Camille Turner English 382- Dr. Foss 28 January 2012
Into the Minds of the Romantics Class Summary for January 26, 2012
As the hands on the clock reached 11:00 am, Dr. Foss’ “Good morning” boomed throughout the classroom, reverberating against the walls. The sad news that the class wiki was still down left everybody feeling dejected, making it easy to identify with some of the discussed Coleridge poems. However, there was promise of the wiki being up and running by the end of the weekend, leaving everyone with a sense of hope for a better and brighter future. The class set out to discuss three Romantic poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, and Lord Byron. The discussion on Coleridge turned out to be lively and therefore lengthy, unfortunately not allowing time for a discussion of Byron’s work, large group, small group, or otherwise. By the end of the class, it was evident that although one should broaden his or her reading of Romantic literature from the so-called famous “Big Six,” these authors are still important in gaining some sort of perspective into the minds of writers of the Romantic Period. We considered the relationship between these authors and their works, and concluded that the imagination— its validity and its attainability— was one of the main focuses of British Romantic literature.
The class began the day’s discussion by considering Coleridge and his works in a large group setting. Dr. Foss asserted the idea that the four Coleridge works assigned seemed to follow a progression, which we later discovered turned out to be that of peacefulness to objectless depression. In the first poem read, “Frost at midnight,” it appeared that it was primarily a calm and relaxed poem. However, it seemed that Coleridge was also playing with words, such as when he says that it’s “so calm, that it disturbs” (L 8) and that the bells rang “so sweetly, that they stirred and haunted [him]” (L31). These lines portray a double meaning, making readers question whether the scene is truly peaceful. As Dr. Foss pointed out, the poem is set in winter, a conventionally depressing season. However, relatively, this poem seemed to be much more hopeful than the other three of Coleridge’s poems that we studied. Both William Wordsworth and Coleridge seemed to believe that there is a power within place, and that setting is important. Opposite of the setting in his good friend, William Wordsworth’s, poem “Lines Written a Few Miles from Tintern Abbey,” Coleridge focuses on a more domestic setting, complete with a defined sense of family. Claire pointed out that Coleridge seemed more concerned with his baby’s future than his own life and enlightenment, unlike William Wordsworth who appeared to invest more interest in the latter.
The second of Coleridge’s poems that we discussed was “Kubla Khan.” Dr. Foss mentioned a stereotype of Romantic writers that they were brilliant and erratic artists who were unable to recognize their own visions. Although William Wordsworth did not seem to support this idea, the image of a prophetic poet is portrayed in some of Coleridge’s works, such as “Kubla Khan.” Though some of the students in the class attributed this poem to an opium, or other drug, trip, the importance lies not on what instigated the writing of this piece, but on the recognition that it is a compelling work that has become symbolic of many Romantic poets. It represents the quest to transcend ordinary human limitations, and poses the question of whether or not humans and their minds are up to the task of breaking through the mind and achieving the ultimate power of imagination. Dr. Foss brought attention to the line, “could I revive within me” (L 42), and the importance of the word “could” in the absence of “when.” This questions the potential for reaching the imagination, as well as the potential to have universal acknowledgement of the power of the human mind.
In Coleridge’s third poem, “Dejection: An ode,” it is evident that the persona is not as confident or hopeful as in Coleridge’s previously discussed poems. In reality, Coleridge was dealing with a possible drug addiction, unrecognized love, and living in Wordsworth’s shadow. In this poem, his depression is described as “a grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear” (L 21), leaving the impression that the speaker is solely numb. Unlike William Wordsworth, who conveys the idea in “Lines Written a Few Miles From Tintern Abbey” that he can feel his mind being impressed by nature which ignites his imagination, Coleridge portrays a belief that the mind is superior to nature, and that when life is horrible, it cannot receive any inspiration from nature. He alludes to this when he says that “in our life alone does nature live/ Ours is her wedding- garment, ours her shroud” (L 48-49). Although the poem ends with proposing that joy may be able to uplift some spirits, the speaker does not include his own spirit in this hope. I read aloud where Coleridge writes that “Yon crescent Moon, as fix’d as if it grew/ In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue/ I see them all so excellently fair/ I see, not feel how beautiful they are” (L 35-38). Although he recognizes the potential for happiness and imagination, he feels that he is unable to obtain either.
Due to running out of time, we did not discuss Coleridge’s poem, “Work Without Hope,” in great detail, though it seems apparent that the speaker is still in a deep depression, void of everything. This poem is hopeless, like its title suggests, completing the progression of Coleridge’s poems from happy and content to contemplating the potential of what the imagination can do to hopelessness and depression.
We spent the remainder of the class in small groups, going over some of Blake’s poems. My group decided that we saw a mixture of an innocent look at the imagination and a darker sense of human failure in Blake’s poems. We found that some common themes in Blake’s work were the idea that kids represent innocence and the notion that man was ultimately responsible for the hardships found in the world. The recurring image of the lamb alludes to an innocence that is primarily associated with children. In “The Chimney Sweep,” children are portrayed as hopeful. Jake proposed the idea that perhaps Blake was hopeful for a better future, and that the children were symbols of that future, whether earthly or heavenly. It appeared that Blake placed the blame on humans, as seen in his poem, “London,” where he refers to the “blackening Church” (L 10). In his poem, “The Clod & the Pebble,” Blake contrasts a humble Clod of Clay whose “love seeketh not Itself to please” (L 1) with the love of a Pebble who “joys in anothers loss of ease/ And builds a Hell in Heavens” (L 11-12). The Pebble could quite possibly represent those on Earth who are oppressive and have ruined God’s pure creation with their wickedness. The Clod of Clay is probably a political statement of how the poor are more god-like than the rich. This could also be an allusion to The Bible, which mentions a story in which Jesus uses clay to restore sight to a blind man. In the poem, “The Fly,” Blake makes a similar statement when he compares human life to that of a fly, which Jess proposed could represent equality among all classes, since everyone is subject to a life and a death.
By the time 12:15 had rolled around, the class had reached several conclusions, the first being that it is important to read the works of all poets, both famous and unheard of, in order to gain an accurate depiction of what was deemed important to people in history. Secondly, we saw how authors such as Coleridge, Blake, Byron, and the Wordsworth siblings produced works that both agreed and contrasted with each other, and how comparing their works together conveys a more truthful portrait of the time, rather than reading and contemplating them separately. Lastly, we discovered that Romantic poets were concerned with nature’s relationship to man, the power of the human mind and how it can be harvested, the pathway to imagination, and the reason for the ills of the world.
Work Cited Damrosch, David. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Third ed. Vol. 2A. Pearson Education, 2006. Print. The Romantics and Their Contemporaries.