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    Colridge Themes

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    Coleridge believed that the imagination could be used to transcend unpleasant circumstances by allowing one to temporarily abandon their surroundings through imaginative flights. In his poetry, Coleridge explored the interplay between philosophy, religious piety, and poetry. Some of his works, like "The Eolian Harp", showed the clash between these forces as the speaker struggled to reconcile philosophical ideas with his wife's orthodox Christian beliefs. For Coleridge, experiencing nature was integral to developing a complete soul and sense of self, as shown in the poem "Frost at Midnight" where the speaker laments not having a rural childhood and vows his son will not be removed from nature like he was.

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    Colridge Themes

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    smsma ahmed
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    Coleridge believed that the imagination could be used to transcend unpleasant circumstances by allowing one to temporarily abandon their surroundings through imaginative flights. In his poetry, Coleridge explored the interplay between philosophy, religious piety, and poetry. Some of his works, like "The Eolian Harp", showed the clash between these forces as the speaker struggled to reconcile philosophical ideas with his wife's orthodox Christian beliefs. For Coleridge, experiencing nature was integral to developing a complete soul and sense of self, as shown in the poem "Frost at Midnight" where the speaker laments not having a rural childhood and vows his son will not be removed from nature like he was.

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    Coleridge believed that the imagination could be used to transcend unpleasant circumstances by allowing one to temporarily abandon their surroundings through imaginative flights. In his poetry, Coleridge explored the interplay between philosophy, religious piety, and poetry. Some of his works, like "The Eolian Harp", showed the clash between these forces as the speaker struggled to reconcile philosophical ideas with his wife's orthodox Christian beliefs. For Coleridge, experiencing nature was integral to developing a complete soul and sense of self, as shown in the poem "Frost at Midnight" where the speaker laments not having a rural childhood and vows his son will not be removed from nature like he was.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    75 views2 pages

    Colridge Themes

    Uploaded by

    smsma ahmed
    Coleridge believed that the imagination could be used to transcend unpleasant circumstances by allowing one to temporarily abandon their surroundings through imaginative flights. In his poetry, Coleridge explored the interplay between philosophy, religious piety, and poetry. Some of his works, like "The Eolian Harp", showed the clash between these forces as the speaker struggled to reconcile philosophical ideas with his wife's orthodox Christian beliefs. For Coleridge, experiencing nature was integral to developing a complete soul and sense of self, as shown in the poem "Frost at Midnight" where the speaker laments not having a rural childhood and vows his son will not be removed from nature like he was.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THE IMAGINATION;

    Coleridge believed that a strong, active imagination could become a


    vehicle for transcending unpleasant circumstances. Many of his poems
    are powered exclusively by imaginative flights, wherein the speaker
    temporarily abandons his immediate surroundings, exchanging them for
    an entirely new and completely fabricated experience. Using the
    imagination in this way is both empowering and surprising because it
    encourages a total and complete disrespect for the confines of time
    and place.Coleridge’s most famous use of imagination occurs in
    “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”.The power of imagination
    transforms the prison into a perfectly pleasant spot.

    THE INTERPLAY OF PHILOSOPHY, PIETY, AND POETRY


    Coleridge used his poetry to explore conflicting issues in philosophy
    and religious piety. Some critics argue that Coleridge’s interest in
    philosophy was simply his attempt to understand the imaginative and
    intellectual impulses that fueled his poetry.In his work, however,
    poetry, philosophy, and piety clashed, creating friction and disorder
    for Coleridge, both on and off the page. In “The Eolian
    Harp”Coleridge struggles to reconcile the three forces. Here, the
    speaker’s philosophical tendencies, particularly the belief that an
    “intellectual breeze” (47) brushes by and inhabits all living
    things with consciousness, collide with those of his orthodox wife,
    who disapproves of his unconventional ideas and urges him to Christ.
    While his wife lies untroubled, the speaker agonizes over his
    spiritual conflict, caught between Christianity and a unique,
    individual spirituality that equates nature with God. The poem ends
    by discounting the pantheist spirit, and the speaker concludes by
    privileging God and Christ over nature and praising them for having
    healed him from the spiritual wounds inflicted by these unorthodox
    views.

    NATURE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL

    For Coleridge, nature had the capacity to teach joy, love, freedom,
    and piety, crucial characteristics for a worthy, developed
    individual.
    According to his formulation, experiencing nature was an integral
    part of the development of a complete soul and sense of personhood.
    The death of his father forced Coleridge to attend school in London,
    far away from the rural idylls of his youth, and he lamented the
    missed opportunities of his sheltered, city-bound adolescence in many
    poems, including “Frost at Midnight”.The speaker sits quietly by a
    fire, musing on his life, while his infant son sleeps nearby. He
    recalls his boarding school days, during which he would both daydream
    and lull himself to sleep by remembering his home far away from the
    city, and he tells his son that he shall never be removed from
    nature, the way the speaker once was. Unlike the speaker, the son
    shall experience the seasons and shall learn about God by discovering
    the beauty and bounty of the natural world. The son shall be given
    the opportunity to develop a relationship with God and with nature,
    an opportunity denied to both the speaker and Coleridge himself.

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