DOCSLIB.ORG

Coleridge and Opium Reverie

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Coleridge and Opium Reverie JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 VERSE FROM THE DREAM FABRIC: COLERIDGE AND OPIUM REVERIE Nitul Su Expert Academy, Guwahati Email: [email protected] Received: 14 April 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 August 2020 ABSTRACT: Coleridge's interest in dreaming and nightmares inform his writing as a poet and his speculation on a range of issues in psychology and metaphysics. It also affords clues to his own troubled inner world. Coleridge originally took opium in its medicinal form but his sustained use created a dependency on it. Coleridge claimed that the poem "Kubla Khan" had come to him under the influence of Opium. His an another poem “The Pains of Sleep” wrote in the midst of long walk alone across Scotland in 1803 during which he was probably suffering from the withdrawal symptoms of opium addiction. In 1953 in "Coleridge, Opium and Kubla Khan" Elizabeth Schneider noticed that the most of his comparison of the states of dreaming and dramatic illusion was derived from Erasmus Darwinian. Coletidge himself never actually analyzed his own dreams from an interpretative prospective. How we dream is a hope compelling question than what we dream. Coleridge's dream may seem less astonishing than that of his precursor. "Kubla Khan" is a remarkable composition, and the nine line hymn dreamed by Caedmon barely displays any virtues beyond its oneiric origin; but Coleridge was already a poet while Caedmon's vocation was revealed to him. There is, however, a later event, which turns the marvel of the dream that engendered "Kubla Khan" into something nearly unfathomable. If it is true, the story of Coleridge's dream began many centuries before Coleridge and has not yet ended. KEYWORDS- Imagination, Dream, Opium, Illusion, Mystery, Pain I. INTRODUCTION "For he honey -dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise" (Kubla Khan) For the generally anxious modernist poetry, illusion or dream vision ought to be one in every of the thematic tools rejecting the other earlier mode of illustration. As up-to-datedness isn't essentially a sole school of recent literary movements, therefore will the dream vision might not be a narrative meant to be incised solely in representative texts. As such, it's difficult to work out what may are the drive for literary traditions to use dream vision. allow us to assume Yeats‟s „vast image out of Spiritus Mundi‟ could be a troubled image from the unconscious disturbed by the concern of annihilation of this civilization brought out by a „rough beast slouched towards Bethlehem‟. it's one in every of those „thousand sordid images‟ constituting a modernist soul, desolate and so seen „flickering against the ceiling‟. The frost at the side of the raptorial bird activity „secret ministry‟ in a very „phantom light‟ attracts USA to a labyrinth once making an attempt to know Coleridge. The mysterious frost could are a college of the unconscious with undisclosed secrets, or it should are a labyrinth wherever each identity gets dissolved. Imageries from dream could seem elsewhere, and during this case, this paper would attempt to figure it call at Coleridge‟s poetry and can attempt to perceive if these illusions were an outcome of narcotic habits. Verse from the dream Fabric: Coleridge and Opium Reverie: Opium, as a drug was prescribed by the doctors to answer violent hysteria or diseases like epidemic cholera, malaria, rickettsial disease and chronic pains like rheumatism. Used either as a sedative or stimulant, abuse of narcotic conjointly semiconductor diode to diseases and disorders like hallucination, respiratory illness and sleep disorder. withal, it ought to are a comforting substance for those that were subjected to acute 7589 JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 pains even though it absolutely was defendant for enslaving them into a „servile captivity‟. Thomas DE Josiah Quincy defends why an inexpensive being would subject himself to such „sevenfold chain‟. “True it's that for nearly 10 years I did sometimes take narcotic for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; however goodbye as I took it with this read i used to be effectually protected against all material unhealthy consequences by the need of interposing long intervals between the many acts of indulgence, so as to renew the pleasant sensations. it absolutely was not for the aim of making pleasure, however of mitigating pain within the severest degree, that I 1st began to use narcotic as a writing of daily diet.”(Quincey,8) Piranesi‟s jail of contradiction that Coleridge explained to be a record of the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Like Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge too was not merely a dreamy romantic laying leisurely on his crouch chewing opium. His power of imagination didn‟t need to be accelerated by opium, albeit it had something to do with the creative process. The habit may not confer imaginative stimulus or fantastic dreams and visions, all facts attributed to it might be the cause of previous mental and emotional make up. Buried deep in the unconscious, these mental or emotional set up might have driven by opium to create a dream reverie of its own with paradox and ambiguities.In this context, Quincey Coleridge's account of a vision of paradox which he found resemblance with sketches of an Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. M.H Abrams, in his The Milk of Paradise had this idea of tracing a pattern of dream imagery- images of lights, sounds, movements and variations in the consciousness of time and space.With a „framework of plot, the pre- existing fabric of dream phenomena‟ was woven accordingly. “….in my belief that this theme was not a happy accident of the imagination, but had its source and development in Coleridge‟s opium hallucination. We have seen that this dreams had already influenced Coleridge‟s poetry,and might be very likely to do it again.