An introduction to Romantic lyrical poetry

Samuel
Taylor
Coleridge:
(1772-1834)
Grew up in Devonshire
Known as one of the founding authors of Romantic poetry
Close friends with Wordsworth
Suffered from rheumatic pains, ended up addicted to opium; ended up needing to seek treatment of a doctor
Died in London in July, 1834, recognized as a literary master

 Emerged in the mid to late 18 th century as a reaction against Enlightenment thinking
 Romantics favor the natural and personal, but still value structure, meter
 “The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” –
Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (1789)
 Coleridge and Wordsworth’s text considered to be the first major work of the Romantic school
 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the last poems in the text

 Poetry which expresses personal or emotional feelings
 Dates from the classical world (Aristotle, Poetics) as a form of poetry usually accompanied by a lyre
 All forms of lyric poetry are connected by a metrical repetition for more than one stanza
 In modern poetry, most common form is sonnet; form also includes ballads, villanelles, odes
 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a ballad (tells a story) and is written in alternating iambic tetrameter
(four feet per line) and iambic trimeter (three feet)

 Descriptions of characters, settings
 Changes in characters, settings
 Animals
 Interactions with other characters
 Role of the spiritual world
 Colors

 S = speaker (the voice who tells the story)
 O = occasion (time and place; what prompted writing)
 A = audience (group of readers to whom piece is directed)
 P = purpose (Reason behind the text)
 S = subject (topic)
 Tone = attitude of the author