2/17/09 Coleridge

Transition to Coleridge: why "Romantic?" Especially given that in its earlier uses it meant something like "extravagant or foolish"? (Recall Pope: "if folly grow Romantic, I must paint it").

One root of the word: genre of lit called romance. Many forms, long history, but examples:

• medieval romance: conventions such as knight, quest, series of trials, seeking favor of woman (so: element of sexuality), landscape peopled with supernatural creatres.
• some post-medieval romances in a similar strain: e.g. Spenser's Faerie Queene
• gothic romance: prose, developed in late 18th C, conventions such as gloomy castle, sufferings imposed on heroine by lustful villain, plenty of supernatural beings. First was probably Walpole's The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, 1764

seems a long way from this to Wordsworth. This in particular might strike us as odd:

• (1664) 1st paragraph of Ch. 14 of Biographia Literaria, supernatural/ordinary. Why would the supernatural and the ordinary belong together?

but consider "Tintern Abbey" again

• "coloring of imagination": embracing of irrational--in case of "Tintern Abbey," willingness to believe in "half-created" divine presence in nature
• still a quest narrative; not seeking Grail, in this case, but confirmation of "Presence"
• romantic view of landscape: different kind of peopling with supernatural creatures

One could make the same case for Barbauld's "Summer Evening's Meditation" without straining. Imagination is the key word here.

With Coleridge, of course, or at least the supernaturally inclined Coleridge, the connection is much clearer. Not knights per se, but definitely supernatural creatures. A quest or quests, also, in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," although in some cases the quests are not self-imposed. And the sexual element, often in the nightmarish version of the Gothic romance, is there too.

"Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

• What kind of a poem is it? ballad meter (abcb, 4343); very far from a classical source. Note also, however, that it begins with an epigraph in Latin. And the marginal glosses would be most common in religious texts
• we aren't going to follow the discussion questions exactly, but I do want to have the two main questions from there on the table: 1) if this is a story about guilt and expiation, what's the crime? 2) assuming that the mariner is a poet or bard figure, what is a poet, and what does poetry do?
• frame narrative
  • why a wedding? Social ceremony, community. Love in social context; blessing of the church.
  • the tale has a teller--let's assume that the mariner is some kind of bard or poet figure. What's he like? Why?
    • the poet appears to have some hypnotic or magical power over people: the wedding guest wants to leave but cannot.
    • On the other hand, his power is limited, in that he is able to stop only one of three.
    • there is something slightly absurd about this figure--whatever else he is, he is ALSO a "greybeard loon"--what's the point of that?
    • How is this different from the portrait of the poet drawn by Wordsworth? "a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with a more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul." (But it's even further away from the witty craftsman described by Pope.
    • Wordsworth's description of the poet in the Preface.)
  • so--is poet in opposition to community? Note that the Wedding-Guest never makes it to the wedding.
  • why does he pick THIS guest?
• wedding guest doesn't want to hear. what does it suggest that he must?
• stanza 6: leaving kirk, hill, lighthouse--why this order?
• 51-62: what kind of place have they ventured to? Lectures on Shakespeare: "Living power as opposed to lifeless mechanism."
• 63-78: what is the albatross?
• 91-102 why does it matter that the sailors justify the crime? why did the mariner kill the bird in the first place?
• after the death of the albatross, 115-142: what is this state of "lifeless mechanism" like?
• 185 ff: death and life-in-death. why is L-i-D sexualized?
• 232-239 in mechanical world: alone. to kill the albatross is to be outside community; natural world then becomes alien and disgusting; sailors isolated from one another
• in contrast: gloss on stanza containing 265; order, belonging.
• leading to 273-291: blessing the snakes. Why snakes, by the way?
• note that he will not stop doing penance, 408-409.
• but he does return, 464 ff.--note reverse order
• 508-518, 574-580. met by Pilot, which makes sense, and Hermit. Why the Hermit?
• 582 ff. Has the mariner returned to the community or not? (597-609). Why is the telling of the tale so important?
• 609-617: the mariner's own moral to the story. Is it an adequate moral? how does it connect with the frame tale?
• ending: what happens to the poor wedding guest? why?

"Kubla Khan":

1. Assuming that this poem is a deliberate fragment (i.e. that it is finished in its unfinished state), what does the introductory narrative imply about the nature of (ideal) poetic creation? How does the narrative frame our understanding of what the poem fragment is or is about?
2. What is the nature of the place described in the poem? Consider:
   • the many opposites or contrasts in the poem: stately/pleasure/sacred, hills/caverns, twice five miles/measureless caverns, holy/demon-lover, etc.
   • the immense energies portrayed, especially in the second verse paragraph (e.g. the fountain)
   • the quantity and variety of the explicit and implicit sexual imagery in the poem
3. The third verse paragraph offers yet another representation of artistic creation; what does the poem say about it?
4. Halfway through the third verse paragraph, the speaker becomes an explicit "I." How does he (assuming it is a he) represent himself?
5. Is this poem's representation of poets and poetry consistent with what we saw in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?