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    Eng Ext1 - Romantic Period and Coleridge Quotes and Analysis

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    kat
    The document discusses the key ideas and themes of Romanticism as expressed in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". It focuses on Coleridge's depiction of nature as a source of inspiration and creativity linked to the imagination. Throughout the poem, nature imagery is used to reflect the poet's creative state and communion with nature allows insight into universal truths. The setting and symbols used convey exotic, mysterious elements that represent a vast array of human sensations and emotions.

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    Eng Ext1 - Romantic Period and Coleridge Quotes and Analysis

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    kat
    43 views3 pages
    The document discusses the key ideas and themes of Romanticism as expressed in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". It focuses on Coleridge's depiction of nature as a source of inspiration and creativity linked to the imagination. Throughout the poem, nature imagery is used to reflect the poet's creative state and communion with nature allows insight into universal truths. The setting and symbols used convey exotic, mysterious elements that represent a vast array of human sensations and emotions.

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    The document discusses the key ideas and themes of Romanticism as expressed in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". It focuses on Coleridge's depiction of nature as a source of inspiration and creativity linked to the imagination. Throughout the poem, nature imagery is used to reflect the poet's creative state and communion with nature allows insight into universal truths. The setting and symbols used convey exotic, mysterious elements that represent a vast array of human sensations and emotions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    43 views3 pages

    Eng Ext1 - Romantic Period and Coleridge Quotes and Analysis

    Uploaded by

    kat
    The document discusses the key ideas and themes of Romanticism as expressed in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan". It focuses on Coleridge's depiction of nature as a source of inspiration and creativity linked to the imagination. Throughout the poem, nature imagery is used to reflect the poet's creative state and communion with nature allows insight into universal truths. The setting and symbols used convey exotic, mysterious elements that represent a vast array of human sensations and emotions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    The Romantic Period and Coleridge

    The ​Romantic Period was a reaction against ‘reason’ in favour of sentiment​. Imagination
    (both intuitive and emotional) was used to reveal the truth. A penetration beyond physical reality,
    an emotional response to Nature, viewed as a source of order, knowledge and stability. They
    were interested in the transcendent and the sublime emotions - the passage requiring the
    ‘suspension of disbelief’, whereby one must let go of the rational world and enter into the
    imaginative journey.

    The movement ​occurred between the ​1790s and 1830s as a reaction against the Neo-Classicist
    poets who were overwhelmingly concerned with reason and common sense, structure, and logic.
    The work of the Romantics is intensely personal and featured a romantic appreciation of natural
    beauty. Works that were not realistic but fanciful, where ​things were treated freely and the
    imagination was pursued​. An emotion towards nature, philosophy, and God. Man and Nature are
    seen to be in harmony. Nature was seen to make sense of life and be a moral guide. Natural
    objects = spiritual meaning.

    The movement was a reaction against reindustrialisation and its resultant urbanisation. Nature
    was seen as a harmonious setting for human endeavour. The ​external world of Nature​, the
    archetypal images of rivers, mountains, trees, plants, sky, wind, seasons, night and day, the
    village, and the out of doors became the focus of writers like Coleridge. The reverence for the
    natural realm as a source of meaning became increasingly threatened as scientific rationalism
    became popular, as they sought to conquer Nature rather than revere it.

    The mechanistic view was replaced by the human capacity to transcend their physical state
    through an act of imagination. The imagination was the faculty of the human soul. The
    Romantics did not see things factually and objectively. Instead, they interpreted their creative
    expression and the world of the imagination fascinated them. The search for the complete
    self-comprising intelligence, senses and emotions. ​Sensual poetry that awakens an emotional
    response in both the poet and the responder. The text becomes an aesthetic and philosophical
    conversation. Through kenosis (self-emptying) the poet attempts to share his ideas about the
    Natural world.

