Themes, Motifs & Symbols in Coleridge's Kubla Khan

Themes

The Transformative Power of the Imagination

Coleridge believed that a strong, active imagination could become a vehicle for transcending unpleasant circumstances. Many of his poems are powered exclusively by imaginative flights, wherein the Speaker temporarily abandons his immediate surroundings, exchanging them for an entirely new and completely fabricated experience. Using the imagination in this way is both empowering and surprising because it encourages a total and complete disrespect for the confines of time and place. These mental and emotional jumps are often well rewarded. Perhaps Coleridge’s most famous use of imagination occurs in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (1797), in which the speaker employs a keen poetic mind that allows him to take part in a journey that he cannot physically make. When he “returns” to the bower, after having imagined himself on a fantastic stroll through the countryside, the speaker discovers, as a reward, plenty of things to enjoy from inside the bower itself, including the leaves, the trees, and the shadows. The power of imagination transforms the prison into a perfectly pleasant spot.

The Interplay of Philosophy, Piety, and Poetry

Coleridge used his poetry to explore conflicting issues in philosophy and religious piety. Some critics argue that Coleridge’s interest in philosophy was simply his attempt to understand the imaginative and intellectual impulses that fueled his poetry. To support the claim that his imaginative and intellectual forces were, in fact, organic and derived from the natural world, Coleridge linked them to God, spirituality, and worship. In his work, however, poetry, philosophy, and piety clashed, creating friction and disorder for Coleridge, both on and off the page. In “The Eolian Harp” (1795), Coleridge struggles to reconcile the three forces. Here, the speaker’s philosophical tendencies, particularly the belief that an “intellectual breeze” (47) brushes by and inhabits all living things with consciousness, collide with those of his orthodox wife, who disapproves of his unconventional ideas and urges him to Christ. While his wife lies untroubled, the speaker agonizes over his spiritual conflict, caught between Christianity and a unique, individual spirituality that equates nature with God. The poem ends by discounting the pantheist spirit, and the speaker concludes by privileging God and Christ over nature and praising them for having healed him from the spiritual wounds inflicted by these unorthodox views.

Nature and the Development of the Individual

Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other romantic poets praised the unencumbered, imaginative soul of youth, finding images in nature with which to describe it. According to their formulation, experiencing nature was an integral part of the development of a complete soul and sense of personhood. The death of his father forced Coleridge to attend school in London, far away from the rural idylls of his youth, and he lamented the missed opportunities of his sheltered, city-bound adolescence in many poems, including “Frost at Midnight” (1798). Here, the speaker sits quietly by a fire, musing on his life, while his infant son sleeps nearby. He recalls his boarding school days, during which he would both daydream and lull himself to sleep by remembering his home far away from the city, and he tells his son that he shall never be removed from nature, the way the speaker once was. Unlike the speaker, the son shall experience the seasons and shall learn about God by discovering the beauty and bounty of the natural world. The son shall be given the opportunity to develop a relationship with God and with nature, an opportunity denied to both the speaker and Coleridge himself. For Coleridge, nature had the capacity to teach joy, love, freedom, and piety, crucial characteristics for a worthy, developed individual.

Motifs

Conversation Poems

Coleridge wanted to mimic the patterns and cadences of everyday speech in his poetry. Many of his poems openly address a single figure—the speaker’s wife, son, friend, and so on—who listens silently to the simple, straightforward language of the speaker. Unlike the descriptive, long, digressive poems of Coleridge’s classicist predecessors, Coleridge’s so-called conversation poems are short, self-contained, and often without a discernable poetic form. Colloquial, spontaneous, and friendly, Coleridge’s conversation poetry is also highly personal, frequently incorporating events and details of his domestic life in an effort to widen the scope of possible poetic content. Although he sometimes wrote in Blank Verse, unrhymed Iambic Pentameter, he adapted this metrical form to suit a more colloquial rhythm. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge believed that everyday language and speech rhythms would help broaden poetry’s audience to include the middle and lower classes, who might have felt excluded or put off by the form and content of neoclassicists, such as Alexander Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and John Dryden.

