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Teachers' Resource Web Study Questions on Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poetry
and Criticism 1. Define and distinguish the categories, "conversation poems" and "visionary (or supernatural) poems." Which of Coleridge's poems fall into each of these categories? 2. Define the term "esemplastic." What is its etymology? 3. Define the term item in alio. What human faculty (especially significant for Coleridge) does it involve? What relationship between subject and object is produced here? 4. Define the term "frame narrative" and apply it to "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner." Why does Coleridge make the Mariner's auditor a Wedding-Guest? 5. How does the Hermit respond to the Mariner's request for absolution? Why might we describe this poem as an attempt to achieve self-consciousness? 6. Also, why might we say that this attempt fails? What is missing from the Mariner's story? Why is he condemned to keep repeating his tale? 7. Name three ways in which the Mariner is characterized as a guilty man. How are these signs of guilt reproduced in the Wedding-Guest, and why is this act of reproduction significant? 8. Name three relationships (Man and _______) which, according to Wordsworth and Coleridge, are strengthened by the activity of the imagination. Do these relationships conflict with or mutually reinforce one another? Explain. 9. Briefly describe Coleridge's "doctrine of the one life" (as presented in "The Eolian Harp"). Citing specific lines, find evidence of a similar doctrine in Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey." 10. Define the term "deism." What is the principal metaphor associated with this philosophy? Why did romantic writers object to deism, and what metaphor did they offer instead? 11. How might the killing of the albatross by the Mariner be seen as a failure of the imagination? How might the blessing of the water snakes be seen as a corrective for this act? 12. Identify seven features or characteristics of Coleridge's conversation poems. 13. In addition, use a brief example from "Frost at Midnight" to illustrate each of these seven features. 14. What does the phrase "secret ministry" in the opening line of "Frost at midnight" suggest? By the poem's end, what do we understand this "secret ministry" to be? 15. What is the speaker's attitude about the "dim sympathies" which he feels with the piece of fluttering soot? How and why does this attitude change--if it does--as the poem develops? 16. What is the significance of the many echoes and mirrors to be found in "Frost at Midnight"? Give examples of these from both the diction and the imagery of the poem. 17. To whom is "Frost at Midnight" addressed? What sort of education does this person have to look forward to? 18. Discuss the significance of natural phenomena being described as the "eternal language" of God. How does this language compare to the finite language of human beings (particularly romantic poets)? 19. Name three things which combined to make Coleridge's life especially unpleasant at the time of his writing "Dejection: An Ode"? 20. Describe in some detail the speaker's mental state at the beginning of "Dejection: An Ode." What change in the weather does the appearance of the moon suggest, and what is the speaker's attitude towards this portent of change? 21. What does the Latin word spiritus mean, and how is it related to our word "inspiration"? What is an Eolian harp--both literally and metaphorically--and why is it an appropriate figure in romantic poetry? 22. Define the term "dissociation of sensibility." Although the term belongs to a later writer, T.S. Eliot, where do we see this idea suggested in "Dejection: An Ode"? 23. For Coleridge, what is the relationship between the questions, "what is poetry?" and "what is a poet?" How does the power of the imagination operate in the ideal poet? 24. What is the significance of the following line in "Dejection: An Ode": "we receive but what we give,/ And in our life alone does Nature live"? How does Coleridge's view here seem to differ somewhat from that of Wordsworth? 25. Define the term "philosophical idealism" again. Now define the terms "noumena" and "phenomena" and indicate why these concepts are central to the view of philosophical idealism. 26. Define the term "objective idealism." Give an example of a universal mental process (one engaged in by all human minds regardless of the culture to which they belong). Define the term "subjective idealism." Give an example of a particular idea or concept (cultural script) that has meaning or value to a particular culture. 27. Explain why the examples which you gave in #26 for both objective and subjective idealism must be seen as mediators between perceiving subjects and perceived objects. How do these mediators enable us to make intelligible the world around us? 28. How does Coleridge define the term "primary imagination"? Who engages in acts of the primary imagination? What is the relationship between these acts and God's eternal act of creation? 29. How does Coleridge define the term "secondary imagination"? Why is it designated as "secondary"? What changes or transformations is it capable of bringing about with respect to the world of objects? 30. What connection can there be between the doctrine of philosophical idealism developed by German philosophers, the activity of the imagination described by Coleridge and other romantic writers, and the ideals that produced the French Revolution? 31. Do the imaginative acts that Coleridge describes entail the abolition of all scripts or mediators, or the replacement of one set of scripts by another? Explain your answer. 32. What was the basis for the neoclassical writers' criticism of Shakespeare? How does Coleridge respond to this criticism? 33. Define the terms, ab extra and ab intra. How do these terms relate to Coleridge's organic theory of art, and how does this theory give greater freedom to the artist? |