• Come cerco una versione di latino?
• Come richiedo una versione di latino?
• Come richiedo una versione di greco?
• Come effettuo una ricerca sul sito?
• Altre richieste di informazioni

He was born in Devon. He went to Cambridge, but he didn't take a degree. He met Robert Southey and together planned to emigrate to America to found Pantisocracy, an ideal community consisting of 12 men and 12 women with the same rights, but this project come to nothing. In 1797 Coleridge met Wordsworth and in collaboration with him, they wrote Llyrical Ballads" a collection which included Coleridge's most famous poem: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the opening poem. He died in 1834.

Works

He wrote essays of philosophy, religion, politics and plays, but he produced his best works in poetry and literary:

poetry: Poems on various subjects;

      Christabel, a supernatural tale set in medieval times;

      Kubla Khan, a fragment of a longer never written poem;

      The Rime of the Ancient Mariner;

prose: Biographia Literaria, about his life and opinions;

     Lectures on Shakespeare.

Imagination was a key word in Coleridge's writings.

According to Wordsworth imagination is divided into 2 types:

Primary Imagination is the faculty by which we perceive the world around us through our senses.

Secondary Imagination is typical of the poet who uses this peculiar faculty to create his poetry.

To emphasise the creative spirit of imagination, Coleridge contrasts it with passivity of Fancy which is a kind of mechanical and logical faculty which enables the poet to aggregate and associate metaphors, similes and others poetical devices.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

It's a Ballad made up of 7 parts which tell the story of an old sailor who, during a voyage, kills an albatross, a bird of good omen, bringing a curse on his ship. In fact all the crew die, except the old sailor, who feels compassion when he observes the water snakes moving around the ship. Finally the ship reaches the Mariner's native land, where there is a boat with a holy hermit who confesses the sailor. Once he had told his tale, his soul finds peace. He must tell other people his his story, so that they learn to love and respect all God's creatures. The killing of the albatross and the blessing of the water snakes are two symbolic acts: the first is a crime against creation, while the second is an act of love, of reconciliation with nature.

Coleridge mixes the supernatural with the real: he gives realistic details about the wedding, the weather, the position of the sun; and he gives magic details about the old mariner who has a glittering eye with a hypnotic power; the presence of a  mysterious force which compels him to tell his tale again and again, the albatross. There is a relation between the Mariner's "State of mind" and the "World around him".