LIT 102

The Survey of English and American Literature

The Life and Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 the son of a clergyman in Ottery St Mary, Devon. His career as a poet and
writer was established after he befriended Wordsworth and together, they produced Lyrical Ballads in 1798.
For most of his adult life he suffered through addiction to laudanum and opium. His most famous works – 'The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner', 'Kubla Khan' and 'Christabel' – all featured supernatural themes and exotic images, perhaps
affected by his use of the drugs.
Coleridge was as much a prose and theoretical writer as he was a poet, as revealed in his major work, Biographia
Literaria, published in 1817. Coleridge's legacy has been tainted with accusations of plagiarism, both in his poetry and
critical essays. He also had a propensity for leaving projects unfinished and suffered from large debts. But such was
the originality of his early work, that his place and influence within the Romantic period is undisputed.

 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English literary critic, poet, theologian, and philosopher. Along with his friend
William Words worth, he founded the Romantic Movement. He was also a member of Lake Poets.
 He is also known for his well-known works such as Kubla Khans, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and his
critical work Biographia Literaria. He wrote highly influential works, particularly his works on William
Shakespeare. He also attempted to introduce the philosophy of German Idealist to the English culture.
 Notable Works: (1798) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, (1816) Christabel, (1816) The dreamlike poem Kubla
Khan, (1817) Biographia Literaria
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Writing Style

 The writing style of Coleridge is satisfying. The events in his poems are not unconnected like dreams or
hallucinations. Samuel also introduced supernatural elements in his poetry. Besides this, he also introduces the
willing suspension of disbelief. He employed magic realism, and elements of medievalism are also present.
 As a matter of fact, Coleridge uses a “conversational style” in his poems. The use of conversational style in poetry
is a practice to keep up with the ideals of the Romantic Movement, which states that poetry should be written
about and for common readers. The poems of Coleridge are most of the time conversations between Coleridge and
an unseen and unknown listener.
Major Themes of Coleridge’s Works

 The Metamorphic Power of the Imagination

According to Coleridge, strong and unpleasant circumstances can be overcome by active and strong
imagination. Most of his poems are driven by imagination or escape to the imaginary world. The Speaker in the
poem temporarily abandons the real world and escapes to the world of completely new and fabricated experience.
 The Relationship of Philosophy, Piety, and Poetry
With the help of poetry, Coleridge explores the contradictory and conflicting issues of religious piety and
philosophy. Several critics viewed that their interest in philosophy by Coleridge was mainly because of his
struggle to comprehend intellectual impulses and imagination that he used in his poetry.
 The Growth of the Individual and Nature
Coleridge and other Romantics admired the imaginative soul of the youth. They find images in nature to
describe the imaginative soul of youth.
Motifs
 Conversation Poems
Coleridge wanted to mimic the patterns and cadences of everyday speech in his poetry. Many of his poems
openly address a single figure—the speaker’s wife, son, friend, and so on—who listens silently to the simple,
straightforward language of the speaker.

 Delight in the Natural World

 Like the other romantics, Coleridge worshiped nature and recognized poetry’s capacity to describe the beauty
of the natural world. Nearly all of Coleridge’s poems express respect for and delight in natural beauty.
 Prayer
Although Coleridge’s prose reveals more of his religious philosophizing than his poetry, God, Christianity,
and the act of prayer appear in some form in nearly all of his poems.

Symbols
 The Sun
Coleridge believed that symbolic language was the only acceptable way of expressing deep religious truths
and consistently employed the sun as a symbol of God.
 The Moon
Like the sun, the moon often symbolizes God, but the moon has more positive connotations than the sun.
 Dreams and Dreaming
Coleridge explores dreams and dreaming in his poetry to communicate the power of the imagination, as well
as the inaccessible clarity of vision.

