Talk:Samuel Taylor Coleridge/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Source?

To whoever added the biography: What's the source? Is it in the public domain? It sounds rather like 19th-century English, so it probably wasn't written recently. It's also not complete accurate, again reminiscent of something written in the 19th or early 20th centuries. Please clarify? -- Marj 07:31 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the text is from, but it reads like it could be from a 1911 Encyclopedia, which would be copyright-fine, and explain your concerns about language and accuracy. Article's beginning to look somewhat better :) Atorpen 03:41 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks!  :) -- Marj 00:03 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

New material

I've done a series of edits adding some links and references, and adding details on his childhood and the opium question. Markalexander100 08:27, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Editions

Could someone please recommend me a complete edition of Coleridges's works? If someone knows of other good editions of the rest of the romantics, particularly Wordsworth (I know an old hardcover one, but I'm looking for something perhaps more sound and cheaper) I'd also like to know. Thanks. 200.141.237.165 15:09, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Try the oxford anthology of english literature, bloom & trilling, oxford univ press, cpyrt 1973Qleem 22:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
  • If you want the Complete Poems, then the Penguin edition edited by William Keach is best. The OUP 'Oxford World Classics' edition (entitled Major Works) is a better overview, since it collects most of the poetry, along with important selections of the prose, and all of Biographia Literaria. For the other Romantics, again, I'd recommend the OUP editions, although the Penguin and Norton ones are also good. Norton editions have selections from 20th century criticism in them. The absolute best Coleridge editions, incidentally, are the Bollingen collected works, but they are very, very expensive.
  • Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. General ed., Kathleen Coburn. London: Routledge and K. Paul; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969-. PR 4470 F69 Kevinhowarth 07:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Garbled sentence

The sections in which Coleridge's definitions of the nature of poetry and the imagination – his famous distinction between primary and secondary imagination on the one hand and fancy on the other – are especially interesting.
This doesn't make sense, what should it say? - Adrian Pingstone 21:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fixed, I think. Markalexander100 03:04, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

last modification is garbage?

Seems to me that the last modification to the wiki just made the page a mess...

--66.11.160.167 21:10, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Skin?

I know I heard something a few years ago about the discovery of a lost Coleridge manuscript, written on what they thought might be a large flap of Coleridge's skin. Anyone know any more about this? DS 15:39, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

last addition

Check out the last addition on coleridge's life

last addition

Check out the last addition on coleridge's life...who would of thought he was gay?-- 02:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC) His Mum Was A Hoe

Homosexual Issue

The Novotel Encyclopedia (1911) gives sufficient evidence of the controversy surrounding the orientation of coleridge as a bisexual.

The Novotel Encyclopedia, of course, had an observer in Coleridge's bedroom, possibly behind the bureau or night stand. That writer would have been able to provide an eye witness account, I am sure. Why don't we save the homosexual interest group a great deal of effort and just declare that everyone in world history is or was homosexual?Lestrade 01:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Lestrade
I thought so. I must be the odd one out. Rintrah 16:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The only mystery , with everyone in the world a homosexual, and it being such a natural and acceptable sort of behavior, is that there are so many millions of people in the world.Lestrade 19:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Sex sex sex

He also was reported to have been, according to Dorothy Wordsworth, a "terrible lover" and "one whose realm is not that of the land twixt the sheets". Is this real, or vandalism? How on earth would Dorothy know what happened twixt Coleridge's sheets? The only Google results for this quote are from our mirrors. Mark1 22:17, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Because they were lovers pehaps? (Anon)

But why would one think they were? Mark1 10:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Christabel.

Why does the link to the article on "Christabel" simply redirect to the Coleridge one?

