Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) - Coggle Diagram
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772-1834)
LIFE
Devonshire, 1772
failed to graduate at Cambridge
enthusiastic republican (influenced by French revolutionary ideals)
After the disillusionment with the French revolution, he planned to establish a
utopian community
in Pennsylvania, a
Pantisocracy
: no private ownership, economic activity as community, but didn't realise the project
1795: meeting with
William Wordsworth
and settlement in the Lake District
Settlement in London
Died in 1834
WORKS (His best poetry was written during the collaboration with Wordsworth)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
(1798)
1st poem of the
Lyrical Ballads
, became the Manifesto of English Romanticism together with Wordsworth's
Preface
Christabel
(1797 - published in 1816)
unfinished poem set in the Middle Ages about a young girl under a witch's spell
Kubla Khan
(1798 - published in 1816)
54-line unfinished dream-like poem probably written under the influence of opium
Biographia Literaria
(1817)
autobiography and text of literary criticism about the dual task set by Wordsworth and him in the
Lyrical Ballads
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
7 parts
1st. The Mariner narrates to a wedding guest how he and his fellows reached the Polar regions after a storm and how he shot an albatross without saying why
2nd. The mariner suffers the punishment for what he has done, the ship ceases to move and the mariners suffer from thirst
3rd. The mariner becomes conscious of what he has done. A phantom ship comes closer to the crew: on board, Death and Life-in-Death cast dice. The former wins the mariner's fellows, who all die, and the latter wins the mariner's life.
4th. The mariner blesses the water snakes and re-establishes a relationship with the nature.
5th. The soul's revival: ship begins to move and spirits stand by the corpses of the dead mariners
6th. The process of purification seems to be impeded.
7th. The Mariner gains the wedding guest's sympathy. Coleridge doesn't tell us the end of the story.
set in the wide sea
introduced by an 'Argument' containing a short summary of the poem
2 narratives:
captions constituting the framework of the whole poem
the poem itself
combination of supernatural and real
characters as stereotypes. The Mariner is a passive spectator but also an actor of the drama
NATURE: not a pantheistic view as in Wordsworth, but essential for poetic creativity because it stimulated the poet to find natural symbols reflecting his emotions and feelings (shapes and colours to symbolise mental states)
BALLAD: dialogue and narration combined, the 4-line stanza,archaic language, allitteration, repetition and onomatopeia, theme of travel, supernatural elements
BUT: the final moral makes it a ROMANTIC Ballad
INTERPRETATIONS:
the description of a dream
an allegory of the life of the soul
a description of the poetic journey of Romanticism
the Mariner is the poet, enchanted by a song deriving from guilt: the regret for a state of lost innocence caused by the Industrial Revolution
TEXTS
The killing of the Albatross
(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wire, /
And I am next of kin...
Death and Life-in-Death
(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)