| Term Paper Title | How Does Coleridge In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner And Kubla Khan Show The |
| # of Words | 760 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 3.04 |
How Does Coleridge in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan' Show the
Interrelatedness Between Mankind, Nature and the Poetic Experience?
Coleridge expresses many thoughtful and rather intense ideas in his poetry,
through using either peculiar or common images of all forms of nature ie human,
environmental or supernatural. His poetic expression is unique in its use of
extraordinary imagery and transition of mood yet he what he creates usually
conforms to numerous literary techniques. The recurring theme in many of his
poems is that of man's harmony with nature, and this idea, combined with his
bizarre and even eccentric poetic expression provides a basis for both 'The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan'.
Mankind, firstly, is explored in both poems by placing the human nature in
situations where perhaps instinct acts before reason. In RAM, the ancient
mariner kills the albatross not for need or in distress, or for any reason that
mariner can deduce the result. He has unknowingly taken on a huge burden, and
the quest begins to extract all the rash impulsiveness of mankind. The mariner
now must search for moral, spiritual and internal rationality, and this goal is
expressed in the poem as a type of blessing or relief which he must earn. In
'Kubla Khan', Coleridge expresses man's social instinct to conform and belong to
a group. This also relates to the creation of rituals and rules by the human-
being and the obeying of the cycle of life to death, again and again. The
running theme of freedom and release for man is emphasised in both poems,
escaping from criticism, in the case of KK, and from blame and regret, in RAM.
They both explore the tendency to be impulsive for reasons accumulated through
the traits of human and social instinct, in contrast to that obtained naturally.
An example of this purely natural expression is that of the senses. KK is an
extremely sensual and sexual poem, appealing to maybe the animalistic part of
the human rather than to the section which recognises its reason and depth. In
RAM, the mariner is subjected to the elements of nature, where all his senses
are exposed to extreme environmental lengths. His instinct strays away from that
based on his position amongst the dead men and the burden he has acquired. He
becomes extremely sensitive in his sight, hearing, sense of touch, smell and
taste and it is then that the mariner becomes inharmonious with nature,
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