Who was Samuel Taylor Coleridge?
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The English poet was born in England, 1722.
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The poet of nature, the purity of childhood, memory and
imagination, relationships between nature and the mind.
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He looks at fantastic imagery and magic.
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He was an opium addict and wrote the poems in his
twenties.
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He was, in fact, a poet of the Romantic Movement.
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Romanticism was always a movement about the youth.
Other poets of the Romantic School included:
William Wordsworth
Elizabeth Barratt Browning
Poets of the Romantic School:
- emphasised emotion and individualism
- idealised nature
- were suspicious of science and industrialization
These Romantic ideas of Coleridge are found in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (first
published in 1798).
To understand the poem, you will also need to know the terms:
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ballad
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allegory