Professional paper
“A Miracle of Rare Device”: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Power of Imagination
Nika Keserović
Abstract
Coleridge’s daemonic poems (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Christabel”, “Kubla Khan”) are arguably his central and most famous works. Known for their supernatural elements, the poems encapsulate Coleridge’s interest in investigating parts of reality and the human mind which do not seem fully comprehensible to human understanding, and which are therefore represented as something beyond nature. The daemonic poems present the theme of the human mind grasping for knowledge of a noumenal order of the world through the power of imagination.
This paper explores the meaning of the supernatural elements in the three poems. Firstly, it looks at the importance of the imaginative power for Coleridge, as is detailed in his philosophical writings (Biographia Literaria). It then moves to an analysis of the poems and the state of human consciousness represented by the characters. The characters’ experience of the supernatural greatly depends on their imaginative capacity, which is linked with a higher knowledge of the world and a lack of superstitiousness. In the analysis of “Kubla Khan”, the paper explores Coleridge’s idea of the two kinds of creative genius. With “Christabel”, it assesses the morality that necessarily comes with intellectual and imaginative power, and by looking to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, it finally addresses Coleridge’s idea of a possible redemption through imagination.
Keywords
Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Romanticism; daemonic poems; supernatural; imagination
Hrčak ID:
318483
URI
Publication date:
17.11.2022.
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