Main Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s

 1798 - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the first poem of the collection Lyrical Ballads;
 1816 - Christabel, an unfinished narrative poem;
 1816 - the dreamlike poem Kubla Khan, composed under the influence of opium;
 1817 - Biographia Literaria, a classic text of literary criticism and autobiography.
Coleridge’s Works Descriptions
 Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the world's most significant treatises on the nature of
poetry and the poet. Coleridge gave the Romantic movement its philosophy in his greatest prose work, The
Biographia Literaria. Biographia Literaria includes some valuable considerations of the philosophy of Kant, Fichte
and Schelling as well.
 Christabel (1797-1800) is an unfinished Gothic ballad. Coleridge wrote its flawless first part in 1797 while the
second part in 1800 which is not as effective as the first one. Christabel is the third of the famous ‘Mystery
Poems’ of Coleridge. The supernatural atmosphere of the poem represents the eternal conflict between the forces
of good and evil as personified in the innocent heroine Christabel and in the snake woman Geraldine.
The Rime of Ancient Mariner
Background of the Poem
 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem
by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797-1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition
of Lyrical Ballads.
Theme of the Poem
 Sin, survival, and death are the major themes of this poem. The rime of the ancient mariner is a narrative
poem in the sense of an allegory and deals with the idea of sin and its penalty. The poem focuses on the
Mariner and the incident of his killing an Albatross. The mariner commits the ultimate crime of murder and
must thus suffer, and so he does.
Literary Devices
 Simile- is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between the objects that are different
using 'as' or 'like'
 Metaphor - It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between the objects that are
different.
 Personification - is when you give an object or animal human behaviors. The use of personification aids the
author's purpose that human life should never be held to a higher standard than any other living being.
Elements of Poetry Present in the Poem
 Structure
The poem is divided into seven parts with each part having more than ten stanzas. The poem has a total of 143
stanzas.

 Ballad Verse
 Since the poem tells a story and is published in an anthology titled "Lyrical Ballads, it comes as no surprise
that the poem uses ballad verse.
 Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme is very typical of the ballad verse as 'abab’
 Rhythm
The rhythm is consistent with ballad verses lines like the first and third lines are iambic tetrameter (four
metrical feet), the second and fourth lines iambic trimeter (three metrical feet).
Symbolism and Allegory
 Albatross were seen by sailors as omens of good luck. With the Mariner's killing of the bird, the dead
albatross, also, can be read more generally as a mark of sin.
 The Gaze Symbolizes the supernatural and communication without speech.
 The Sun and Moon symbolize the competing influences on the Mariner's journey and on the world. The sun
is associated with blood, heat, dryness, and the thirst that ultimately kills the Sailors. The moon, as it is
responsible for shaping the tides, symbolizes the supernatural and divine influences on nature.
Characters
 Wedding Guest - The Wedding Guest is a man attending his kinsman's wedding.
 Mariner - The Mariner is an old sailor.
 Albatross - The Albatross is a sea bird that the Mariner kills.
 Life-in-Death - Life-in-Death is a woman aboard the ghost ship.
 First Voice - The First Voice is a voice that the Mariner overhears.
 Second Voice - The Second Voice is a voice that the Mariner overhears.
 Pilot - The Pilot is a man who rescues the Mariner in the harbor.
 Pilot's Boy - The Pilot's Boy is his son, also in the boat with the Pilot when he rescues the Mariner.
 Hermit - The Hermit is a holy man who is also in the boat with the Pilot.

Conclusion
‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner's Coleridge's chief contribution to the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, and
undoubtedly is one of the world's true masterpieces.
Although the poem introduces the reader to a supernatural realm, with a spectre-ship, the overhanging curse of
the Albatross, a crew of dead men, the Polar Spirit. and the manic breeze, it nonetheless manages to create a sense of
absolute reality regarding these manifest irrationalities.