    Coleridge has been said to have a ​pantheist (God is in all Nature and therefore to commune
    with Nature is to commune with God) reverence for the earth and universe. He actually
    tried to create a commune-like community; a pantisocracy (equal rule by all), but sadly it failed.
    Nature, in Coleridge’s work, is the supreme source of the eternal, universal truths of existence. It
    is the embodiment and the manifestation of the ‘organic’ and the harmonised. He tried ‘to give
    the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural,
    by awakening the mind from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loneliness and the
    wonders of the world around us. He attempts to recreate places through expansion and
    contraction. He expands his conversation in his poems from a particular place and time to other
    times and places and then contracts to start, but with new insights, fresh thoughts gained on the
    way.

    The Imagination is the way the individual orders experience, intrusted knowledge, perceived
    truth and created a sense of unity allows the individual to substantiate contact with the natural
    world/realm. The artist’s mind is seen as a creative power that is capable of understanding the
    Platonic (spiritual) ‘ideal’ forms, or truths, through communion with nature. Coleridge believed
    in two types of Imagination. T​he Primary Imagination is an involuntary process that takes
    unconnected segments of experience and moulds them into new wholes. The Secondary
    Imagination enables the poet/artist/philosopher to remould these new wholes into a unity that
    involves the conscience. ​His odyssey takes the reader on an odyssey of their own. The responder
    identifies with the humanising elements of his poems, empathy is created. ​The fear of solipsism
    (that only you exist and the rest is part of your own consciousness), drove Coleridge to share his
    reverence for Nature.

    Romanticism in ​Kubla Khan


    A central figure/protagonist in communion with Nature
    - Throughout the poem Nature is inextricably linked to creation and inspiration.
    Creation and inspiration are linked to imagination and imagination is linked to man
    - Nature imagery abounds throughout the poem (deep chasm, sunless sea caves of
    ice etc.)
    - The romantic chasm setting as a reflection of the poets creative state
    - Nature's ​awesome​ ​beauty ​and ​power ​is made evident
    - nature as teacher, as a source of wisdom for man, is made evident.
    A focus on the central figure/protagonist’s interior journey and the moral
    development of the self
    - Introspective, relf-reflexive figure, Imagination as a pathway to transformation
    - Moral development includes humility, spiritual appreciation
    - The ‘other-worldly’ gothic imagery used to conclude the poem helps to illustrate
    the poet’s developed understanding of the ‘worldly’
    - Awareness (and acceptance of) human frailty
    - Wisdom is obtained/ achieved via an emotional, metaphysical journey
    - Renewed appreciation of inspiration
    A celebration of emotionalism
    - A range of emotions are represented: desire, fear, agner, love, regret, despondency,
    passion, delight.
    - Man (humanity) is clearly represented as an emotional being.
    - The emotive response, rather than reason, provides the pathway to understanding.
    An interconnection between the metaphysical and the physical world
    - ‘Alph’​ the sacred river
    - A vision
    - Ancient forests
    - Mount Abora
    - The ‘dream’
    The use of exotic, strange, dramatic or mysterious settings
    - Xanadu with its walls and towers and Ancient forests
    - Alph, the sacred river, r​ unning through​ caverns measureless to man down to a
    lifeless ocean
    - the deep romantic chasm -​ given a distinctly ​gothic​ flavour​: a savage place…
    waning moon … haunted … demon-lover… turmoil.
    - The sunny domes with caves of ice
    - Mount Abora
    - Exotic and gothic references that advocate the vast array of sensations -​ sublime
    A reliance on symbolism or myth within the narrative structure
    - xanadu (utopian setting)
    - kubla khan(man of power, control)
    - alph, the sacred river (source of inspiration
    - caverns measureless to man (the subconscious)
    - The ability for our subconscious to allow us to transcend physical
    boundaries and limits and travel beyond.
    - Mount Abora (point of connection between the physical and metaphysical realms)
    - the sunless sea (the speaker’s creative state)
    - Honey-dew / the milk of Paradise (the food of the Gods)
    - The prophecy of war, suggesting a power struggle - symbols references to myth
    Experimentation with form
    - a ‘fragment’ : represented as an imaginative glimpse / insight. Suggests
    incompletion; and ongoing process
    - Dreamscape: episodic, vivid imagery; lacking continuous flow; ​a representation
    of imaginative energy​.

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