I changed it, and put in its place a stub about the poem. Someone else will have to expand it, becauses I haven't read the poem itself, only the preface. Marksman45 09:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Controversy

ISBN 0-321-13007-3

Effect of Opium

The article states that the effect of opium was not generally known in Coleridge's time. In 1839, the following was written:

[B]y means of wine or opium we can intensify and considerably heighten our mental powers, but as soon as the right measure of stimulus is exceeded, the effect will be exactly the opposite

— Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of the Will, Ch. III

Lestrade 01:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

- only 5 years after STC died then!Johnbod 22:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

De Quincey wrote in 1821. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The article didn't say that the effects of opium were not known at all during that time, it says they were not well known. Opium was being used very commonly back then, it was basically the aspirin of their time, and few knew of it's addictive properties, although many soon found out about the pleasures it could bring and its crashes.

Entry missing

Why is the entire article missing? nicolasqueen 19 September 2006

New Low

Wikipedia is touching bottom today with its inclusion of popular culture references in its articles. "Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden recorded a song titled Rime of the Ancient Mariner - based on the poem by Coleridge - on their 1984 album Powerslave." Isn't there a rap "song" out there with some reference to Coleridge?Lestrade 19:44, 30 October 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

People from Porlock

I see there is a Category for the above - 1 entry, Acland, a cabinet minister under Lloyd George I think. Crying out for an entry on the most famous "person from Porlock" I think, by someone with the references to hand Johnbod 17:42, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Citizen Kane

Rather surprised at the absence of surely the most famous cultural reference about Xanadu, Kane's mansion, I added one, but a bot for some reason promptly objected to this ... Straw Cat 13:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

According to your edit summary you didnt actually add it, just deleted some other stuff, check the history Qleem 20:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Cultural References

I've retrieved the most significant of the cultural references deleted by BuddingJournalist and placed them here:

Perhaps they can find a home elsewhere in the article per WP:TRIV.--Ethicoaestheticist 20:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Coleridge and the influence of the Gothic

Coleridge wrote some reviews of popular Gothic novels of the period, and was plainly influenced by the popular fashion for all things Gothic, so I suggest we include this text to reflect that - I'll leave it a few days to see if anybody wants to comment:

Gothic fiction like Polidori’s The Vampire, Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Mrs Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, and Matthew Lewis’s The Mad Monk were the best-sellers of the end of the eighteenth century, and thrilled many young women (who were often strictly forbidden to read them). Jane Austen satirised the style mercilessly in Northanger Abbey.

Coleridge wrote reviews of Mrs Radcliffe’s books and of The Mad Monk among others. He comments in his reviews:

Situations of torment, and images of naked horror, are easily conceived; and a writer in whose works they abound, deserves our gratitude almost equally with him who should drag us by way of sport through a military hospital, or force us to sit at the dissecting-table of a natural philosopher. To trace the nice boundaries, beyond which terror and sympathy are deserted by the pleasurable emotions, - to reach those limits, yet never to pass them, hic labor, hic opus est.

and:

The horrible and the preternatural have usually seized on the popular taste, at the rise and decline of literature. Most powerful stimulants, they can never be required except by the torpor of an unawakened, or the languor of an exhausted, appetite... We trust, however, that satiety will banish what good sense should have prevented; and that, wearied with fiends, incomprehensible characters, with shrieks, murders, and subterraneous dungeons, the public will learn, by the multitude of the manufacturers, with how little expense of thought or imagination this species of composition is manufactured.

However, Coleridge used mysterious and demonic elements in poems such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), Christabel and Kubla Khan (published 1816 but known in manuscript form before then) and certainly influenced other poets and writers of the time. Poems like this both drew inspiration from and helped to inflame the craze for Gothic romance.

Mary Shelley, who knew Coleridge well, mentions The Rime of the Ancient Mariner twice directly in Frankenstein, and some of the descriptions in the novel echo it indirectly. Although William Godwin, her father, disagreed with Coleridge on some important issues, he respected his opinions and Coleridge often visited the Godwins. Mary Shelley later recalled hiding behind the sofa and hearing his voice chanting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Common source is more likely for much of this; the Gothicks are indebted to German literature, which Coleridge knew first hand. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:05, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Biographia Literaria

I am pleased to see this applied to the article; but do we need quite so much of it? We are telling Coleridge's life in a page, not expounding his aesthetics in two volumes.

