Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Peter Vandyke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,1795. London, National Portrait Gallery.

2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1. Life • Born in Devonshire in 1772. • Studiedat Christ’s Hospital School in London, and then in Cambridge, but never graduated. • Influenced by French revolutionary ideals, he planned with a friend a utopian commune-like society in Pennsylvania. This project came to nothing. In 1794 he married his friend’s sister. Christ’s Hospital School

3. To alleviate the pains caused by chronic rheumatism the doctors prescribed him opium and he developed a growing addiction to this drug, which plagued him until his death in 1834. • In 1797 he met William Wordsworth and in 1799 he moved to the Lake District. These were the years of their fruitful artisticcollaboration. • Between 1804 and 1806 he spent a period of solitude and despair in Malta, struggling against his addiction. When he returned to England, he left poetry and he dedicated himself to literary criticism and wrote Biographia Literaria, where he explained his views about poetry. • . Christ’s Hospital School

4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 2. Main works 1798The Rime of the AncientMariner, 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. Hand-written page from Kubla Khan

5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 3. Coleridge’s poetry • Content  Extraordinary, supernatural events. • Aim To give them a “semblance of truth”. • Style  Archaic language rich in sound devices, but the vocabulary is simple and accessible to everybody. • Main interest The creative power of imagination.

6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 4. Coleridge’s imagination • It is the human power to give a certain shape to the objects perceived through the senses • Everybody has this power and it uses it unconsciously Imagination Primary Secondary Poetic faculty, which not only gives shape and order to a given world, but builds new realities. Therefore, art does not reproduce reality, but it creates a new word, which is superior to the real world He was a master in depicting fantastic scenes and hallucinating atmospheres which looked real. For this faculty, the poetis a sort of superhuman being

7. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 5. Coleridge’s nature Nature Unlike Wordsworth, it is not a moral guide or a source of consolation. He is not Pantheist, he has a strong Christian faith Nature represents the awareness of the presence of the ideal in the real. In Nature God manifests himself, both in natural elements – like storms, winds, the moon,- and in supernatural creatures – sea snakes, angels,.. – which are as real as material things, although ordinary men cannot see them . Poetry helps man to re-establish the original harmony between man and nature in order to re-discover God and re-conciliate man with God

8. First and Second Romantic Generation Both Wordsworth and Coleridge’s lives were characterised by a restless youth and a short period of political radicalism, followed by a deep disillusionment due to the excesses of the Terror. When their revolutionary ideals collapsed, they turned to poetry to realise a sort of literary revolution. Their poetical ideas were an extension of the democratic principals of the French Revolution to literature: • Poetry had to change people’s hearts and awake them ‘ from the lethargy of custom’, thanks to the use of imagination • Poetry was to be understood by everybody The poets of the Second Romantic Generation – Byron, P.B.Shelley and Keats – did not witness French Revolution and Terror, but the reactionary policies of the Holy Alliance. They remained political rebels throughout their (short) lives, opposing all established institutions and refusing the political and social values of the time. They carried the romantic ideals to extremes: • Poetry, whose essence was imagination, was seen as something divine, a creative power, capable both to ‘make immortal what is best and beautiful in the world’ and to change the world

9. the poet himself had extraordinary powers, he was a visionary, who could see ‘into the life of things’ , and a creator of a new world Their literary revolution was successful: In England, their works were appreciated during life, Wordsworth was made Poete Laureated and Coleridge became an influencial literary critic. • they thought of themselves as exceptional beings and suffered from excessive egocentrism and individualism. A typical attitude of these poets is alienation from society and escapism, i.e. refuge in an alternative world as surrogate • To express their powerful feelings they returned to a more elevated poetic diction, using a great variety of metres, a wide vocabulary and figures of speech. In contrast with the First Romantics, they turned to classical models and idealized the modes of the ‘harmonious, open-minded and universal Mediterranean South’ During life, Byron and Shelley did not get recognition in their home country, because of their opposing ideals and scandalous behaviour, but in Europe they were hailed as great poets and champions of liberty