Coleridge poetry... (1 Viewer)

[zelda]

i need some help with This lime tree bower my prison and Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge. I have a vague idea about what both of them is about..so if anyone has any summaries, notes or techniques that relate to imaginative journeys would be great so i can get a better idea on what its about.

thanks for your help.

 

[KarmaKitten]

heh poor kid, im doing coleridge as well, so far frost at midnight is my favourite, I cant stand kubla khan

 

[Tusitula]

nah nah the best is "the rime of the ancient mariner" its like freakin 150 verses or something.

 

[jpg]

hey im doing coleridges poems aswell..they are pretty hard to interpret. About Kubla Khan, my teacher was telling us that coleridge was under the influence of opium at the time he wrote the poem. I guess you could relate it to imaginative journeys in that sense. Apparently, he was in a dream-like state up till line 36 and then he was straight when he wrote line 37 and onwards, thats why the poem doesnt really link together. He also writes about mystical places such as xanadu and mt abora. The poem is coleridges imaginative interpretation of his paradise. i dunno if thats any help but yeh.

 

[zelda]

yeah..my teacher explained about that too...but thanks.

 

[billieroseanna]

I hate Kubla as well..

One important thing to refer to is how he was a Romantic poet, and Romanticism set a high value on beauty and feeling, on youthful passion and on nostalgia and recollection.

I think the easiest way to talk about his poems is to examine the value of the imaginary journeys he takes - what has he learnt, or taught the responder, at the end of it? For example with Lime Tree he tells you how there is beauty (ie. God - link to pantheism) in all nature and that sometimes it's a positive thing to be "bereft of promised good" - deprived of what we want or expect - because it makes us contemplate and appreciate them more.

 

[lethal kangaroo]

The thing our teacher has told us over and over again is that we should put the poems into context- but the thing is the life of Coleridge is one of the most fiercly debated things in literary history!!
He was only 25 when he wrote Kubla, Lime Tree, Mariner and Frost- according to most sources this is several years BEFORE he was addicted to Opium.
One thing agreed on is that Coleridge was notorius for making up things about his writing process, saying different things at different times and being increadibly self depreciating.
Well, I think they only thing I'm aiding here is the spread of confusion- so I'll bugger off now.