Also, as an annotated edition will make clear, Coleridge was of course writing from memory, and got some things (probably not these) wrong. For matters on which there are likely to be other sources, like magazines and his lecture tours, it should be checked with a modern biography. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The race of Samuel Coleridge Taylor

There seems to be a minor revert war going on over this, so can we discuss it here? The question seems to be whether it is worth noting that the British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor, whose parents named him after Samuel Coleridge, was black. I recall, but have no present source, that it was at one time rumoured that Coleridge himself had black ancestry, because of some supposed features on his portraits, and wonder if that particular story was the reason for the choice of name. If this could be clarified and added into that section about Coleridge-Taylor, then it might be worth noting the colour of C-T's skin. Otherwise I think a case needs to be made for why it should be included.--Guinevere50 18:17, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I think Coleridge-Taylor should be described as a Black British composer. I don't really understand why anyone would want to leave out information that could assist the reader. The reference to him though, in the article (apart from the disambig link), really amounts to trivia - relevant to the Coleridge-Taylor article but not the STC one - and the extensive trivia section was removed from the article a while back, thankfully.--Ethicoaestheticist 20:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
And quite frankly, Coleridge-Taylor is much more notable as a black composer, a quite sparse set before 1950 or so, than he is as a composer. I simply see no reason for shaving the word and identifying him less precisely. Black British would be fine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
That seems fair enough, especially as it allows us us to link to black British so I've altered it accordingly.--Guinevere50 20:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


Modern influence of Samuel Coleridge Taylor

I thought it might be interesting to add in information on the modern influence of STC. Off the top of my head, the band Rush wrote the song "Xanadu" on their "A Farewell to Kings" album, which was an adaptation of Coleridge's Kubla Khan. Additionally, the band Iron Maiden adapted "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" into a 10+ minute song on their Powerslave album. Any others?

Well, part three of the Nightwish song "Beauty of the Beast" (Century Child album) is called Christabel, and if I recall correctly the song makes a few references to Coleridge's poem, although it's not really based on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.251.169 (talk) 14:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:26, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Emerson

I assume that the Emerson referred to a couple of times is Ralph Waldo, but hesitate to disambiguate the link on the off chance I'm wrong (this really isn't my area of expertise). Could somebody who knows for sure fix the link? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:11, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Divorce ?

Concerning Coleridge's marriage with Sarah Fricker, I don't recall to have ever read that he eventually divorced her. He intended to at some point and they lived separately most of the time but they never actually did divorce (mainly because Sarah Coleridge was very much against the idea), unless I'm mistaken. I'm pretty sure I didn't read that fact in Richard Holmes's Biography of Coleridge. I also recall letters of the later Coleridge naming his wife. If anyone knows a source mentioning this divorce, could he/she please share his/her knowledge ? At any rate, I'll investigate further and in case there is no divorce ever mentioned, I'll modify the assertion about it, which imho is not correct. -- Shangdou (talk) 16:16, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

You're right and I have changed it to say he separated, unless someone has a source for saying he divorced. --Straw Cat (talk) 16:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

large unwikified section.

This was added at the beginning of the article. some of it should be worked into the appropriate sections, wikified and sourced. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary on 21 October 1772, youngest of the ten children of John Coleridge, a minister, and Ann Bowden Coleridge. He was often bullied as a child by Frank, the next youngest, and his mother was apparently a bit distant, so it was no surprise when Col1 ran away at age seven. He was found early the next morning by a neighbor, but the events of his night outdoors frequently showed up in imagery in his poems (and his nightmares) as well as the notebooks he kept for most of his adult life. John Coleridge died in 1781, and Col was sent away to a London charity school for children of the clergy. He stayed with his maternal uncle2. Col was really quite a prodigy; he devoured books and eventually earned first place in his class.

His brother Luke died in 1790 and his only sister Ann in 1791, inspiring Col to write "Monody," one of his first poems, in which he likens himself to Thomas Chatterton3. Col was very ill around this time and probably took laudanum for the illness, thus beginning his lifelong opium addiction. He went to Cambridge in 1791, poor in spite of some scholarships, and rapidly worked himself into debt with opium, alcohol, and women. He had started to hope for poetic fame, but by 1793, he owed about £150 and was desperate. So he joined the army.