Delight in the Natural World

Like the other romantics, Coleridge worshiped nature and recognized poetry’s capacity to describe the beauty of the natural world. Nearly all of Coleridge’s poems express a respect for and delight in natural beauty. Close observation, great attention to detail, and precise descriptions of color aptly demonstrate Coleridge’s respect and delight. Some poems, such as “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” “Youth and Age” (1834), and “Frost at Midnight,” mourn the speakers’ physical isolation from the outside world. Others, including “The Eolian Harp,” use images of nature to explore philosophical and analytical ideas. Still other poems, including “The Nightingale” (ca. 1798), simply praise nature’s beauty. Even poems that don’t directly deal with nature, including “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” derive some symbols and images from nature. Nevertheless, Coleridge guarded against the Pathetic Fallacy, or the attribution of human feeling to the natural world. To Coleridge, nature contained an innate, constant joyousness wholly separate from the ups and downs of human experience.

Prayer

Although Coleridge’s prose reveals more of his religious philosophizing than his poetry, God, Christianity, and the act of prayer appear in some form in nearly all of his poems. The son of an Anglican vicar, Coleridge vacillated from supporting to criticizing Christian tenets and the Church of England. Despite his criticisms, Coleridge remained defiantly supportive of prayer, praising it in his notebooks and repeatedly referencing it in his poems. He once told the novelist Thomas de Quincey that prayer demanded such close attention that it was the one of the hardest actions of which human hearts were capable. The conclusion to Part 1of Christabel portrays Christabel in prayer, “a lovely sight to see” (279). In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the mariner is stripped of his ability to speak as part of his extreme punishment and, consequently, left incapable of praying. “The Pains of Sleep” (1803) contrasts the speaker at restful prayer, in which he prays silently, with the speaker at passionate prayer, in which he battles imaginary demons to pray aloud. In the sad poem, “Epitaph” (1833), Coleridge composes an epitaph for himself, which urges people to pray for him after he dies. Rather than recommend a manner or method of prayer, Coleridge’s poems reflect a wide variety, which emphasizes his belief in the importance of individuality.

Symbols

The Sun

Coleridge believed that symbolic language was the only acceptable way of expressing deep religious truths and consistently employed the sun as a symbol of God. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge compares the sun to “God’s own head” (97) and, later, attributes the first phase of the mariner’s punishment to the sun, as it dehydrates the crew. All told, this poem contains eleven references to the sun, many of which signify the Christian conception of a wrathful, vengeful God. Bad, troubling things happen to the crew during the day, while smooth sailing and calm weather occur at night, by the light of the moon. Frequently, the sun stands in for God’s influence and power, as well as a symbol of his authority. The setting sun spurs philosophical musings, as in “The Eolian Harp,” and the dancing rays of sunlight represent a pinnacle of nature’s beauty, as in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.”

The Moon

Like the sun, the moon often symbolizes God, but the moon has more positive connotations than the sun. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the sun and the moon represent two sides of the Christian God: the sun represents the angry, wrathful God, whereas the moon represents the benevolent, repentant God. All told, the moon appears fourteen times in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and generally favorable things occur during night, in contrast to the horrors that occur during the day. For example, the mariner’s curse lifts and he returns home by moonlight. “Dejection: An Ode” (1802) begins with an epitaph about the new moon and goes on to describe the beauty of a moonlit night, contrasting its beauty with the speaker’s sorrowful soul. Similarly, “Frost at Midnight” also praises the moon as it illuminates icicles on a winter evening and spurs the speaker to great thought.

