Reader's Log 6B

There are two Reader’s Log sections in this assignment block. Note that they both have the same deadline for completion. It will be necessary to have your text book at hand while completing them. Prepare your responses as directed below and then click on one of the several links to the Web Portfolio provided below and go there to post your responses.

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), pp. 1556-1573.

Read the editors’ introduction carefully, pp. 1556-1557. Separated in childhood after the deaths of their parents, Dorothy and William took up residence together in 1795 and remained intimate members of the same household till William’s death. Dorothy accompanied William on his visit to see his former lover and their natural daughter in France, encouraged his marriage to her long-time friend Mary Hutchinson, and served as an affectionate caretaker for William’s and Mary’s children. Dorothy kept detailed journals into which she entered sharply delineated details from the daily life of the Wordsworth household. The journal is, of course, a valid literary genre in its own right, and Dorothy’s version merits reading for what it shows about her intelligent personality as well as for what it reveals about her famous brother. Browse through the journal entries given here, noting the sensitivity with which Dorothy describes nature, the vividness of her anecdotes, her references to William’s poems, and her account of their relationship with William’s close friend and collaborator Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

READER’S LOG. The Grasmere Journals, Tuesday, May 4^th, 1802, p. 1566. Read this entry carefully. Note the mention of William’s poem The Leachgatherer, which as your editors point out was inspired by an incident recounted by Dorothy in her entry for October 3, 1800, p. 1560. (Leaches, which attach themselves to animals and suck their blood, were gathered for the then-medically-approved practice of bleeding the sick.) Dorothy goes on in the present entry to describe one of the many indigent persons whom the Wordsworths met, which serve to remind us that unemployment and stark poverty were the lot of great masses of people in their time. Summarize in your own words the circumstances of this vagrant woman.

READER’S LOG. The Grasmere Journals, Sept. 24 and following, 1802, pp. 1568-1569. This entry describes the wedding day of William and Mary and events immediately before and after it. Describe in your own words the incident involving the wedding ring and offer, if you would like, your opinions on what the incident implies about the relationship between William and Mary.

READER’S LOG. Grasmere–A Fragment, pp. 1569. When they moved to the Lake District, William and Dorothy took up residence in a small house they called Dove Cottage near Lake Grasmere. When William married, Mary moved into the house, where the three continued to live harmoniously until their deaths many decades later. The first 40 lines of this simple but highly effective poem describe the cottage and its beautiful rural surroundings. Lines 41 to the end of the poem describe Dorothy’s impressions and emotions on the first day of moving into the cottage. From lines 69-76, tell in your own words Dorothy’s special reason for rejoicing in their decision to settle in the cottage.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), pp. 1573-1635.

Read the editors’ introduction carefully. Browse through the various poems and prose statements, getting a feel for the range of Coleridge’s intellectual and emotional interests. The editors’ introduction tells you that the young Coleridge, like Wordsworth and many other young intellectuals who were inspired by the French Revolution, was a radical in religion and politics. The word radical, derived from a Latin word signifying the root of a plant, implies an advocacy of wrenching change in church and government Coleridge went so far as to join an aborted experiment in communal living in America, whose chief result for him was an unhappy marriage. Coleridge’s encouragement was a major factor in the development of Wordsworth’s poetry, the two friends collaborating on the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. It is probable that Wordsworth derived many of his ideas from Coleridge. You will recall that he addresses The Prelude to Coleridge.

As you see in the last paragraph on p. 1547, the editors characterize Coleridge as something of a Samuel Johnson for the Romantic Age, a brilliant conversationalist and the foremost spokesperson of Romantic literary values. Nonetheless, in his own time, Coleridge’s reputation was nothing like Wordsworth’s. Owing perhaps to his unstable personality, intensified by his addiction to a medical narcotic, his production of poetry was meager, and his otherwise brilliant prose pieces were flawed by uninspired padding and sometimes by outright plagiarism. In our time, Coleridge is recognized as Wordsworth’s full peer and, like him, one of the big six Romantics.

READER’S LOG. Editors’ introduction, p. 1575. In the next to last paragraph on this page, your editors tell you that Coleridge, himself influenced by the German philosopher Kant, influenced intellectuals in both England and America to turn from the mechanical empiricism (the theory that knowledge basically derives from sensory experience) of John Locke and accept the Romantic view that knowledge can also derive from the innate intuitions of a mental faculty called Imagination. You have already met this term in your study of Wordsworth, who owed the concept to Coleridge. Quote the second sentence of this paragraph, beginning "In opposition to...," which, as you will see, is an excellent description of the function of Imagination.

READER’S LOG. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, pp. 1580-1595. Read the notes, bottom of p. 1580. Note the italicized gloss Coleridge provides in the left margin. This gloss will help you read the poem with some efficiency. The lines vary in their meter; lines two and four rime in the four line stanzas. This is the most famous of what your editors call Coleridge’s poems of mystery and demonism. It is a narrative poem featuring an aged sailor who is condemned by an occult curse to roam the land telling chosen listeners about the death by thirst of the crew of a becalmed ship, a fate which the narrator brings upon his fellows by wantonly killing an albatross, a bird whose presence was considered an omen of good luck. As for himself, he is cursed to stay alive and suffer horror from being among his dead comrades. Even after he is rescued, he is condemned to roam the land telling his story, as he does to the unfortunate wedding guest in the poem. Read carefully Part 4, pp. 1586-1587, noting that the final three stanzas bring a partial reversal of the curse upon the mariner. Describe in your own words the act which suddenly relieves him.

