An Overview of Coleridge's Philosophy of Poetry and Some Ideas to Consider for "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," and "Frost at Midnight"

Coleridge's Brief Bio

b. 1772 in small town in Devonshire but sent to school in London on death of father

Precocious and lonely schoolboy (read Charles Lamb's recollections)

Attended Cambrige U but did not finish (strong scholar but unstimulated by University life)

Enlisted in Light Dragoons (cavalry) -- retrieved by brothers

1794 Met Robert Southey (poet and radical like himself)

Planned "Pantisocracy" in America -- didn't happen -- married Sara Fricker, sister of Southey's fiancee (mistake)

1795 Met Wordsworth  (sees WW as huge talent; many see STC as midwife of WW and a much more expansive genius, undercut only by his own problems)

1795 WW and DW moved to Alfoxden; 1798 published LB; traveled to Germany; STC attended University and studied German philosophy

1800 on STC struggles with addiction to laudanum

1804-6 Malta to recuperate (doesn't work)

Estranged from wife, horrible nightmares, ruined health; 1810 break with Wordsworth

Still gives public lectures, publishes essays etc.

1818 James Gillman, physician, helps STC manage opium problem; STC lives with Gillmans till death in 1834 and has relatively happy older age; makes up with WW, wife, etc. 

Key Concepts to Understand in Coleridge's Philosophy of Poetry (see Biographia Literaria for more detail)

Imagination (primary and secondary) vs. Fancy

    Imagination is the human analogy to the Creation (creation whose origins are in the creator's consciousness)
    Fancy is simply playing with ready-made counters  (concept of associationism - ideas come from outside inc. from empirical reality)

Coleridge's theory of mind is anti-associationist: true genius is creation from within without external stimulus

"the poetic genius itself...sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet's own mind"

A key phrase for the reader's experience, now usually used in connection with fiction rather than poetry:

 "the willing suspension of disbelief"

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 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 of 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.

Coleridge's contributions were to have  included "Christabel" but he didn't finish

Coleridge's response to the Preface: 

objections to the phrase "language of real life"

"The best part of human language...is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.  It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated man"

"The Language of Milton as Much the Language of Real Life, Yea, Incomparably More so than that of the Cottager"

"Christabel"

A narrative poem that despite the promise  of greater certainty than the lyric is filled with gaps and opacities!
Readers tend to get very hung up on a fixed, sort of superstitious, set of decodings for the poem: x symbolizes this Christian thing, weakness crossing the threshold means that Geraldine is not human, the owl crying indicates death, etc…..like reading a "dream book" to solve the interpretive problem of the poem. The poem itself dramatizes interpretive problems! Sir Leoline, for example, is a terrible misreader of people, situations, and symbolic dreams like the one Bracy the Bard has.

Readers tend to want to get really specific answers to a lot of questions:
(let's make a list)

who is G talking to in lines 205-206 and lines 211-213?
 

`Off, wandering mother ! Peak and pine !
I have power to bid thee flee....
`Off, woman, off ! this hour is mine--
Though thou her guardian spirit be,
Off, woman. off ! 'tis given to me.'

what specifically does Christabel see when she sees Geraldine unclothe her breast and side?

Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold ! her bosom, and half her side-- --
A sight to dream of, not to tell !
O shield her ! shield sweet Christabel !

what kind of sin does Christabel fear she has committed?
 

`Sure I have sinn'd !' said Christabel,
`Now heaven be praised if all be well !'
And in low faltering tones, yet sweet,
Did she the lofty lady greet
With such perplexity of mind
As dreams too lively leave behind.

So quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed
Her maiden limbs, and having prayed
That He, who on the cross did groan,
Might wash away her sins unknown...
 

How reliable is Geraldine's story?

Five warriors seized me yestermorn,
Me, even me, a maid forlorn :
They choked my cries with force and fright,
And tied me on a palfrey white.
The palfrey was as fleet as wind,
And they rode furiously behind.
They spurred amain, their steeds were white :
And once we crossed the shade of night.
As sure as Heaven shall rescue me,
I have no thought what men they be ;
Nor do I know how long it is
(For I have lain entranced, I wis)
Since one, the tallest of the five,
Took me from the palfrey's back,
A weary woman, scarce alive.
Some muttered words his comrades spoke :
He placed me underneath this oak ;
He swore they would return with haste ;

Is G a witch or a serpent? Is she Satan?