(Abrams,36). Similar argument has been made by critics like Althea Hyter and Elizabeth Schneider. Reading the text keeping these patterns in mind should help tracing out the glimpses of the memory of the dream world. Having habituated to opium, Coleridge was troubled with a sense of guilt, remorse, rage and shame which ended Humanity terrified nightmares that stupefied him in his waking moments. Nevertheless, he confessed that though opium darkened his days and night with horror and nightmares, it was necessary for his protection against pain.This resulted in the absence of exuberance and celebrations of chivalry demanded by Romantic tradition in his poems. 2"In the later stages of addiction, a man‟s sensibilities are so immune to all deep feelings that heis in a buried alive condition. No warmth or glow of passion or genial feeling can be aroused. Hence the poetical faculty becomes a sort of vitrifying process that chills all sensibility, whatever is done is done in pale cold strength of intellect”.(Lefebure,180) But he would eventually surrender into the habit only to be guilty of what he had subjected himself into. 3"I cannot pretend that I have not received countless warnings and for my neglectand for the habits, and all the feebleness and wastings ofthe moral will which unfit the soul for spiritual ascent,and must sink it,of moral necessity, lower and lower, ifit be essentially imperishable, my only ray of hope is this,that in my inmost he art, as far as my consciousness can sound its depths, I plead nothing but my utter and sinful helplessness and worthlessness on one side, and the infinite mercy and divine Humanityof our Creator and Redeemer crucified from the beginning of the world, on the other!” ( Letter to J H Green, 25th May, 1820) It is noticeable that the tug of war between sin and redemption in his private life is the central theme in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The surreal world of the Ancient Mariner has no place for transcendent truth and beauty, it is a world infested with a life-in-death question. Every temporal and spatial perception is lost upon the „painted ship on a painted ocean‟. The nightmarish spectre of the white faced yellow haired woman had its „icy terror‟ deeply rooted in the unconscious, a metonymy radiating the petrified whole of the poets unconscious. At this juncture, opium as a catalyst brewing out poetic inspiration comes to the light of argument. The personification of „life-in-death‟ with the yellow haired woman is a personification of the sedative, so does his fear for the sedative rests on the fact that it would lead him into a life-in- death stage literally. The preface to Kubla Khan invites not of critical responses but a look on the psychological domain that it administers. “at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and as far as the authors own opinions are concerned, ratheras a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits”.(1,1816) Composed from the memory of a dream after a profound sleep, the poem holds the darker side of the soul with gothic imageries and insistence to demons and savagery echoing The Ancient Mariner. The finite capital Xanadu is surrounded by walls and the river Alph runs through infinite cavern measureless to man ending up in a lifeless ocean. The suggestion to death is so strong in the first stanza that it surpasses any romantic sensibility that should have been inspired by the Eden image postulated by the city of Xanadu. Drawing the argument conducive toopium 7590 JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 19, 2020 reading, Xanadu is only the tip of the iceberg.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Kubla Khan" Page 1 of 7
    Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" Page 1 of 7 Home | Current Issue | Editorial Board | Instructions for Authors | Contact Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal ISSN 1718-8482 Disclaimer: The work represented here is entirely the creation of the author. The L.U.R.J. does not in any way endorse the correctness of this article. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan": Creation of Genius or Addiction? Karen Mahar University of Lethbridge Lethbridge Alberta Canada Citation: Karen Mahar: Coleridge's "Kubla Khan": Creation of Genius or Addiction?. Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal. 2006. Volume 1 Number 1. In a 1950s study, an artist injected with a hallucinogen was asked to sketch pictures at various intervals throughout his high. Not only did his behavior deteriorate, but the style of the pictures he completed under the influence was completely different from his normal oeuvre. Although these works could probably still be considered “art,” their difference from his “natural” work raises an important question about their value and the genuineness of their authorship (“Acid Trip” 1, 1-9). A similar question might be posed about Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Kubla Khan”: it is undoubtedly an excellent poem, but unique in his oeuvre, and created by a very different Coleridge indeed. Coleridge was a literary genius and a chief Romantic poet and theorist. His most famous poems—”Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Christabel,” and “Kubla Khan”—combine an element of fantasy with lyric genius, and have endured for over two centuries, providing testament to the poet's exceptional abilities. “Kubla Khan,” arguably his most anthologized poem, however, reflects a vision and style not consistent with Coleridge's other fantastical work.