READER’S LOG. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part 5, pp. 1587-1590. Read Part 5 carefully. Glancing ahead briefly, you will see from note # 1, p. 1595, that poet Anna Barbauld judged the poem to lack "a moral," meaning a significant generalization about life. It is true that poem bears no message or theme. Yet it is also true that it rouses emotions of wonder and dread, a function perhaps even more legitimate for lyrical poetry than conveying a message. Returning to Part 5, p. 1588, tell in your own words what it is that makes the rotting corpses of the dead crew perform their customary duties of sailing the vessel.

READER’S LOG. Kubla Khan, pp. 1596-1598. Read carefully both the author’s opening prose explanation and the editors’ notes, pp. 1596-1597. Read carefully the entirety of this famous fragment of a poem. Notice the other-worldly setting that Coleridge creates for Kubla Kahn’s palace. Starting with line 37, the poet shifts attention from the palace to a supernaturally beautiful song, which he warns his readers would, if only he could recall it clearly, induce an ecstasy in him of perilous quality. Quote lines 50-54, p. 1598, which dramatically convey this warning.

READER’S LOG. Dejection: An Ode, pp. 1615-1619. Read the editors’ note # 1, p. 1615. Return briefly to editors’ introduction, final paragraph, p. 1575, where you are told that Coleridge’s poems divide into two kinds, those of "mystery and demonism," as we have seen above, and those of "integrally related description and meditation," a pattern adopted by Wordsworth for Tintern Abbey. Dejection: An Ode is considered a perfect example of this type. The poem is about the depression or melancholy which afflicts Coleridge, arising immediately from the futile attachment of the unhappily married poet to Sara Hutchinson, sister of Wordsworth’s wife Mary and, more generally, from the poet’s recognition that he can no longer achieve the joyful access to the spiritual heart of nature that he once enjoyed through the faculty of Imagination. The stimulus for the poet’s meditation on his melancholy is a tempestuous night wind, which, as lines 17-20 say, formerly would have awakened joy within him. From stanza 2, lines 21-38, p. 1616, quote a few lines expressing his recognition of his lost ability to respond to nature with joy.

READER’S LOG. Dejection: An Ode, stanzas 3-4, lines 39-58, pp. 1616-1617. In these stanzas, the poet informs Sara, the "Lady" to whom the poem is addressed, that he has lost the creative power for declaring the deep significance of nature, which is made known only by a responsive human soul. Quote a few lines from stanza 4, p. 1617, expressing the indispensable role of a harmoniously tuned human soul in declaring nature’s truths.

READER’S LOG. Dejection: An Ode, stanzas 6-7, lines 76-125, pp. 1617-1618. In line 79, the poet identifies Fancy as the faculty which as formerly transported him into joy, but now, as he says in line 95, Reality chokes his thoughts like a coiling viper. Note the powerful ominous description of the tempestuous night wind in stanza 7. The worst result of the poet’s dejection is, as lines 84-86 say, a suspension of his innate gift of Imagination, the power which interprets nature. Lines 87-93 inform you of the poet’s grand ambition, now frustrated. In your own words, tell what that ambition has been.

READER’S LOG. Dejection: An Ode, stanza 8, lines 126-139, pp. 1618-1619. The sleepless poet ends his meditation on his own dejection with a hope for something better for his beloved Sara. Tell in you own words what it is he hopes for her.

Biographia Literaria, pp. 1623-1635. Read the editors’ introduction, pp. 1623-1624. Browse widely in these pages. This book-length prose work was an expansion of a preface Coleridge had intended for a book of his poems. It sets forth his theory of poetry, including a definition of that all important faculty, Imagination, and a critique of Wordsworth’s theory of poetry. Although he quarrels with Wordsworth’s ideas on poetic diction, his commentary on Wordsworth is respectful and often eulogistic. There is no question that Coleridge regarded Wordsworth as the greatest poet of their time. As for Coleridge, his strength lay, not with the creation of poetry, but with articulating the poetic credo of the Romantic Era in philosophical terms.

READER’S LOG. Biographia Literaria, From Chapter 13, pp. 1627-1628. In Chapter 4, Coleridge tells his reader that he first realized the distinction to be made between Fancy and Imagination soon after his earliest acquaintance with Wordsworth, in whom even then he saw poetic genius. In the present chapter, Coleridge succinctly defines Imagination and Fancy. By the word Fancy, Coleridge means something very close to what we call imagination today. He distinguishes two kinds of Imagination, primary and secondary, making a distinction between them that is not easily followed. What is important is that he identifies the human faculty of Imagination with the fundamental creative power of nature at large. According to Romantic theory, this human faculty was not simply like the fundamental creative power of nature but was actually a part of it. Being part of that power, Imagination enabled a sensitive poet to clarify and describe its attributes. Quote the second sentence from the first paragraph beneath the heading of Chapter 13 near the bottom of p. 1627.

READER’S LOG. Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14, pp. 1628-1633. Browse in this chapter in which Coleridge, like Wordsworth, tries his hand at defining poetry. After laying out the conditions of such a definition in abstract philosophical terms, he arrives finally on p. 1632 at an indirect definition of poetry by defining a poet. Read carefully the paragraph starting in the middle of p. 1632. Quote the first two sentences of this paragraph.

READER’S LOG. Biographia Literaria, From Chapter 17, pp. 1633-1635. Coleridge here agrees with a part of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry and takes exception to another part. From the first two paragraphs under the heading of Chapter 17, p. 1633, summarize in two sentences of your own what Coleridge agrees with and what he disagrees with.