“Kubla Khan or A Vision in Dream: A Fragment”

(By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Summary
Kubla Khan was written in 1798 but not published until 1816. It was then issued in a pamphlet containing
Christabel and The Pains of Sleep. It is one of those three poems which have made Coleridge, one of the greatest poets
of England, the other two being The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel.
Coleridge himself describes this poem as the fragment of a dream, a vision seen perhaps under the influence
of opium-which he saw when he had fallen asleep after reading the account of Kubla Khan in an old book of travels
written by Purchas. Kubla Khan is a brilliant achievement in the field of supernatural poetry.
Coleridge beautifully imagined and skillfully described what he had imagined about a palace about which he
had read. He has achieved remarkable success in making the description lively and complete. He writes as if he has
seen it before him.
The poem begins with the description of the kingdom of Kubla Khan. The action takes place in the unknown
Xanadu (a mythical city). Kubla Khan was the powerful ruler who could create his pleasure dome by a mere order.
Alpha was the sacred river that passed through Xanadu. It followed through the measureless caverns (caves) to the
sunless sea. There were gardens in which streams were following in a zigzag manner. The gardens had many flowers
with sweet smells and the forests had many spots of greenery. The poet gives a beautiful description of the remote and
distant land cape of Xanadu.

Main Themes
 The power of the imagination: Coleridge’s poem is both a feat of the imagination and an allegory for the
imagination’s dynamic movements.
 The coexistence of contraries: Coleridge creates tension and mystery by presenting contrary realities together.
  The limits of creativity: The poem suggests that human creativity can never be as boundless as that of nature
itself.
Figurative Language
 Alliteration- use of the same beginning consonant sound
Ex: “sunless sea” (line 5), “sunny spots” (line 11)
 Personification- giving human characteristics to inhuman objects
Ex: “a savage place! as holy and enchanted” (line 14), “beneath a waning moon” (line 15), “as if this earth in
fast thick pants were breathing” (line 18)
 Smiles- a comparison using like or as
Ex: “And here were forests ancient as the hills” (line 10), “huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail” (line
21)
 Metaphor- a direct comparison
Ex: “down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!” (line13)
Imagery
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses descriptive imagery to make the reader picture this great utopia, the emperor’s
palace, but with disturbing thoughts, such that it was “haunted by [a] woman wailing for her demon lover!”
(15-16).
 He describes in great detail a scared river that flows through a canyon. Kubla Khan himself was seen listening
to the noisy river and thinking about war.

Symbolism
 The River: The speaker mentions the river in over half the poem, the descriptions on how powerful it is draws
us to the conclusion that the main image is about the excitement and power of the Earth’s natural wonders.
 The Ocean: The ocean is described as dark, gloomy and mysterious. It seems to be a dead-end and an
unknown open space. It could possibly be seen as an underworld type environment when compared to the lush
utopia also described.
 Woman and Demon Lover: The description of the woman wailing for her lover who is also a demon
describes supernatural power and romance but it can also be related to excitement.
Poetics Devices
 Rhyme Scheme: It has rhyme either back-to-back or every other line.
Ex: “round” & “ground”, “slanted” & “enchanted”, “hail” &” flail”
 Alliteration: It has alliteration within each stanza.
Ex: “sunless sea”, “woman wailing”, “mazy motion”, “deep delight”
 Cacophony: Throughout the poem there are several lines that rhyme but are broken up by words that don’t
rhyme after a few lines so it breaks the rhythm of the poem.
Ex. “But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted”
 Repetition: In this poem repetition is used with certain words that sounds the same and have the same
ending.
Ex: “seething”, breathing”, “rebounding”, “prophesying”, “dancing”, “waning”, “lifeless”,
“measureless”, “ceaseless”
Conclusion
The writer of the poem made his point very fast in the beginning, getting right to it. He started out real
dramatic in his descriptions. He repeats himself plenty of times for dramatic effect; as if he were telling a story to a
crowd or preaching to an audience. He never lets his energy drop throughout the poem.
The fact that most of the poem rhymed and parts of it didn’t made the flow off so it matched with his mood
and the dark them of the poem. Elements the author used the most were repetition and imagery. These elements were
effective because it makes a more vivid vision for the reader.
Prepared by:

Willa Mae P. Mongcal , BSED English 2