    [Show full text]
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge John Spalding Gatton University of Kentucky
    The Kentucky Review Volume 4 Number 1 This issue is devoted to a catalog of an Article 6 exhibition from the W. Hugh Peal Collection in the University of Kentucky Libraries. 1982 Catalog of the Peal Exhibition: Samuel Taylor Coleridge John Spalding Gatton University of Kentucky Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Gatton, John Spalding (1982) "Catalog of the Peal Exhibition: Samuel Taylor Coleridge," The Kentucky Review: Vol. 4 : No. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review/vol4/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Kentucky Libraries at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Kentucky Review by an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Gc car un1 To brc de~ In Wordsworth's judgment, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was "the most wonderful man" he ever met. Endowed with one of So1 the most brilliant and complex minds of his day, he would, like bUJ Chaucer's parson, "gladly .. learn, and gladly teach." If he an< squandered a wealth of thought in correspondence and wh conversation, and left unfinished or merely projected major poems, Rh lectures, and systematic expositions of his philosophical tenets, his pre critical theories, and his theology, he nevertheless produced a vast So1 and impressive array of poetry, prose, and criticism.
    [Show full text]
  • Imaginative Transference in Coleridge's Poetry
    W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1984 Imaginative Transference in Coleridge's Poetry Kevin Coakley-Welch College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Coakley-Welch, Kevin, "Imaginative Transference in Coleridge's Poetry" (1984). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625263. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-nt8g-yn85 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IMAGINATIVE TRANSFERENCE il IN COLERIDGE’S POETRY A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts fey Kevin Coakley-Welch 1984 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Author Approved, June 1980 vatu. < < . c . u r Nathaniel Y. Elliott Wayne ¥/. Glausser / ■/ Terry Meyers 7 ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to trace the use of a poetic technique labeled "imaginative transference” in a series of poems written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Imaginative transference is identified as that process through which Coleridge, appearing as a character in each of the poems, transfers emotions or perceptions from himself to another chosen character in the same poem.
    [Show full text]
  • Kubla Khan: S.T
    Kubla Khan: S.T. Coleridge The Poet and His Poetry Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was not only a major Romantic poet, but he was also the foremost philosopher and literary critic of his age. His poetic output is erratic in comparison to Wordsworth‟s, but his contribution to English literary history also includes his literary criticism and his lively discussion of the ideas of the German Idealist philosophers, particularly Immanuel Kant. His theory regarding the cognitive and synthesising role of the imagination is one of the most important cornerstones of the Romantic Movement. John Stuart Mill summed up his influence on the age when he called Coleridge a “seminal mind”. Birth and the early years Comment [U1]: Uniformly bullet these sub-units Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, on October 21, 1772, the youngest son of John Coleridge, vicar, and Ann Bowdon, his second wife. A precocious boy, dreamy and introspective, he finished the Bible and the Arabian Nights before he was five. At ten, following the death of his father, he was sent to Christ‟s Hospital, London, as a charity boy. Though poor and neglected, he became an accomplished Greek and Latin Scholar. Here he met Charles Lamb. It was the first of many significant literary friendships. He entered Jesus College, Cambridge on a scholarship in 1791; but in spite of a brilliant career in classics, he finally left the college in 1794, without taking a degree. At University, he was interested in the radical political and religious ideas of his day. He had already been attracted by the motto of the French Revolution and Jacobin politics, though later he dismissed it as a youthful folly.
