Discussion Questions on Coleridge

"Rime of the Ancient Mariner":

1. If this is a poem which is in part about guilt and expiation, what's the crime? What does it mean to kill an albatross? You might consider:
   • the description of the albatross itself, lines 63-79
   • the mariner's motives for killing the albatross
   • the state that follows from the killing of the albatross, 115-142, 171-198, 232-248
   • what it takes to begin to break the spell, 272-291
   • where are the mariners going in the first place? why?
2. If the mariner is a poet-figure (a significant "if," here), then what is a poet, for Coleridge? What do poems and poets do? Consider:
   • the description of the mariner in the opening frame
   • the odd mixture of genres in the poem--a ballad with a Latin epigraph and the marginal glosses of a religious text
   • the overall narrative of what happens to the mariner (loss of community, whatever the albatross means, isolation, redemption, the compulsion to tell the tale, etc.)
   • the nature of the mariner/poet's penance, 570-609; the mariner returns home, but has he become a part ofthe community?
   • the poet/mariner's effect on his audience, the Wedding-Guest (opening and closing frame)
   • the "moral to the story" as the mariner sets it out, 610-617. Does this moral do justice to the mariner's tale? If so, how? If not, what's the point?

"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"?