Prompts for Thursday
1. "Kubla Khan" is a good example of something we have been discussing about poetry, namely that it is not prose and therefore cannot be paraphrased. It is difficult to say what the poem is “about”; in a sense, any external "meaning" we come up with for "Kubla Khan" is probably much less important than the effect the poem has upon us as we read it. Read the poem out loud a few times. Focus on its sounds and its rhythms. What is your biological response to it? What do you feel? What do you envision? Try, at least the first time you read it, to immerse yourself in its sonic and rhythmic properties instead of analyzing "what it means." Then write about your response.
2. Let’s assume that the speaker of “Frost at Midnight” is Coleridge himself. How did his childhood differ from Wordsworth’s? Relatedly, how do the wishes he offers for his child compare to those W. Wordsworth offers for D. Wordsworth at the end of “Tintern Abbey”?
3. In his Biographia Literaria (474-88), Coleridge writes that he and Wordsworth, when planning Lyrical Ballads, decided that Coleridge's part in the volume "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" (478). What part of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" can be called “supernatural”? What part of our “inward nature” does the “supernatural” represent, and what does it mean if we say that the poem requires a "willing suspension of disbelief"?
4. During this period, much of popular literature was “gothic” in nature. Gothic literature has sometimes been described as a blend of romance and horror. The reader’s pleasure in reading it comes from experiencing an entertaining fear, often caused by ghosts, demons, evil, darkness, madness, torture, etc. Can "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" be called a gothic poem?
5. In his Lectures on Shakespeare Coleridge argues that there is a difference between poetry written in "mechanic form" and that written in "organic form" (see pages 487-8). A poem is "mechanic," according to Coleridge, "when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material;--as when to a wet mass of clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it develops itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form." He goes on to argue that just as Nature is "inexhaustable," so are its forms. I would like for you to look for places in Coleridge’s poetry where the form seems organic in this way, answering the demands of the subject matter, as opposed to predetermined. Discuss what it is about the poem's material that is causing the form to change. In other words, how is the form of the poem changing to meet the needs of its material?
6. The margin notes in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” are Coleridge’s. They were not written by the editors of our anthology. Did you find Coleridge's marginalia helpful? Why or why not?
2. Let’s assume that the speaker of “Frost at Midnight” is Coleridge himself. How did his childhood differ from Wordsworth’s? Relatedly, how do the wishes he offers for his child compare to those W. Wordsworth offers for D. Wordsworth at the end of “Tintern Abbey”?
3. In his Biographia Literaria (474-88), Coleridge writes that he and Wordsworth, when planning Lyrical Ballads, decided that Coleridge's part in the volume "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" (478). What part of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" can be called “supernatural”? What part of our “inward nature” does the “supernatural” represent, and what does it mean if we say that the poem requires a "willing suspension of disbelief"?
4. During this period, much of popular literature was “gothic” in nature. Gothic literature has sometimes been described as a blend of romance and horror. The reader’s pleasure in reading it comes from experiencing an entertaining fear, often caused by ghosts, demons, evil, darkness, madness, torture, etc. Can "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" be called a gothic poem?
5. In his Lectures on Shakespeare Coleridge argues that there is a difference between poetry written in "mechanic form" and that written in "organic form" (see pages 487-8). A poem is "mechanic," according to Coleridge, "when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material;--as when to a wet mass of clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it develops itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form." He goes on to argue that just as Nature is "inexhaustable," so are its forms. I would like for you to look for places in Coleridge’s poetry where the form seems organic in this way, answering the demands of the subject matter, as opposed to predetermined. Discuss what it is about the poem's material that is causing the form to change. In other words, how is the form of the poem changing to meet the needs of its material?
6. The margin notes in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” are Coleridge’s. They were not written by the editors of our anthology. Did you find Coleridge's marginalia helpful? Why or why not?
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