    [Show full text]
  • Kubla Khan” and Later Texts: Inspiration, Agency, and Interruption
    Connotations Vol. 16.1-3 (2006/2007) The Person from Porlock in “Kubla Khan” and Later Texts: Inspiration, Agency, and Interruption LAURA M. WHITE Of late, literary criticism has focused on the socio-cultural agency of artistic production, writing in the material elided by the classical tradition of the Muse on the one hand and the Romantic figure of the autonomous genius on the other. We no longer read inspiration by the light of the Muse’s presence, or by the wan light cast by the candle in Chatterton’s garret; “inspiration” as a concept has come to seem an illusion that covers up the full story of the processes by which art comes into being, in which artists respond to large currents within their culture. Thus, older ideas about inspiration have been overshad- owed by a focus on artistic production as a complex series of negotia- tions between an artist and his or her culture, a turn much at odds with twenty-four centuries of thought about inspiration in the Western tradition. The gap between current explanations and those of the past reveal a central problem in aesthetics—how is art really created? Coleridge’s 1816 “Kubla Khan,” with its accompanying narrative about how the poem came into being and how its writing was prematurely stopped by a knock on the door, offers a figure that represents the cessation of inspiration: the person from Porlock. The person from Porlock stands for the interruption of inspiration, and this figure’s popularity in many subsequent narratives by authors writing in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries shows that the issue of inspiration and its agency continues to vex our collective imagination.
    [Show full text]
  • The Kubla Khan Manuscript and Its First Collector
    THE KUBLA KHAN MANUSCRIPT AND ITS FIRST COLLECTOR HILTON KELLIHER COLERIDGE'S Kubla Khan, Or, A Vision in a Dream, first printed with Christabel The Pains of-Sleep in 1816, has long been regarded as one of the great literary icons of the Romantic movement. Coleridge's famous account of its conception in the summer or autumn of 1797 - the lonely Exmoor farmhouse, the effects of an 'anodyne', and the poetical reverie interrupted by the arrival of 'a person on business from Porlock'- contributed in no small measure to the hypnotic sway that it has always exercised over the imagination of its readers. Awe and wonderment were, if anything, only increased by the researches of J. L. Lowes and others into its sources, which proved to have stretched far beyond the simple sentence in Purchas his Pilgrimage that was allegedly the immediate inspiration.^ Yet these fifty-four verses were, the author later insisted, merely 'A Fragment'' rescued from a broken trance in which images, rising up before him 'as things', had shaped themselves into a poem of two or three hundred lines. Some scholars have been sceptical, seeing in Coleridge's insistence on the dream-origins of the poem a mere fiction masking his inability to complete it, though this line of argument is nowadays little regarded. Rather surprisingly for an author who left such a mass of papers behind him, the only manuscript text of the poem that is known to survive is the autograph fair copy publicly displayed for many years now in the British Library galleries.^ This first came to the notice of scholars in 1934, and was acquired for the nation in 1962 from the widow of the Marquess of Crewe who had inherited it from his father, the bibliophile Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-85), first Baron Houghton.^ Milnes had bought it at auction at Puttick and Simpson's premises in Leicester Square on 28 April 1859, where it was lot 109 (fig.
