Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
What is the form and the genre?
Who is the protagonist and why is he ‘ancient’ rather than ‘old’?
Find adjectives to describe his journey in general terms
What are the different stages in his journey?
Find animals, beast and creatures and think about what they might symbolise.
What do you think of the last three stanzas?
What is your interpretation of the poem?
List Romantic features from the poem
List Gothic features from the poem.

2. ‘Kubla Khan…’
What do we know about the birth / creation of the poem?
Is it really a fragment or not? Why is it emphasised in the title? What do you know about the Romantic taste for fragments? Can you bring parallels from the arts and architecture?
Who is the main character? What do we know about him? What has he done? What is the result of his work?
List manmade objects in the poem: What do they symbolise?
List natural objects in the poem: What do they symbolise?
What do you think about stanza 4? (Do not forget the check unfamiliar words.)
How does this poem compare to ‘I Wandered Lonely’?

3. ‘Frost at Midnight’
What is the dramatic situation (setting, characters, place and time)?
What is the difference between the childhood self of the speaker and his own child? What is this ‘other knowledge’?
What is ‘eternal language’ and what can the ‘secret ministry of frost’ be?
Think about the sleeping baby in terms of being a symbol: what could it symbolise?
What is the conclusion?

4. Biographia Literaria (1817)
Think about what Coleridge has to say in Biographia Literaria about the joint poetic venture of Lyrical Ballads and try to argue for or against the differences between his and Wordsworth’s poetic methods:
‘During the first year that Mr Wordsworth and I were neighbours, out conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination….The thought suggested itself…that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real….For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such, as will be found in every village and its vicinity….In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure [“obtain”] for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural. By awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.’ (Chapter 14)