Encyclopedia
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, critic, and
philosopher who was, along with his friend
William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the
Romantic Movement in
England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem written by the English [i] poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge [i] ...
and
Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work
Biographia Literaria.
Early life and education
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in the rural town of
Ottery St Mary, Devonshire. He was the youngest of thirteen children, and his father, the Reverend John Coleridge, was a well respected vicar. Coleridge suffered from constant ridicule by his older brother Frank, partially due to jealousy, as Samuel was often praised and favored by his parents. In order to escape this abuse, he often sought refuge at a local library, which led him to discover his passion for the written word.
After the death of his father in 1781, contrary to his desires, he was sent to
Christ's Hospital, a boarding school in
London. The school was widely regarded for its unwelcoming atmosphere and strict policies, which fostered thoughts of guilt and depression to form in his maturing mind.Throughout life, Coleridge idealized his father as a pious innocent, but his relationship with his mother was extremely difficult. His childhood was characterized by attention-seeking, which has been linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was rarely allowed to return home during his schooldays, and this distance from his family at such a turbulent time proved to be emotionally damaging. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem "Frost at Midnight:"
"With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birthplace"
From 1791 until 1794 Coleridge attended
Jesus College at the
University of Cambridge. In 1792 he won the Browne Gold Medal for an Ode that he wrote on the slave trade. In November, 1793, he left the college and enlisted in the royal dragoons, perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved had rejected him. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later, , and he was readmitted to Jesus College, although he left Cambridge without a degree.
Pantisocracy and marriage
At the university he was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet
Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian
communist-like society, called pantisocracy, in the wilderness of
Pennsylvania. In 1795 the two friends married sisters Sarah and Edith Fricker, but Coleridge's marriage proved unhappy. He grew to detest his wife, whom he only married because of social constraints, and eventually divorced her. During and after his failed marriage, he came to love a woman named Sara Hutchinson, who did not share this passion and consequentially caused much distress. Southey departed for
Portugal, but Coleridge remained in England. In 1796 he published
Poems on Various Subjects.
In 1795 Coleridge met poet
William Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy. They became immediate friends.
Around 1796, Coleridge started using
opium as a pain reliever. His and Dorothy Wordsworth's notebooks record that he suffered from a variety of medical complaints, including toothache and facial neuralgia. There appears to have been no stigma associated with taking opium then, but also little understanding of the physiological or psychological aspects of addiction.
The years 1797 and 1798, during which the friends lived in Nether Stowey,
Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. Besides the
Ancient Mariner, he composed the symbolic poem
Kubla Khan, written—Coleridge himself claimed—as a result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie"; and the first part of the narrative poem
Christabel. During this period he also produced his much-praised "conversation" poems
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,
Frost at Midnight, and
The Nightingale.
In 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry,
Lyrical Ballads, which proved to be the starting-point for the English romantic movement. Though the productive Wordsworth contributed more poems to the volume, Coleridge's first version of
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem written by the English [i] poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge [i] ...
was the longest poem and drew more immediate attention than anything else.
In the autumn of 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a stay in
Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. During this period he became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism of
Immanuel Kant, and in the literary criticism of the 18th-century dramatist
Gotthold Lessing. Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the dramatic trilogy
Wallenstein by the German Classical poet
Friedrich Schiller into English.
Coleridge was critical of the literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative insofar as he was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people would mean a continued desecration of literature itself.
In 1800 he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends at
Keswick in the
Lake District of
Cumberland to be near
Grasmere, where Wordsworth had moved. Soon, however, he was beset by marital problems, illnesses, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers, all of which fueled the composition of
Dejection: An Ode and an intensification of his philosophical studies.
From 1804 to 1806, Coleridge lived in
Malta and travelled in
Sicily and
Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. For a while he had a civil-service job as the Public Secretary of the British administration of Malta, assisting governor Sir Alexander John Ball.
Thomas de Quincey alleges in his
Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested, however, that this reflects de Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.
Between 1808 and 1819 this "giant among dwarfs", as he was often considered by his contemporaries, gave a series of lectures in London and
Bristol – those on
Shakespeare renewed interest in the playwright as a model for contemporary writers.
In 1816 Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, took residence in the home of the physician James Gillman, in
Highgate. ln Gillman's home he finished his major prose work, the
Biographia Literaria , a volume composed of 25 chapters of autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and criticism. The sections in which Coleridge expounded his definitions of the nature of poetry and the imagination are particularly important: he made a famous distinction between primary and secondary imagination on the one hand and fancy on the other. He published other writings while he was living at the Gillman home, notably
Sibylline Leaves ,
Aids to Reflection , and
Church and State . He died of heart failure in Highgate on July 25, 1834.
Poetry
Coleridge is probably best known for his long narrative poems,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem written by the English [i] poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge [i] ...
and
Christabel. Even those who have never read the
Rime have come under its influence: its words have given the
English language the metaphor of an
albatross around one's neck, the quote of "water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink", and the phrase "a sadder but wiser man".
Christabel is known for its musical rhythm and language and its
Gothic tale.
Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known and loved. It has strange, dreamy imagery and can be read on many levels. Both
Kubla Khan and
Christabel have additional "romantic" aura because they were never finished. Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical movement" and "imaginative phrasing."
Coleridge's shorter, meditative "conversation poems," however, proved to be the most influential of his work. These include both quiet poems like
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison and
Frost at Midnight and also strongly emotional poems like
Dejection and
The Pains of Sleep. Wordsworth immediately adopted the model of these poems, and used it to compose several of his major poems. Via Wordsworth, the conversation poem became a standard vehicle for English poetic expression, and perhaps the most common approach among modern poets.
Sources
"The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge" Oxford University Press 1912
Family connections
Coleridge was the father of Hartley Coleridge, Sara Coleridge, and Derwent Coleridge and grandfather of Herbert Coleridge, Ernest Hartley Coleridge and Christabel Coleridge. He was the uncle of the first Baron Coleridge. The poet Mary Coleridge was a relation but not a descendant. His nephew Henry Nelson Coleridge, who was an editor of his work, married Sara.
Modern references
...
, which draws heavily from "Kubla Khan".
Further reading
By Coleridge
- The Collected Works in 16 volumes , many editors, Routledge & Kegan Paul and also Bollingen Series LXXV, Princeton University Press
- The Notebooks in 5 double volumes, eds. Kathleen Coburn and others, Routledge and also Bollingen Series L, Princeton University Press
- Collected Letters in 6 volumes, ed. E. L. Griggs, Clarendon Press: Oxford
About and around Coleridge
- Essay by John Stuart Mill: On Coleridge
- Biography by Richard Holmes: Coleridge: Early Visions, Viking Penguin: New York, 1990 ISBN 0-375-70540-6; Coleridge: Darker Reflections, HarperCollins: London, 1997 ISBN 0-375-70838-3
- Memoir by Thomas de Quincey: Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets ISBN 0-14-043973-0
- Science fiction by Douglas Adams: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a novel [i] by Douglas Adams [i]. ...
ISBN 0-671-74672-3 - Fantasy by Tim Powers
...
:
The Anubis GatesFurther viewing
External links
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- in Creative Commons recordings.
- of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem written by the English [i] poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge [i] ...
from -
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- , a detailed analysis of the poem.
- , a detailed analysis of the poem.