    [Show full text]
  • Kubla Khan': the Poet in the Poem
    SYDNEY STUDIES 'Kubla Khan': The Poet in the Poem GEOFFREY LITTLE For many readers 'Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment' (the full title is important) has offered indulgence in a magical mystery tour ofexotic places and erotic imagery which, like such tours, leads nowhere. Others have found enticing symbolic equations, sometimes abandoned as unresolvable; and others again have discovered in the poem verbal clues which may be assembled in a variety of solutions, much as anagrams, puns and incomplete quotations may be made to fit into a multiple crossword puzzle. One strong tradition of readers to find the poem marvellous but meaningless begins with Lamb and Hazlitt. Lamb thought it 'irradiates and brings heaven and Elysian bowers into my parlour while he sings or. says it' (the picture of Coleridge singing the poem, with or without dulcimer, has its own charm) but that it made no sense. 1 Hazlitt remarked that it proved Coleridge was one of the best writers of nonsense poems in English.2 It is not far from those contemporary responses to characterizing the poem as merely the product ofopium; or, indeed, as an unwritten poem. T. S. Eliotsaid acidly that 'faith in mystical inspiration is responsible for the exaggerated repute of Kubla Khan'; however its im~gery sank in and then rose from Coleridge's consciousness, 'it is not used: the poem has not been written,.3 A recent critic has been still more contemptuous; for her, the mounting final lines are 'a total non sequitur . .. a small masterpiece of confidence trickery' in a poem which may well have started in the romantic habit of ballad­ mongering for money, or 'piss a canto'.4 The solutions of other critics, following more or less Peacock's blithely confident 'simplex et unum from first to last',5 have varied widely.
    [Show full text]
  • A Political Reading of S. T. Coleridge's the Raven
    International Journal of Education and Research Vol. 2 No. 7 July 2014 A Political Reading of S. T. Coleridge's The Raven Marjan Amrollahi (Corresponding Author) Department of English, Vali-e Asr University of Rafsanjan, Kerman, Iran E-mail:[email protected] Dr. Anita Lashkarian Department of English, Maybod Branch, Islamic Azad University, Yazd, Iran E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is famous as the English poet who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (1816) but today is almost forgotten as one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. His political orientation can be traced in many of his poems, political pamphlets and journalistic writings. Many of his poems such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan are studied from a political point of view but the contribution of Coleridge's political beliefs to the poem The Raven has not been studied. Although a few studies have been done on this poem, it has been neglected to a great extent by scholars. This study tends to explore the symbolism manifested in The Raven in order to illustrate the political dimensions implicit in this poem. Certainly 'The Raven' has none of the political allusions and this has led most critics to concur that the poem exhibits a total lack of politics. Yet given the circumstances which gave rise to 'The Raven" as a political poem, is the very absence of political content which is itself political. Key Words: Samuel Taylor Coleridge; The Raven; Political Poetry; Symbolism 149 ISSN: 2201-6333 (Print) ISSN: 2201-6740 (Online) www.ijern.com 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Opium in Nineteenth-Century England
    Bridgewater State University Virtual Commons - Bridgewater State University Honors Program Theses and Projects Undergraduate Honors Program 5-14-2020 Opium in Nineteenth-Century England Hannah Hutchinson Bridgewater State University Follow this and additional works at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/honors_proj Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Hutchinson, Hannah. (2020). Opium in Nineteenth-Century England. In BSU Honors Program Theses and Projects. Item 332. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/honors_proj/332 Copyright © 2020 Hannah Hutchinson This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Opium in Nineteenth-Century England Hannah Angelina Hutchinson Submitted in Partial Completion of the Requirements for Departmental Honors in History Bridgewater State University May 14, 2020 Dr. Sarah Wiggins, Thesis Advisor Dr. Erin E. O’Connor, Committee Member Dr. Paul Rubinson, Committee Member Hutchinson 1 Over the course of nineteenth-century England, opiate use and the attitudes towards its use shifted and changed. Opium and the consumption of opiates stems back thousands of years and has been utilized in countless ways. Opium has always existed and has always played an effective role in society. Whether for enjoyment or pain relief, for pleasure or for pain, opiates remained a key player in society all over the world. The study of the history of drug use in nineteenth-century England is important because it adds a vital perspective into the changing attitudes towards opium. Many of the changes that happened physically to opium in the nineteenth century and the attitudes towards it have great effect on the meaning and reception of opium today.
