Romantic Literature Final
Lyrical Ballads:
The Eolian Harp by Coleridge (522-26)
Tensions: poetic inspiration (wind blowing through him, exotic, wild, unknown) vs. constraints (wife, domestic home life)
Coleridge is worried that this will be the last poem he writes, he feels he has lost his poetic inspiration.
Alliteration of sounds as if wind is blowing.
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison by Coleridge (545-57)
Similar to Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. Travels in memory with his friends in beautiful natural setting. (So it becomes a new fond memory rather than a prison as he first fears). One can draw on and appreciate nature, as it serves as inspiration and memory. His detailed memory creates beautiful images in his mind. Coleridge "commands" nature to come together and inspire friend Charles as it did him. He wants his friend to feel the same of nature as he does. His memory sooths him, as if here were there with them.
Wordsworth on Helvellyn
English: Samuel Taylor Coleridge at age 42. Franç...
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeNature/God never leaves us, its all around us. Even the darkness of the rook in nature holds the power to inspire.
Kubla Khan by Coleridge (545)
Very fragmented (incomplete, a romantic theme). Language cannot capture the true experience. The poem is not complete; it was an opium induced dream that was interrupted by a businessman at the door. Coleridge was frustrated because he couldn't get back to this dream. He tries to capture this in his poem. Very supernatural and fantastical (almost unbelievable)
Dejection: An Ode by Coleridge (563)
This is a response to Wordsworth's Intimations Ode:
Without imagination, a poet is useless. He has lost his imagination and he wants to get back to that. His nature is a deadly storm, dark, ominous, as opposed to Wordsworth's happy descriptions of nature. Coleridge seems almost angry, he really experiences melancholy and knows its effects as to...