Coleridge's in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan

806 Words2 Pages

How Does Coleridge in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan' Show the
Interrelatedness Between Mankind, Nature and the Poetic Experience?

Coleridge expresses many thoughtful and rather intense ideas in his poetry, through using either peculiar or common images of all forms of nature ie human, environmental or supernatural. His poetic expression is unique in its use of extraordinary imagery and transition of mood yet he what he creates usually conforms to numerous literary techniques. The recurring theme in many of his poems is that of man's harmony with nature, and this idea, combined with his bizarre and even eccentric poetic expression provides a basis for both 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan'.

Mankind, firstly, is explored in both poems by placing the human nature in situations where perhaps instinct acts before reason. In RAM, the ancient mariner kills the albatross not for need or in distress, or for any reason that mariner can deduce the result. He has unknowingly taken on a huge burden, and the quest begins to extract all the rash impulsiveness of mankind. The mariner now must search for moral, spiritual and internal rationality, and this goal is expressed in the poem as a type of blessing or relief which he must earn. In
'Kubla Khan', Coleridge expresses man's social instinct to conform and belong to a group. This also relates to the creation of rituals and rules by the human- being and the obeying of the cycle of life to death, again ...

Open Document