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Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1.Biography 2. Introduction to his works 2015/4/13 1 Biography 2015/4/13 Born in rural Devonshire in 1772, Coleridge inherited his bookish tastes from his father, a learned (and eccentric) clergyman. Coleridge as a boy lived almost entirely in a world of books and ideas. After his father's death, he was sent, in 1782, to a famous charity school in London, known as Christ's Hospital. It was in this school that he met Charles Lamb . Coleridge next won a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he studied at Jesus College . Finding himself (through his own imprudence) desperately in debt, he rushed off to London and enlisted in the Army under the wonderful name of Silas Tomkin Comberbach. 2 Biography 2015/4/13 He hated army life and was terrified of the cavalry horses; so when his brothers contrived to have him released, he gladly returned to Cambridge. Encouraged by the success of the American War of Independence andthe French Revolution, Coleridge and Southey worked on a harebrained scheme which they called “Pantisocracy.” As the name implies, this was to be a Utopian society in which the powers of government were to be shared by all. The “Pantisocracy” of Coleridge and Southey came to nothing. Throughout his life Coleridge was better at drawing up plans than at putting them into practice. 3 Introduction to his works The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Biographia Literaria Kubla Khan 2015/4/13 4 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner The plot of the poem 2015/4/13 The story tells of the unnecessary and wanton shooting of an albatross. The Ancient Mariner, a chillingly mysterious figure who almost forcibly detains a young man on his way to a wedding feast to listen to his narrative, tells of a storm that carried his ship to the seas of the Antarctic. Terrified by the snow and ice, utterly isolated from the world of living things, the crew is overjoyed when an albatross appears. The Ancient Mariner kills the albatross and first The Ancient Mariner's shipmates are angry at him because of his rash and meaningless act. When the fog and mist lift, however, they decide that the shooting of the bird has brought them luck and they applaud the crime of their companion, thus becoming, as it were, his accomplices. Racing north toward the equator, the ship is becalmed in the sea. Suffering from unbearable heat and from thirst, the crew is terrified by the approach of a skeleton-ship, carrying Death and Life-in-Death. On the skeleton-ship a grisly dice game takes place, and Life-in-Death wins. The Mariner's shipmates all die, and he is left hopelessly alone with his physical agony and his consciousness of guilt. There comes a moment, however, in his terrible loneliness when the glint of moonlight on the brightly colored creatures of the deep affects the Ancient Mariner. So he thanks God for all living things. After his pointless slaughter of the albatross, he is once more able to realize the sacredness of life. Released from the awful punishment that his crime brought about, the 5 Mariner returns to his native land. The consequences of his evil-doing, however, cannot be ignored. It is his fate to wander, presumably for all eternity, throughout the world, telling and retelling his frightening story. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Comment on the poem 2015/4/13 It is, perhaps, the finest “literary” ballad in English literature. A literary ballad, in contrast to a folk ballad, is one written by a known author in conscious imitation of the old traditional ballads whose authorship is not known. He deliberately uses this form to tell a simple story. But when reading it, we discover many subtle places, and the musical effect is wonderful. The albatross, a sea bird, is an omen of luck. A seaman for no reason at all kills it, and for this reason the whole ship is punished by God and the seaman is punished by his fellow seamen. The theme is about sin and its expiation. The language is irresistible. A guest is detained by the mariner to listen to his tale. The reader, like the reluctant guest, is enchanted by the tale. Here Coleridge's excellent skill at making supernatural things appear real and true to life is fully displayed. It has been demonstrated that the poem reflects Coleridge's amazingly wide reading. Materials concerning the polar regions, the equatorial regions, guardian spirits, the Scriptural story of Cain, legends about the Wandering Jew, all came together in his imagination and shaped this hauntingly beautiful and profoundly moving poem. It should be obvious that this is not a cautionary tale about 6 being kind to animals. It is a psychologically profound study of guilt, of remorse, of the nature of evil. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Style analysis The story of the Ancient Mariner is told in the style and meter used in many traditional ballads. Most of the stanzas are of four lines, alternately of four stresses and three stresses. The rhymes also alternate, abab. Variety is obtained by introducing occasional six-line stanzas. One stanza is nine lines long. 2015/4/13 7 Biographia Literaria Most of Coleridge's ideas on literature are to be found in his Biographia Literaria. Many of the specific critical comments in this rambling, uneven, and frequently cloudy book are worth attention. For example, his remarks on Wordsworth show a perceptive understanding of that poet's greatness. At the same time he praises Wordsworth, and he takes issue with Wordsworth's oversimplified views on poetic diction and he even shows that Wordsworth does not always follow his own stated principles. His view on imagination He emphasized the relationship of the imagination to the entire process of artistic creation. He denied that the imagination was the mere reshaping of images originally produced by sense impressions and thus was able to make a more profound contribution to our understanding of artistic originality than was made by any neoclassical or pre-Romantic theorist. 2015/4/13 8 Biographia Literaria How to analyze a poem Related to his ideas on the imagination is his healthy awareness that a poem is an organic whole. It is, in other words, like all living things, more than the sum of its parts. One can, of course, analyze parts of a poem, such as the diction, the meter, the rhymes, and the like. But true criticism must ultimately go beyond analysis and examine the poem in its totality. 2015/4/13 9