Love and Death: Poetic Development in Coleridge's Sonnets

• Main Authors: WU, YI-YIN, 吳宜盈
• Other Authors: Steven Frattali
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/96474271936439867724

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 91 === This study intends to explore the aesthetics and psychology of Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) as expressed in his sonnets. This group of poems has been ignored by critics, but I would like to argue that they actually give profound expression to his philosophical theories. Through close reading, I attempt to analyze the essential parts of his concepts about love, the primary and secondary imagination, and the relationship between human and the nature. In the introductory chapter, I offer a brief survey of Coleridge’s life and works. In the analysis that follows, his sonnets are categorized thematically as well as chronologically. In the second chapter “Early Sonnets─In the Imitation Mode,” I find that Coleridge first started writing sonnets by imitating the melancholic style of Charlotte Smith and William Bowles of the Romantic sonnet revival as well as John Milton’s occasional sonnets. I argue that his melancholy was, however, unreal and thus he did not attain as dramatic an effect as his models. Simultaneously, the irregular rhyme scheme in his sonnets revealed his intention to experiment with various possibilities in order to find out a more proper form for English use. His dissatisfaction with such imitative sonnets led to his change in topic and material in the next stage. In the third chapter “Sonnets of Personal Affection,” I find that Coleridge, gradually developing his personal style, focused on family life and personal passion in his sonnets. My argument is that his sonnets then contain no decorative words but plain language and an intimate and lively tone, record of his sincerity and sudden thrust of intensive emotion. In this period, he frequently used the final couplet and then made better use of the sonnet form. In the fourth chapter “Sonnets of Landscapes and Philosophy,” I observe the fact that Coleridge, attracted by German aesthetics, interwove the issue of the relationship between the human mind and external objects into his sonnets; moreover, shortly before his death, Coleridge showed his terror of death and turned to religion for comfort, abandoning the joy in nature. The sonnets then showed his creativity to combine several themes in one single sonnet and the uses of terse words. The sonnets in this period became deeper in meaning, and more philosophical. At last, in the fifth chapter, I come to a conclusion that the development of Coleridge’s sonnet-writing shows a clear picture of his poetic growth; the themes and writing skills in sonnets correspond to Coleridge’s literary theory and major poems. Moreover, with these sonnets, Coleridge was a successor of previous sonneteers in Romantic sonnet revival and a pioneer of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats--to modernize sonnet by applying it for Romantic use. With such importance, Coleridge’s sonnets are indispensable from the totality of his literary glory.