English Poets

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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher. His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic movement. Coleridge’s work has received widely varying assessments, more than that of any other English literary artist, though there is broad agreement that his enormous potential was never fully realized in his works. His stature as a poet has never been in doubt; in “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” he wrote two of the greatest poems in English literature and perfected a mode of sensuous lyricism that is often echoed by later poets.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 2016. Britannica School

Kubla Khan, 1816

Or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment. 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man

    Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, 

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Library Resources
eReserve
Web Resources

Library Resources

Poetry

In collaboration with William Wordsworth

 History and criticism

Romanticism in literature

  • English Romantic poets: modern essays in criticism edited by M.H. Abrams  Includes a chapter on Coleridge
  • The Romantic poets by Graham Hough.  Includes a chapter on Wordsworth and Coleridge
  • Romanticism by Barbara Stanners. Includes a chapter on Coleridge. An analysis of 'Frost at Midnight" from this book can be viewed in eReserve.

eBook

 Additional reading

  • The Poet's daughters: Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge. Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge, were life-long friends. They were also the daughters of best friends: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the two poetic geniuses who shaped the Romantic Age. Living in the shadow of their fathers' extraordinary fame brought Sara and Dora great privilege, but at a terrible cost. In different ways, each father almost destroyed his daughter.

eReserve

Poem

Analysis of Frost at Midnight

  • Stanners, B, 2009, 'Frost at midnight' in Romanticism: exploring genre and style, Phoenix Education, Putney, pages 22-27.

Web Resources

Online study notes

General

 Poems

Analysis

YouTube