What I'd like to ask you to do is to look at this questions somewhat differently and more generally, not as opportunities for decoding specific codes and then leaving it at that-solve the puzzle-but rather to ask some broader questions that lead us to imagery and diction, not generalized knowledge and assumptions, as evidence: i.e. let's ask questions that we can explore-not "solve" in terms of the evidence in the poem.

For example:

What is the major tension in the plot of this poem? what produces it?

What thematically is it about? how can you tell?

What is significant about the scene of seeing: what sets it up in suspense? why doesn't c. let US see? not knowing, what does it "feel like" and what creates that feeling?

If G is a source of "harm," can we be more specific about the kind of harm she seems to represent?

What is the human dynamics of the scene LIKE (not what is it exactly) and what creates that likeness? To what extent is it historically particular?

what are the shifting relationships between the women? consider the ways in which the mother-child bond, for example, is mimicked in several places.

what about G and L, L and C?

What is the significance of the external world in this poem: the woods, the castle, the chamber? not "what do they really mean," but what meanings do they come to have in the poem?

Characterization: how is Geraldine described and how does she change?
Same with Christabel.
How about Leoline?

What is the deal with the Bard?

what phrases seem allusive?
what realms of detail are built-what connects with what?

what is repeated or reiterated until it accumlulates significance?

what is the position of Christianity in this poem? *again, this does not mean decoding for Christ references or making C a Christ figure…

Medievalism is a strong current in Romantic and Victorian poetry-does this remind you of anything you read in anglo-saxon or medieval lit?

themes:

hospitality…and unexpected problems with it for the guest or the host
a sense of the supernatural and how good Christians negotiate with it (Gawain's wearing of the lady's girdle as a way of hedging his bets; in this poem, the problem belongs to Christabel and perhaps to Bracy, both of whom are clear about sensing danger (although not quite as clear as the mastiff bitch) but who aren't sure of how to really enact protection (Christabel asks for protection from Christ and Mary-indicating that this is a Catholic country-and also from her own mother, who seems to have a similar protective status as mother Mary-but it doesn't work. Bracy asks not to leave, but Leoline in his interpretive blunder thinks that everything is fine now that they have protected Geraldine---in a classic horror plot, the danger you thought was outside is now inside, because you have invited it through your doorway, treated it with hospitality (Dracula).

the relative status of spirituality, religion, and supernatural is being worked out here but the resolution is unclear, more so of course because the poem isn't finished.

The fragment is a characteristically Coleridge move: to the extent that it becomes central to his poetics as we experience them, and in some ways, seen from our vantage point, makes him seem very modern (and darewesay postmodern)-as in Eliot, "these fragments I have shored against my ruin." Rather than think about what these poems could have been, it's engaging to ignore Coleridge's apologies and explanations and just think of that as a way of giving them different status-

1) or else, think of the poems AS WHOLE and work from there. Similarly, taking "Kubla Khan" as a poem written by an opium addict seriously limits what we can say about it.

Kubla Khan

Interpretations of this vary! Try this for a beginning: consider it a contribution to the ongoing development of theories about what poets are like, poetry  (composing it--and possibly reading it too) as "altered states" and the impact of those altered and even antisocial states on the social world

(See WW's Preface, Keats's letters, and, for an alternate and very innovative example, Anna Letitia Barbauld's "Washing-Day")

(Get volunteer to draw the landscape; show clip from Pandaemonium)

Like Geraldine's bosom in "Christabel," esp. as unclarified in the fragment, an ineffable landscape: it can barely be visualized because it doesn't exist in external reality as much as in the imagination?

"Frost at Midnight" - a "conversation poem" (Coleridge's coinage, and the stimulus for "Tintern Abbey")

(show clip from Pandaemonium)

Like WW's poetry, an encounter with the external world that sparks a journey inward and eventually outward again

Geoffrey Hartman's frame for thinking about the Romantic dynamic:

Nature reminds us of the impossible failure of returning to an unconscious state of union with world-in our longing for it we are reminded of this impossible gap-the external weorld doesn't let us in--thus we turn away from nature, people, and into our selves, where we find what we sought-inside not outside. Then we return to natural world renewed-nature is no longer our guide, but is integrated with imagination (experience of transcendence-related to Emerson's transcendent eyeball perceiving the universe in "Nature"-E was deeply influenced by Coleridge, whom he met in the 1830s).

The mind must pass through a stage in which imagination separates the poet from everything else (immediacy, humans, remembered scenes) and becomes pure consciousness (death-in-life, a sense of self-division, a middle-realm, a liminal space-an altered state)-and then returns to the world again