...Poets The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge hone his craft. Troubled by debt, though, he left Cambridge in 1793 and enlisted in the 15th Dragoons, a British army regiment, under the alias Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. After being rescued by his brothers, Coleridge returned to Cambridge, but he left again, in 1794, without having earned a degree. That year, Coleridge met the author Robert Southey, and together they dreamed about establishing a utopian community in the Pennsylvania wilderness of America. Southey, however, backed out of the project, and their dream was never realized. notable quote “No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.” fyi Did you know that Samuel Taylor Coleridge . . . • developed a fascination with the supernatural at age five? • was known as a brilliant and captivating conversationalist? • was the most influential literary critic of his day? • liked to write poetry while walking? Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834 Samuel Taylor Coleridge is famous for composing “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” considered two of the greatest English poems. As a critic and philosopher, he may have done more than any other writer to spread the ideas of the English romantic movement. Precocious Reader The youngest of ten For more on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, visit the Literature Center at ClassZone.com. children, Coleridge grew up feeling rejected by his distant mother...
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...him. The Mariner was able to free himself of the remorse of his sin by following the Hermit's request to tell his story. Regardless of any scrutinizing theories, whether they are critical examinations or not, Coleridge's lyrical ballad, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” continues to demonstrate a moralistic story. All can agree that the plot has a moral to impart and the Mariner's tough trials and struggles at sea, and of his life, leave him with the responsibility to notify all audiences of the life lessons he has gained. Christian roots run deep within the poem, however Coleridge created it so that a comprehensive study of Christian allegory is redundant when trying to comprehend this message. Nor is the emphasis of the importance of numbers or themes needed. In structure alone, the ballad is an exciting work of art. Its' simplicity and flow make the story of travel an interesting read. Samuel Taylor Coleridge himself might have possibly followed the "Hermit's" edict to free his own guilt by writing this poem, and sharing with his readership for his own personal repentance. Maybe it is just truly a lyrical ballad created from the vivid imagination of S.T. Coleridge’s mind. Regardless, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner succeeds in making the bizarre believable; creating detailed word-pictures, some troubled with horror, others piercing with brief visions of splendid beauty. All bring to mind images so clear and deep they affected the audience’s senses and...
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...14 October 2010 The Line of the Ancient Mariner Attempting To Explain the Unexplainable Samuel Taylor Coleridge declares an argument in Part One of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner of what is to come of The Mariner and his crew. “How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.”(Coleridge II, 235) Coleridge stated in Biographia Literaria that he originally wanted to illustrate a disordered universe, “the incidents and agents were to be in part at least, supernatural;” (Coleridge I, 132). All who have read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner know the realm the ship sails into is a realm where the laws of logic and the scientific method are not valid. I plan to investigate the theme of “the strange things that befell” the crew after crossing “the Line”. L.J. Forstner explained the line the ship passes is not a geographic line, such as the equator, it is a line of understanding. We learned the region south of the line contains the imagination and unconscious while the region to the north of it has reason and conscious. (Piper 174) Some of the unconscious and imaginative events that happened during this time are when the albatross is given the credit for leading the crew from the South Pole. The Mariner...
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...knowledge and innovation that they had disconnected from both the natural world, and their deeper, natural selves. Though the philosophies of the individual poets differed, in general romantic poetry focused on and lauded primitivism, and emotion, while minimizing (but not discounting) the importance of reason and logic. The ultimate goal of romantic poetry was the attainment of the sublime, the ultimate, transcendental connection with the natural self. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the pioneers of the Romantic Movement, believed that the creative imagination was the key to man achieving his connection to the sublime. This caused much difficulty though, as the source of creative imagination was impossible to trace and because creative inspiration was quite fickle. Coleridge struggled with this conundrum throughout his life, but felt that as a poet and as one who understood the importance of the creative imagination it was his right and responsibility to better mankind through his poetry. William Wordsworth was, along with Coleridge, another leader in the early Romantic Movement. Wordsworth believed that beauty and inspiration was to be found in the most rudimentary and common things, and was not something that could only be found in the high and lofty. It was the role of the poet to extract and explain that beauty. In his preface to “Lyrical Ballads” Wordsworth describes a poet as a man speaking to men, but ensures...
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...There is one lesson that seems to be common in a lot of stories. A lesson about how to live your life and to learn to do things for yourself. This lesson I saw in many of the readings/films we read/watched in class, some examples include: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle and, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These stories are all very different but share that same lesson of putting matters into your own hands. Trust no one or you will be hurt or put into danger. In Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, you can’t trust the government. The government also known as The Party, watches it’s citizens and will vaporize anyone just for doing something as simple as having an individual thought. In any society you should be able to trust the government. Maybe not completely but enough to know you won’t be killed just for thinking. “For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory” (Orwell 24)? This quote describes that the Party doesn’t keep records of the past, the records that are kept are constantly changed. People have so little memory of their past that Winston can’t even remember the beginning of the Party’s rule or his childhood. Another example about the government is even the children will turn you in for anything. The children are junior spies that could have you vaporized. “You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy...