Dreams and Dreaming

Coleridge explores dreams and dreaming in his poetry to communicate the power of the imagination, as well as the inaccessible clarity of vision. “Kubla Khan” is subtitled “A Vision in a Dream.” According to Coleridge, he fell asleep while reading and dreamed of a marvelous pleasure palace for the next few hours. Upon awakening, he began transcribing the dream-vision but was soon called away; when he returned, he wrote out the fragments that now comprise “Kubla Khan.” Some critics doubt Coleridge’s story, attributing it to an attempt at increasing the poem’s dramatic effect. Nevertheless, the poem speaks to the imaginative possibilities of the subconscious. Dreams usually have a pleasurable connotation, as in “Frost at Midnight.” There, the speaker, lonely and insomniac as a child at boarding school, comforts himself by imagining and then dreaming of his rural home. In his real life, however, Coleridge suffered from nightmares so terrible that sometimes his own screams would wake him, a phenomenon he details in “The Pains of Sleep.” Opium probably gave Coleridge a sense of well-being that allowed him to sleep without the threat of nightmares.

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Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems: An Ecofeminist Perspective

Ecofeminism as a movement embodies a philosophy that links feminism with ecology. It is believed that the term was coined by the French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne in her book, Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminism connects the exploitation and domination of women to the environment, and argues that there is an association between Nature and women. A large and growing body of literature on Ecofeminism in the West relatesgender and environment mainly in ideological terms.Ecofeminists consider that this connection is illustrated through the traditionally ‘female’ values of reciprocity,nurturing and cooperation, which are present both among women and in nature. Ecofeminist theory interrogates orrejects previously held patriarchal paradigms and holds that the domination of women by men is intimately linked to thedestruction of the environment. This paper seeks to delineate the Ecofeminist angle in Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems. However during the Romantic Age there were no such theories as we see in the contemporary times, but a reading of the five Lucy Poems ascribe to the fact that apart from a hardcore Romantic, Wordsworth’s bent of mind was Ecofeminist too. The poems taken in this paper will try elaborating the fact, how Wordsworth as a poet was highly influenced by Nature, and how he blended the Nature with feminine understanding thereby creating a corpus of work that substantiates the fact, how much it is required that an understanding of life could be better done when itis seen in close connection to the women as well as Nature, because it is ultimately the harmony between the two, that can sustain human life.

Wordsworth’s treatment of women in his poetry was certainly influenced to a great extent by the women in his personal life. Women in his house had to perform two folds of duties: doing the laundry and taking dictation as well as laboring to make fair copies of manuscripts. In Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals we find an attestation of this fact as ladies like Dorothy, Mary Wordsworth, Mary’s sister Sara Hutchinson and later the Wordsworth’s daughter Dora and her friend Isabella Fenwick used to provide domestic and editorial help. But more important than all these was, perhaps the fact that these women were the source of inspiration for Wordsworth’s poetry. They were the ones who provided emotional and intellectual context in which he could write.

If these women had direct and positive impact on the creations of William Wordsworth, there are at least two more female figures that could have disturbed his conscience with a sense of guilt and empathy. Wordsworth’s abandonment of Annette Vallon, his first love, and their daughter Caroline are finally connected in his imagination to his feelings of abandonment by his mother (who died when he was eight) and to his lifelong fear of further loss. Thus, in his life, there is a paradoxical sense of abandonment as he had suffered the bereavement of his mother before he himself left Annette Vallon and Caroline. And it will not be improper to say that all these experiences with women shaped Wordsworth’s impression about women and his subsequent treatment of them in his poetry. That is why the grieving or abandoned women in his poetry- in the Lyrical Ballads, in "Laodamia," and in The Excursion- can be seen as expressions of guilt and empathy.

It is in theLucy Poemsthat the treatment of feminine as sensory and natural is reflected. Although, Lucy seems to be the central character, she is valued up to a certain point. The identity of Lucy has always been a debate. ‘Who was Lucy?’ There is no answer to this question except to say that it is extraneous. Lucy may or may not have been inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth, by Annette Vallon, or by another young woman. Whoever Lucy is, she remains a mysterious figure. But this mysterious figure of Lucy is always seen in the relation of Nature and a reading of the Lucy poems time and again show how Wordsworth was trying to deliver a message through connecting Lucy with Nature around her.

Throughout the ages, Wordsworth has been appreciated as a true believer in an extraordinary power of Nature. To him, it is not only beautiful; it has also the power to influence human life in an unimaginable but positive way. In those poems of his, where Nature is the centre of focus, his philosophy regarding women is not at all absent. To show this, he has first brought into discussion the theory of Edmund Burke.

