Samuel T. Coleridge was a brilliant though often erratic writer. Many of his greatest works were written while he was “chasing the dragon” (as opium addiction was known at the time.) Nonetheless he was a brilliant poet and his usage of particularly vivid imagery was inspired.
One of Coleridge's seminal works from that period of his life was a short poem entitled “Kubla Khan” or “a Vision in a Dream”. According to Coleridge, this is but a fragment of the whole... He had envisioned an epic work of some two to three hundred lines of poetry whilst sleeping and upon waking, immediately tried to transcribe his dream to paper. He had written the first three stanzas when he was interrupted by the so-called “Person from Porlock” (wiki) who detained him for over an hour and subsequently was unable to recall the rest of the poem. Is that story true? Or is it rather; as many have asserted, simply an excuse used by Coleridge in an attempt to appease the critics of the time. Many of whom, it should be noted, dismissed the poem as literary nonsense. In fact, one of Coleridge's contempor...
As delineated in paragraph one, Coleridge’s poetic field is one rampant with erratic thought and ultimate change. The proposed subject of the poem, an eolian harp, is virtually abandoned and replaced with veneration of a God as well as a lover. One would think that such a fickle publication would be kept isolated by its author. Although, Coleridge may have staked importance in showing his adoration for God publicly. Hence,
In his poem This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Samuel Taylor Coleridge explicates how humans can always find beauty near themselves, even in the least futile of places. Coleridge, a man of twenty five years at the time he wrote this poem, added This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison to his collection of The Conversation Poems (Hill). In the summer of 1797, when he wrote this, he addressed the poem to a friend of his, Charles Lamb, the essayist, and while they departed, Coleridge wrote him this poem in the garden, for he had been hindered from walking by a misfortunate accident earlier in the day. This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison contains three stanzas which hold seventy eight lines.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. He was the youngest of ten children and was often teased and bullied by the others. When he was 7 years old, Coleridge ran away from home. He was found unharmed the next morning. This event has recurred, in a literary sense, in a large portion of his writings. Many of his poems, sketches, and notebooks contained pictures and descriptions of his night spent outdoors. Although it was evident that Coleridge was a prodigy, he did not do well at a young age because he lost himself in women, drugs, and alcohol. He turned to the army, but this too fell through for him because his family was furious and his brother had him released for reasons of insanity. He immediately brought him back to Cambridge. It was here that he met William Wordsworth (Ashton 29).
S. T. Coleridge divides the concept of imagination into two separate parts: Primary imagination and Secondary imagination. Primary imagi...
Throughout the beginning of the poem there are religious undertones Coleridge uses words like bended knee and reverential to highlight a religious belief and perhaps a plea to God to cure the “Pains of Sleep” this is interesting as he seems to feel “humbled” by the spirit presence. He mentions being weak but realises he is blest by this power. The religious undertone suggests to me a feeling of utter helplessness.
During the 18th century, two great companion; William Wordsworth collaborated together to create Lyrical Ballad; one of the greatest works of the Romantic period. The two major poems of Lyrical Ballad are Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.” Even though these two poems contain different experiences of the two speakers, upon close reading of these poems, the similarities are found in their use of language, the tone, the use of illustrative imagery to fascinate the reader’s visual sense and the message to their loved ones.
Mileur, J. 1982. Coleridge and the Art of Immanence. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Kubla Khan.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 459-462. Print.
In two works by Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, both works regard the imagination as vitally important. In the Ancient Mariner, the imagination (or rather, the lack of it) condemns the Mariner to a kind of hell, with the fiends of sterility, solitude, and loneliness: “’God save thee, Ancient Mariner, from the fiends that plague thee thus! Why look’st thou so?’ ‘With my crossbow I shot the Albatross’”. In Kubla Khan, the imagination of an external being, the narrator that Coleridge created, the ideal critic, can create a masterpiece that far outstrips the meager piece of work that even the emperor of a huge, rich civilization can produce: “I would build that dome in air, a sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, and all should cry, Beware! Beware!” In Kubla Khan, the imagination can even make people fear an otherwise inconsequential event, sequence, or organism.
...ous allegory represents Christian ideals such as sin, forgiveness, and prayer. In addition, Coleridge’s use of language and form contribute to the message conveyed in the text. The form fluctuates throughout the text by use of different rhyme schemes, loose meter, and stanzas in length varying four to nine lines. The variety of form could be representative the array of interpretations of this text. Coleridge conveys profound religious meaning by using symbolic language with interpretive representations. Although his use of elevated language possibly narrowed the audience, that could have been his intentions due to the complexities of this philosophical poem. In the end, Coleridge’s depiction of the Mariner’s journey ultimately conveys the Christian ideal, which is to love and appreciate all creatures created by God, whether Albatross or snake.
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...
Samuel Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan is a metaphorical journey through a complex labyrinth of symbols and images that represent the unconscious and seemingly troubled mind. It is a voyage that continually spirals downward toward uncharted depths, while illustrating the unpredictable battle between the conscious and the unconscious that exists inside every individual. Moreover, the poem appears to follow a dreamlike sequence past numerous, vivid images that are mainly artificial recreations of the narrator’s (most likely Coleridge’s) previous thoughts and experiences.
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a poem about the creative powers of the poetic mind. Through the use of vivid imagery Coleridge reproduces a paradise-like vision of the landscape and kingdom created by Kubla Khan. The poem changes to the 1st person narrative and the speaker then attempts to recreate a vision he saw. Through the description of the visions of Kubla Khan’s palace and the speaker’s visions the poem tells of the creation of an enchanting beautiful world as the result of power of human imagination. The second part of the poem reveals that although the mind has the ability to create this paradise-like world it is tragically unable to sustain this world.
While Coleridge describes the process of creating Romantic poetry and encourages poets to use the combination of nature and imagination in this process, Keats is more focused on reality and is well aware of the limitations of the Grecian urn. With the poets’ admiration of nature present in both poems …… to be completed.
with the alliteration of the frst five lines : "Kubla Khan'', ''dome decree'', and ''sunless sea''. Coleridge interlaces short exclamations (''but oh!'', ''a savage place!'') and exageratedly long exclamations (''as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted by a woman wailing for her demon lover!'') reinforces the feeling of flowing which is related to the time ''ticking'' irregularly away, creating a sense of timelessness.