion, irrationality, overwhelming thrills, and the unconscious
- refers to an architectural style (“Gothic”) associated w/ medieval era => ancient castles, ruined abbeys, abandoned monasteries => something archaic, dilapidated has held on
When Gotchic originated
- originates in 18th c. as a response to Enlightenment: a philosophical movement characterized by logic and reason
- 1764: Horace Walpole publishes The Castle of Otranto (one of the earliest novels) based upon a fictitious medieval manuscript and salacious circumstances => one of the most popular topics
- 1790s: Novels featuring horror, mystery, and bizarre become increasingly popular
- 1818: Mary shelley, Frankenstein
More on Gothic
- explores the unconscious and irrational
- what haunts us might be historical traumas and atrocities or it might also be the monster within => excavate unresolved traumas haunting a society, Mariner seems like a ghost that haunts England
- doubles and doppelgangers => the repressed underside of modern life
- what’s repressed will inevitably resurface => the more you suppress, the more fixated you’ll be
- often a gateway to the taboo and transgressive
Death at sea
“Are those her ribs through…Quoth she, and whistles thrice” (lines 185-198)
- supernatural appearance of woman (w/ death) => description is angelic
- facts, logic, reason where we think we’re superior to reason => brings out of the made up rationality and brings us back to nature that we think we’re so above
- death isn’t necessarily a horrific thing => can be beautiful
- “the game is done, I’ve won” => a siren (gothic uncanny happening)
Unable to die
“The cold sweat melted…and yet I could not die” (lines 253 - 262)
- what makes human human is the ability to die
- can’t die on sea => become monstrous (reinforce ideas of conventions)
- Mariner is traumatized individual who’s surrounded by death => something monstrous about extremity of being too young or too old
More on Rime
- Rime part of broader rise of sea fiction (Robinson Crusoe) => literature set at sea makes ocean into metaphor for variety of different things, sea fiction about empire, mapping the world, understanding relation of human and nature
- Maritime expeditions a matter of empire (colonial territories), science (natural history and botany), and psychology (depths of the sea) => depths of sea become unconscious
- Mariner occupies a tenuous relation to England => not really British (outcast), goes to sea which changes relationship w/ his home country
Limits of the Known world
“With sloping masts and dipping prow…like noises in a swound” (lines 45-62)
- something about north and south pole that fascinated humans in this time
- surrounded by ice => imagery
Murdering the albatross
“And a good south wind…I shot the Albatross” (lines 71-82)
- violent, murderous relationship
- no psychological interiority/exploration => no reason he shot it
- modern => irrational side of human subjectivity
- different predatory relationship b/twn human and natural world
- albatross associated w/ wind (like wind w/ Wordsworth) => kills it = wind stops and ship also stops and when there’s no wind they’re stuck in the water
- undoing natural harmony w/ natural world
