Title: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1)
1Samuel Taylor Coleridge"founder of the
Romantic movement in poetry"
presented at -
K.V. No.2 Delhi Cantt (ii Shift)
presented by
Madhur Tripathi
2Coleridges Childhood
- Coleridge was born in 1772, son of a vicar in a
small Devon town. He was the youngest of many
children (some say 10, some 14), much adored and
even spoiled by his parents. He was a dreamy
child who loved reading I found the Arabian
Nights entertainments--one tale of which... made
so deep an impression on me... that I was haunted
by spectres whenever I was in the dark--and I
distinctly remember the anxious and fearful
eagerness with which I used to watch the window
in which the books lay--and whenever the sun lay
upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the
wall, and bask, and read (from his Biographia
Literaria).
3Education and the Dragoons
- Coleridges father died when he was only nine,
and Samuel was sent away to a very strict London
boarding school, Christs Hospital. He attended
Jesus College, Cambridge for several years in the
early 1790s, where he met lifelong friend and
fellow poet Robert Southey, and came in contact
with the radical political and social ideas
fermenting just after the French Revolution. In
1793, depressed by his lack of funds and a failed
love affair, he left college and enlisted in the
dragoons. His brother rescued him from this
misguided commitment and he returned to
Cambridge, but never completed his university
studies.
4Utopianism and an Unhappy Marriage
- Southey and Coleridge dreamed up and hoped to
make real a utopia based on the ideals of Platos
Republic, and called it pantisocracy, meaning
equal rule by all members of the community. They
intended to move to the New World with their
wives and a select few other couples to realize
this vision it never happened. But Coleridge and
Southey did marry sisters, Sara and Edith
Fricker, in 1795. Coleridge was actually in love
with another woman, Mary Evans, who was obligated
elsewhere, and his marriage ended unhappily in a
legal separation in 1806.
5Samuel Taylor Coleridge's daughter Sara
Fricker-Coleridge 1830. Portrait by Richard
James Lane
6Poetry
- Despite not enjoying the name recognition or
popular acclaim that Wordsworth or Shelley have
had, Coleridge is one of the most important
figures in English poetry. His poems directly and
deeply influenced all the major poets of the age.
He was known by his contemporaries as a
meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his
careful reworking of his poems than any other
poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent
on his professional advice. His influence on
Wordsworth is particularly important because many
critics have credited Coleridge with the very
idea of "Conversational Poetry".
7- The idea of utilizing common, everyday language
to express profound poetic images and ideas for
which Wordsworth became so famous may have
originated almost entirely in Coleridges mind.
It is difficult to imagine Wordsworths great
poems, The Excursion or The Prelude, ever having
been written without the direct influence of
Coleridges originality. As important as
Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he was equally
important to poetry as a critic. Coleridge's
philosophy of poetry, which he developed over
many years, has been deeply influential in the
field of literary criticism. This influence can
be seen in such critics as A.O. Lovejoy and I.A.
Richards.
8Coleridge draft of the poem Kubla Khan
9The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel,
and Kubla Khan
- Coleridge is probably best known for his long
poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christa
bel. Even those who have never read the Rime have
come under its influence its words have given
the English language the metaphor of
an albatross around one's neck, the quotation of
"water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink"
(almost always rendered as "but not a drop to
drink"), and the phrase "a sadder and a wiser
man" (again, usually rendered as "a sadder but
wiser man"). The phrase "All creatures great and
small" may have been inspired by The Rime "He
prayeth best, who loveth best/ All things great
and small/ For the dear God who loveth us/ He
made and loveth all." Christabelis known for its
musical rhythm, language, and its Gothic tale. - Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment,
although shorter, is also widely known.
Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional
"Romantic" aura because they were never
finished. Stopford Brooke characterised both
poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite
metrical movement" and "imaginative phrasing."
10The statue of the Ancient Mariner at Watchet,
Somerset, England. The statue was unveiled in
September 2003, as a tribute to Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
11The Conversation poems
- The Eolian Harp (1795)
- Reflections on having left a Place of
Retirement (1795) - This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison (1797)
- Frost at Midnight (1798)
- Fears in Solitude (1798)
- The Nightingale A Conversation Poem (1798)
- Dejection An Ode (1802)
- To William Wordsworth (1807)
12The Rime of The Ancient Mariner
13SUMMARy
14- Three guys are on the way to a wedding
celebration when an old sailor (the Mariner)
stops one of them at the door (we'll call him the
Wedding Guest). Using his hypnotic eyes to hold
the attention of the Wedding Guest, he starts
telling a story about a disastrous journey he
took. The Wedding Guest really wants to go party,
but he can't pry himself away from this grizzled
old mariner. The Mariner begins his story. They
left port, and the ship sailed down near
Antarctica to get away from a bad storm, but then
they get caught in a dangerous, foggy ice field.
An albatross shows up to steer them through the
fog and provide good winds, but then the Mariner
decides to shoot it. Oops.
15- Pretty soon the sailors lose their wind, and it
gets really hot. They run out of water, and
everyone blames the Mariner. The ship seems to be
haunted by a bad spirit, and weird stuff starts
appearing, like slimy creatures that walk on the
ocean. The Mariner's crewmates decide to hang the
dead albatross around his neck to remind him of
his error.Everyone is literally dying of
thirst. The Mariner sees another ship's sail at a
distance. He wants to yell out, but his mouth is
too dry, so he sucks some of his own blood to
moisten his lips. He's like, "A ship! We're
saved." Sadly, the ship is a ghost ship piloted
by two spirits, Death and Life-in-Death, who have
to be the last people you'd want to meet on a
journey. Everyone on the Mariner's ship dies.
16- The wedding guest realizes, "Ah! You're a
ghost!" But the Mariner says, "Well, actually, I
was the only one who didn't die." He continues
his story he's on a boat with a lot of dead
bodies, surrounded by an ocean full of slimy
things. Worse, these slimy things are nasty water
snakes. But the Mariner escapes his curse by
unconsciously blessing the hideous snakes, and
the albatross drops off his neck into the
ocean.The Mariner falls into a sweet sleep, and
it finally rains when he wakes up. A storm
strikes up in the distance, and all the dead
sailors rise like zombies to pilot the ship. The
sailors don't actually come back to life.
Instead, angels fill their bodies, and another
supernatural spirit under the ocean seems to push
the boat. The Mariner faints and hears two voices
talking about how he killed the albatross and
still has more penance to do. These two
mysterious voices explain how the ship is moving.
17- After a speedy journey, the ship ends up back
in port again. The Mariner sees angels standing
next to the bodies of all his crewmates. Then a
rescue boat shows up to take him back to shore.
The Mariner is happy that a guy called "the
hermit" is on the rescue boat. The hermit is in a
good mood. All of a sudden there's a loud noise,
and the Mariner's ship sinks. The hermit's boat
picks up the Mariner.
18- When they get on shore, the Mariner is desperate
to tell his story to the hermit. He feels a
terrible pain until the story had been told. In
fact, the Mariner says that he still has the same
painful need to tell his story, which is why he
stopped the Wedding Guest on this occasion.
Wrapping up, the Mariner tells the Wedding Guest
that he needs to learn how to say his prayers and
love other people and things. Then the Mariner
leaves, and the Wedding Guest no longer wants to
enter the wedding. He goes home and wakes up the
next day, as the famous last lines go, "a sadder
and a wiser man."
19English frozen crew joined albatross which sits
on the ship