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...politics are both generated by the same human craving for freedom from traditions and tyranny. The Romantic Movement revives the poetic ideals of love, beauty, emotion, imagination, romance and beauty of Nature. Keats celebrates beauty, Shelley adores love, Wordsworth glorifies nature Byron idealizes humanism, Scott revives the medieval lore and Coleridge amalgamates supernatural. As a result, the Romantic Movement revolts against the ideals, principles, intellectualism, aristocracy and technicality of Augustan period and smoothed the run of broad emotional gallery of substance relinquishing the rigidity of ‘form’. From sociological and political perspective it is not unfair to say that Romanticism and French Revolution are synonymous. In fact, Rousseau’s social theory roughly embodies in the familiar phrase of ‘the return to nature’ while the battle cry of French Revolution – liberty, equality and Fraternity – are influential on the youthful imagination of Romantic poets. Rousseau establishes the cult of the individual and championed the freedom of the human spirit. Rousseau’s sentimental influence touches Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge; his intellectual influence Godwin, and through Godwin Shelly. Byron and Shelley also share the champion of liberty and revolutionary idealism. A wonderful humanitarian...
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...Nature in Romanticism The Romantic Period came as a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and the rising emphasis on science and technology that the movement brought along. People traditionally living in the country now gathered into urbanized areas in hopes of employment as farmland gradually developed into factories (“Introduction”, Pages 5-7). As a result, cities became crowded and unsanitary as this sudden influx of population was not accounted for in city works. The lack of a citywide waste disposal system created an environment where litter dusted the streets and smog suffocated the populace (Wood). In the heavily industrialized cities of the time, flora and other greenery became a rare sight. The people of the late eighteenth century became rapidly disillusioned by their surroundings and yearned for the better days of the past where there was more space to breathe and distance themselves to find spiritual meaning in their life (Wood). The people sought for a refuge from the turmoil of society and found that coveted solitude in nature, which became idealized as a meditative sanctuary where people could go to reflect upon life or draw inspiration. Each writer of the Romantic period came upon different interpretations from their experiences with nature and these varying perspectives are reflected in their works. Pantheism was a very pervasive theme found in the works of the Romantic Period. This shared sentiment did not come as a surprise as nature became personal...
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...In the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the significance of the line on the equator is a defining point in which the climax takes place, and where interpretations of the text provides an understanding of the Mariner’s troubles. The line is a literal representation of the hero’s journey when he is passing back out again from his home to the South Pole. Without the line, one cannot see the dichotomy between the supernatural worlds, and the natural world, and the hero’s journey would be incomplete. The goal of this paper is to connect the significance of the setting of the line to major events that occur on the equator, and to the fate of the hero’s journey. Throughout the poem, the events occurring...
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...Christian Allegory in Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of an Ancient Mariner" is a lyrical ballad that seems to be more like a miniscule adventurous story. However, not only it is a ballad depicting the adventure of an old mariner who is cursed for the entirety of his life because he kills an albatross; even deeper than that, it is also a religious allegory that conveys a plethora of themes pertaining to Christianity. On one hand, if a person were to read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" simply as a tale at sea, the poem stands to be remarkable because of its rhyme of simplicity and easy flow. On the other hand, if one reads much deeper into the intricate details, symbolism, themes, and literary aspects, Coleridge will have produced a masterpiece in their eyes. Furthermore, a multitude of critics agree that there are several connotations that signify religion in this ballad; however, very few agree upon it being an allegory that mainly reflects the specific ideology of Christianity. Christianity preaches that life is basically a test by which we either pass and go to heaven, or fail and go to hell. Also, the human body is a victim of the human thought and action, which is represented by the soul. Therefore, in relation to the ballad, we can refer to the ship as the human body and the Mariner who steers the ship and leads it to destruction as the human soul. This ship led by the Mariner goes through a trial of storm and winds, but fails because...
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...Although Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the major literary figures of the Romantic movement in England, as a poet his reputation stands on primarily just three works, " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "," and "Kubla Khan." All three were written between 1797 and 1800; however, was not published until 1816. At that time, Coleridge subtitled it "A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment," and added a prefatory note explaining the unusual origin of the poem. This preface describes how Coleridge, after taking some opium as medication, grew drowsy while reading a passage about the court of Kubla Khan in Samuel Purchas's , a seventeenth-century travel book recounting the adventures of early explorers. Soon he fell into a deep sleep which lasted about three hours. During this period, he composed from 200 to 300 lines of poetry based on the vivid images in his dream. When he woke, he remembered the entire poem and immediately began to write it down. Unfortunately, however, a visitor interrupted him, distracting him for about an hour. When Coleridge returned to his writing, the vivid images had fled, leaving him with only vague recollections and the fifty-four lines of this poetic fragment. Many critics challenge the truthfulness of Coleridge's version of this story, feeling that the poem is complete as it stands and much too carefully crafted to be solely the result of a dream. However, whether whole or fragment, dream or not, the poem examines issues of vital importance to Coleridge: creativity...