Nature, for Burke, possesses both ‘sublime’ and ‘beautiful’ aspects. And they have their distinct impacts on the mind of man. In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke, attempting to define the experience of sublime, “spoke of an experience of a power that exceeds the quantifiable and the usable” (Day, 1996: 183). This power evokes pain and terror rather than pleasure and love in our mind. The viewer is awe-stricken and what he feels can only be termed as ‘terrifying thrill’ which is the result of something grand and commanding. As examples of ‘sublime’ Burke has cited those that can produce an impression of infinity: “in natural phenomena and in human constructions, whose dimensions, particularly along the vertical line, are huge and grand: in the overwhelming mass of mountains or in deep dark caves, in soaring buildings, particularly ruins, or even in poetry (such as that in the Old Testament or in Homer) which celebrates the superhuman or the divine” (Day, 1996: 184). And the ultimate sublime object, for Burke, is God. As opposed to masculine gendering of sublime, things which are beautiful have been termed by Burke as feminine and are of a lesser order than sublime.

Nature seen in these respect, when got the feminine attributes and a female character to voice forward its valuable existence made Wordsworth’s poetry sublime.In “Tintern Abbey” he is thankful to Nature for all its gifts-‘sensations sweet’ during the weary hours of city life in London, ‘tranquil restoration’ that passed into his mind and made it purer or feelings of ‘unremembered pleasure’ that made him perform ‘acts of kindness and of love’. But above everything, he values most ‘that blessed mood’- an ‘aspect more sublime’.Nature was, for him, not only to gratify his senses and provide him pleasure; rather, it was, for him, endowed with a presence- a presence of something divine. That is why, it will not be wrong to say that the experience of Nature used to take him to the pinnacle of sublimity since a divine being, perhaps God Himself, used to be reflected in his eyes.

The Lucy Poemsare written from the point of view of a lover who has long viewed the object of his affection from afar, and who is now affected by her death. Yet Wordsworth structured the poems so that they are not about any one person who has died; instead they were written about a figure representing the poet’s lost inspiration. Lucy is Wordsworth’s inspiration, and the poems as a whole are, according to Wordsworth biographer Kenneth Johnston, “invocations to a Muse feared dead”. Lucy is represented in all five poems as sexless; it is unlikely that the poet ever realistically saw her as a possible lover. Instead, she is presented as an ideal and represents Wordsworth’s frustration at his separation from Coleridge.

Wordsworth’s voice slowly disappears from the poems as they progress, and his voice is entirely absent from the fifth poem. His love operates on the subconscious level, and he relates to Lucy more as a spirit of nature than as a human being. From an Ecofeminist angle if we observe these five Lucy Poemswe can very well say that these poems were not only the musings of the poet, but his attempt to bring woman and nature in one strong frame, so as to impart the valuable doctrine that it is in the close harmony and understanding of the two that mankind can have a better destiny.The poet’s anguish is confidential, and he is unable to fully explain its source.When Lucy’s lover is present, he is completely immersed in human interactions and the human aspects of nature, and the death of his beloved is a total loss for the lover. The 20th-century critic Spencer Hall argues that the poet represents a “fragile kind of humanism”.

Lucy is presented as character connected to nature who exists in a state between the spiritual and human; similar to a mythical nymph. However, she represents a state of consciousness and exists within the poem as part of the narrator’s consciousness.“Strange fits” is probably the earliest of the poems and revolves around a fantasy of Lucy’s death. It describes the narrator’s journey to the cottage of Lucy and his thoughts along the way. Throughout, the motion of the moon is set in opposition to the motion of the speaker. The poem contains seven stanzas, and a relatively elaborate structure which underscores his undecided attitude towards Lucy’s imagined death. The constant shifts in perspective and mood reflect his conflicting emotions.The first stanza, with its use of dramatic phrases such as “fits of passion” and “dare to tell”, contrasts with the subdued tone of the rest of the poem.