    [Show full text]
  • Kubla Khan Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    Kubla Khan Samuel Taylor Coleridge background Coleridge wrote “Kubla Khan” in 1797 after taking opium prescribed to relieve pain. Affected by the powerful narcotic, he fell into a deep sleep while reading about the 13th-century Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. In his sleep, he composed 200 to 300 lines based on fantastic images that rose up as he dreamed. Awakening hours later, Coleridge began to write the poem down, but a visitor interrupted him, and later Coleridge could not recall the rest of the lines. He called the poem “a fragment” and “a vision in a dream.” In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 1 Xanadu (zBnPE-dLQ): Shangdu, one A stately pleasure dome decree: of Kublai Khan’s residences in what is now northern China. Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man 5 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, 8 sinuous rills: winding streams. Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; 10 And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. a a SOUND DEVICES Read lines 1–11 aloud. What sound devices do you notice, and what mood do they help create? But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! 13 athwart a cedarn cover: across a A savage place! as holy and enchanted grove of cedar trees. 15 As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: 19 momently: at every moment.
    [Show full text]
  • Romanticism and Orientalism: Orientalizing the Orient in Romantic Poetry
    ROMANTICISM AND ORIENTALISM: ORIENTALIZING THE ORIENT IN ROMANTIC POETRY A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts In English: Literature by Parminder Kaur Johal San Francisco, California August 2018 Copyright by Parminder Kaur Johal 2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read Romanticism and Orientalism: Orientalizing the Orient in Romantic Poetry by Parminder Kaur Johal, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thes’s submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Literature at San Francisco State University. -------------------- Wai-Leung Kwok, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Lawrence Hanley, Ph.D. Professor of English ROMANTICISM AND ORIENTALISM: ORIENTALIZING THE ORIENT IN ROMANTIC POETRY Parminder Kaur Johal San Francisco, California 2018 This thesis examines Eastern representations in the works of Romantic poets that contributed to Orientalism. Even though there were many provocateurs that fueled stereotypes of the East, my study hones in on the poems Dy Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Through a literary analysis of Coleridge's Kubla Khan and Sheliey’s Ozymandias, efforts are made to reach the conclusion whether Coleridge and Shelley misrepresent the Orient. 1 argue that the works of these highly celebrated poets adhere to the underlying stereotypes popular during the Romantic Era, thus raising issue with the reliability—or raiher unrenai'-liiy—of their works. In addition to analyzing representations, I examine travel literature within the cultural and historical context of their lives to better understand influences that shaped their perspectives and informed their writing.
    [Show full text]
  • When Feminists Read the Romantics, Or the Cultural Chasm Anca Vlasopolos of "Kubla Khan" Wayne State University
    When Feminists Read the Romantics, or the Cultural Chasm Anca Vlasopolos of "Kubla Khan" Wayne State University ABSTRACT Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" offers the occasion for scrutinizing academic feminism since Romanticists and feminists regard this poem as a "founding myth" of our culture and is situated on the boundary of rivalling literary historiographies. Against Gilbert and Gubar's assessment of "Kubla" as touchstone of opposing feminisms, this author reads the poem as the site of a continuing clash between man- made poetics of form and the expression of female pleasure. Recognizing the dangers in totalizing gestures of academic feminism leads to enabling readings of gender-troubled Romantic texts and to re-examinations of power politics in academia, including those of feminist criticism. RESUME "Kubla Khan" nous offre l'occasion d'examiner le feminisme academique du moment que ce poeme de Coleridge est consider^, par les feministes autant que les critiques du romantisme, comme mythe culturel de base qui se situe au bord du territoire reclame par des discours historiques rivalisants. Contre la these de Gilbert et Gubar, qui considerent le texte en tant que terrain d'oppositions de points de vue feministes, cette auteure propose que "Kubla" nous represente toujours le conflit entre les rigueurs d'une politique masculine et l'expression trouble d'une jouissance feminine. En decouvrant les dangers d'un feminisme academique inflexible, nous nous rendons capables de rfccupdrer les textes romantiques troubles par la question de la sexualite et d'interroger la politique du pouvoir, y compris le feminisme, dans les milieux academiques. Our wickedness is one of the vertiginous themes that opens the space of writing.
    [Show full text]