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...Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a leader of the British Romantic movement, was born in 1772, in Devonshire, England. His father, a vicar of a parish and master of a grammar school, married twice and had fourteen children. The youngest child in the family, Coleridge was a student at his father's school and an avid reader. After his father died in 1781, Coleridge attended school in London. While in London, he befriended a classmate named Tom Evans, who introduced Coleridge to his family. Coleridge fell in love with Tom's older sister Mary. Coleridge's father had always wanted his son to be a clergyman. In 1791 Coleridge entered University of Cambridge and focused on a future in the Church of England. Coleridge's views, however, began to change over the course of his first year at Cambridge. While at Cambridge, Coleridge also accumulated a large debt, which his brothers eventually had to pay off. Financial problems continued to plague him throughout his life, and he constantly depended on the support of others. En route to Wales in June 1794, Coleridge met a student named Robert Southey. Striking an instant friendship, Coleridge postponed his trip for several weeks, and the men shared their philosophical ideas. Influenced by Plato's Republic, they constructed a vision of pantisocracy (equal government by all), which involved emigrating to the New World with ten other families to set up a commune on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Coleridge and Southey envisioned...
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...French woman Annette Vallon, who gave birth to their daughter in 1792. Due to lack of money, Wordsworth returned to England the following year. The circumstances of his return and behavior raised doubts about his wish to marry Annette. The Reign of Terror and the war between France and Britain prevented him from seeing Annette and his daughter, Caroline for several years. The separation left him with a sense of guilt that deepened his poetic inspiration and resulted in an important theme in his work of abandoned women. Wordsworth’s first poems, Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk, were published in 1793. The next year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the two of them grew very close. He was also reunited with his sister, Dorothy in 1794. Wordsworth and his sister moved to Somerset, a few miles away from Coleridge’s home. Wordsworth and Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads which came out in 1798, and...
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...symbolizes the innocence of children with birds. The birds are happy and they sing; mocking the children. ’Nest of birds’ symbolizes peace. The poem could be attributed to the life of a person-birth, life, death. Birth being the morning, life being the kids playing, the routines throughout the day, and men reminiscing, and lastly death being the end of the day when all goes dark, and quiet smothers the earth. “The Eolian Harp”, is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Inspired by the peaceful music being played by wind this poem was written for his wife, Sara, while visiting a house of his in Clevedon, Somersetshire. The theme in this poem is also peace, as well as innoncence. Peace comes to him while he ponders on the beauty of nature, and the wonder of God giving him everything around him including Sara. Coleridge personifies nature by comparing it to abstract nouns. For example, the white flower represents innocence. This abstract noun does exactly this: it gives life and character to nature. Coleridge uses unperceived nature to appeal to the human...
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...external and internal experience. Or as William Wordsworth would say that ‘[...] poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.’ The poet therefore assumed the role of the mediator between man and nature. The role of the poet was arguably in place to showcase beauty, truth and the endless possibilities that tradition had previously encased. Within this new enlightened form of expression in literature, the imagination had been elevated to a primary position in regards to poetic composition. The imagination allowed poets to see beyond surface value, to create an external world of existence. It permitted them to see the truth beyond powers of reason and rationality. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in particular was a poet fascinated with the potential and limitless possibilities of the imagination. Coleridge placed considerable emphasis upon the imagination as a focal element within his poetry. He categorised the imagination into two key sectors; the primary imagination and secondary imagination. As explained in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria: ‘The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and a repetition in the finite of the external act of creation of the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode its...
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...10/10/2015 Closet Drama: Definition & Examples | Study.com Log In (/academy/login.html) (/) Course Navigator Menu Next Lesson (/academy/lesson/novelsde㸷㐰nition-characteristics-examples.html) Closet Drama: De㸷㐰nition & Examples Chapter 3 (/academy/topic/literary-terms-tutoring-solution.html) / Lesson 18 (/academy/lesson/closet-drama-de啨喤nition-examples-quiz.html#transcriptHeader) Quiz Lesson (/academy/practice/quizworksheetcloset drama.html) Course Instructor: Debbie Notari The Closet Drama is a play that was meant to be read, but not performed. This art form is most associated with the Romantic period in literature, though Closet Dramas are still written today. In this lesson, we will look at the history of Closet Dramas and see a few examples. De㸷㐰nition Closet dramas are plays that have been written to be read, but not performed. Their value is in the play itself, not in the performance of the play. This art form was popularized in the Romantic era by such writers as Robert Browning and Goethe. Plays are written, generally, to be performed, and the playwright depends on the actors and actresses to bring his script to a higher level. With closet dramas, the playwright intends just the opposite. There will be no performance, and the play itself carries its own strength and value. In a nutshell, a closet drama is meant to be read, but not performed. History http://study.com/academy/lesson/closetdramadefinitionexamplesquiz...
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