The presence of death is felt throughout the poem, although it is mentioned explicitly only in the final line. The moon, a symbol of the beloved, sinks steadily as the poem progresses, until its abrupt drop in the penultimate stanza. That the speaker links Lucy with the moon is clear, though his reasons are unclear. The moon nevertheless plays a significant role in the action of the poem: as the lover imagines the moon slowly sinking behind Lucy’s cottage, he is entranced by its motion. By the fifth stanza, the speaker has been lulled into a somnambulistic trance—he sleeps while still keeping his eyes on the moon (lines 17–20). When the moon abruptly drops behind the cottage, the narrator snaps out of his dream, and his thoughts turn towards death. Lucy, the beloved, is united with the landscape in death, while the image of the retreating, entrancing moon is used to portray the idea of looking beyond one’s lover.The darker possibility also remains that the dream state represents the fulfillment of the lover’s fantasy through the death of the beloved. In falling asleep while approaching his beloved’s home, the lover betrays his own reluctance to be with Lucy.

Wordsworth made numerous revisions to each of the Lucy Poems.The earliest version of “Strange fits” appears in a December 1798 letter from Dorothy to Coleridge. This draft contains many differences in phrasing and does not include a stanza that appeared in the final published version. Wordsworth also removed from the final stanza the lines:

I told her this; her laughter light
Is ringing in my ears;
And when I think upon that night
My eyes are dim with tears.

This final stanza lost its significance with the completion of the later poems in the series, and the revision allowed for a sense of anticipation at the poem’s ending and helped draw the audience into the story of the remaining “Lucy poems”. Of the other changes, only the description of the horse’s movement is important: “My horse trudg’d on” becomes “With quickening pace my horse drew nigh”, which heightens the narrator’s vulnerability to fantasies and dreams in the revised version.

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways” presents Lucy as having lived in solitude near the source of the River Dove. According to literary critic Geoffrey Durrant, the poem charts her “growth, perfection, and death”. To convey the dignified, unaffected naturalness of his subject, Wordsworth uses simple language, mostly words of one syllable. In the opening quatrain he describes the isolated and untouched area where Lucy lived, as well as her innocence and beauty, which he compares to that of a hidden flower in the second. The poem begins in a descriptive rather than narrative manner and it is not until the line “When Lucy ceased to be” that the reader is made aware that the subject of the verse has died. Literary scholar Mark Jones describes this effect as finding the poem is “over before it has begun”, while according to writer Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897), Lucy “is dead before we so much as heard of her”.

Lucy’s “untrodden ways” are symbolic of both her physical isolation and the unknown details of her thoughts and life. The third quatrain is written with an economy intended to capture the simplicity the narrator sees in Lucy. Her femininity is described in girlish terms. This has drawn criticism from those who see the female icon, in the words of literary scholar John Woolford, “represented in Lucy by condemning her to death while denying her the actual or symbolic fulfillment of maternity”. To evoke the “loveliness of body and spirit”, a pair of complementary but paradoxical images are employed in the second stanza: the solitary, hidden violetjuxtaposed to the publicly visible Venus and first star of evening.Wondering if Lucy more resembles the violet or the star, the critic Cleanth Brooks (1906–1994) concludes that while Wordsworth likely views her as “the single star, completely dominating [his] world, not arrogantly like the sun, but sweetly and modestly”, the metaphor is a conventional compliment with only vague relevance. For Wordsworth, Lucy’s appeal is closer to the violet and lies in her seclusion and her perceived affinity with nature.

Wordsworth’s influence of the traditional English folk ballad is evident in the metre, rhythm and structure of “She dwelt”. The narrator of the poem is less concerned with the experience of observing Lucy than with his reflections and meditations on his observations. Throughout the poem sadness and ecstasy are intertwined, a fact emphasised by the exclamation marks in the second and third verses. The critic Carl Woodring writes that “She dwelt" and the Lucy series can be read as elegiac as “sober meditation[s] on death”. He found that they have “the economy and the general air of epitaphs in the Greek Anthology [I]f all elegies are mitigations of death, the Lucy Poemsare also meditations on simple beauty, by distance made more sweet and by death preserved in distance”.