His family was irate when they finally found out. He'd used the improbable name of Silas Tomkyn Comberbache and had escaped being sent to fight in France because he could only barely ride a horse. His brother George finally arranged his discharge by reason of insanity and got him back to Cambridge. It was there that he met Robert Southey, and they became instant friends. Both political radicals4, they began planning Pantisocracy, their own socio-political movement5. Robert was already engaged to a woman named Edith Fricker, and introduced Col to her sister Sara. Within a few weeks, Col was willing to marry Sara, which he did in October of 1795. Robert and Col had started arguing over Pantisocracy, and finally Robert agreed to his family's wish that he become a lawyer instead of emigrating. Robert's best gift to posterity was the fact that he introduced Col to William Wordsworth. It was Col's misfortune that he met Sara6 Hutchinson through William, who would eventually marry Sara H.'s sister. Col fell in love with this Sara almost immediately, putting an extra strain on an already iffy marriage.

With his marriage, Col tried very hard to become responsible7. He scraped together a fairly respectable income of £120 per year, through tutoring and gifts from his admirers8. His Poems, published in 1797, was well-received and it looked like he was on the fast track to fame. He already had one son, David Hartley Coleridge, born September 1796, followed by Berkeley Coleridge in May 17989. In 1798, the famous Lyrical Ballads was published, the collaboration between Col and William which pretty much created the Romantic movement. The authors didn't realize this at the time, of course; they went to Germany with William's sister Dorothy. Col's son Berkeley died while he was away; the baby had been given the brand-new smallpox vaccination and died of a reaction to it. Col, as was typical of him, returned home slowly so as not to have to deal openly with Berkeley's death, and got little work done.

After a string of illnesses brought on by the damp climate of the Lake Country, Col turned to newspaper work in 1801 to try and recover financially. He was convinced he would die soon, and insured his life shortly after the birth of his daughter Sara10 in 1802. In 1804, he left for Malta in hopes of a cure from the warm climate. Here, he spied a bit for his majesty11, who wanted Malta as a British port, though officially Col was the temporary Public Secretary. Col had also hoped for a release from his addiction, but this was not to be. He returned to England in 1806, and, plucking up his courage, asked for a legal separation from his wife. Though Sara was furious, the separation happened. Col's paranoia and mood swings, brought on by the continual opium use, were getting worse, and he was hardly capable of sustained work12. His friendship with William was all but nonexistent, and Col was again writing newspaper articles to earn a living, further supplemented by various lecture courses13. Most of his remaining work was non-fiction, except for a play or two, and included such works as Biographia Literaria(1817), a work on nearly everything14.

He was still haunted by his failure to break free from opium, however, and to this end he moved into the house of an apothecary named James Gillman, asking Gillman to help cut back his opium dose. Like all addicts, though, Col quickly had an alternate supply arranged. Col had apparently separated from his children as well; his friends and relatives had to take up a collection to send Hartley to school, and at one point, he went 8 years without seeing his children15. His London friends, though, loved his conversational skills and continually sought him out. His nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge16, published a collection of Col's conversation called Table Talk, and Col himself was not only publishing new works, like Aids to Reflection(1825), but was reprinting the old in hopes of finally making a real financial contribution to his family. By 1830, the reviews of his work were becoming more and more positive, and he was generally hailed as the finest critic of his day17. He still couldn't reach financial security, however; a government reorganization lost him his pension from the Royal Society of Literature, his one remaining reliable source of income. He died, surprisingly peacefully, on 25 July 1834, leaving only books and manuscripts behind.

Though he's really only known today for his poetry, Col's contributions to the field of criticism and our language were many. For instance, he not only coined the word 'selfless,' he introduced the word 'aesthetic' to the English language. Charles Lamb wrote one of my favorite descriptions of Col in 1817: "his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Arch angel a little damaged." Cole summed himself up this way, in the epitaph he wrote for himself:

--Jieagles (talk) 19:16, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

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