An early draft of “She dwelt” contained two stanzas which had been omitted from the first edition. The revisions exclude many of the images but emphasise the grief that the narrator experienced. The original version began with floral imagery, which was later cut:

My hope was one, from cities far,
Nursed on a lonesome heath;
Her lips were red as roses are,
Her hair a woodbine wreath.

A fourth stanza, also later removed, included an explanation of how Lucy was to die: “But slow distemper checked her bloom / And on the Heath she died.”

The last of the Lucy Poemsto be composed, “I travelled among unknown men”, was the only one not included in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads. Although Wordsworth claimed that the poem was composed while he was still in Germany, it was in fact written during April 1801. Evidence for this later date comes from a letter Wordsworth wrote to Mary Hutchinson referring to “I travelled” as a newly created poem.In 1802, he instructed his printer to place “I travelled” immediately after “A slumber did my spirit seal” in Lyrical Ballads, but the poem was omitted. It was later published in Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807.

The poem has frequently been read as a declaration of Wordsworth’s love for his native England and his determination not to live abroad again:

‘Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more. (lines 5–8)

The first two stanzas seem to speak of the poet’s personal experience, and a patriotic reading would reflect his appreciation and pride for the English landscape. The possibility remains, however, that Wordsworth is referring to England as a physical rather than a political entity, an interpretation that gains strength from the poem’s connections to the other Lucy Poems.Lucy only appears in the second half of the poem, where she is linked with the English landscape. As such, it seems as if nature joins with the narrator in mourning for her, and the reader is drawn into this mutual sorrow.

Although “I travelled” was composed two years after the other poems in the series, it echoes the earlier verses, in both tone and language. Wordsworth gives no hint as to the identity of Lucy, and although he stated in the preface to Lyrical Ballads that all the poems were “founded on fact”, knowing the basis for the character of Lucy is not necessary to appreciate the poem and understand its sentiment. 

“Three years she grew in sun and shower” was composed between 6 October and 28 December 1798. The poem depicts the relationship between Lucy and nature through a complex opposition of images. Antithetical couplings of words—“sun and shower”, “law and impulse”, “earth and heaven”, “kindle and restrain”—are used to evoke the opposing forces inherent in nature. A conflict between nature and humanity is described, as each attempt to possess Lucy. The poem contains both epithalamic and elegiac characteristics; Lucy is shown as wedded to nature, while her human lover is left alone to mourn in the knowledge that death has separated her from humanity.

Written in spare language, “A slumber did my spirit seal” consists of two stanzas, each four lines long. The first stanza is built upon even, soporific movement in which figurative language conveys the nebulous image of a girl who “seemed a thing that could not feel / The touch of earthly years”. The second maintains the quiet and even tone of the first but serves to undermine its sense of the eternal by revealing that Lucy has died and that the calmness of the first stanza represents death. The narrator’s response to her death lacks bitterness or emptiness; instead he takes consolation from the fact that she is now beyond trials of life, and “at last ... in inanimate community with the earth’s natural fixtures”.The lifeless rocks and stones depicted in the concluding line convey the inevitability of Lucy’s death.

The five Lucy Poemsare often interpreted as representing Wordsworth’s opposing views of Nature as well as meditations on the cycle of life. They describe a variety of relationships between humanity and Nature. For example, Lucy can be seen as a connection between humanity and nature, as a “boundary being, nature sprite and human, yet not quite either. She reminds us of the traditional mythical person who lives, ontologically, an intermediate life, or mediates various realms of existence”.Although the poems evoke a sense of loss, they also hint at the completeness of Lucy’s life—she was raised by nature and survives in the memories of others. She became, in the opinion of the American poet and writer David Ferry (b. 1924), “not so much a human being as a sort of compendium of nature”, while “her death was right, after all, for by dying she was one with the natural processes that made her die, and fantastically ennobled thereby”.

In conclusion, it can be drawn that Wordsworth’s ultimate obsession lies with the sublimity of Nature which he worships, but he never avoids the feminine nature or the femininity in Nature.He has projected his women in such a way that although they do not maintain the dominance in terms of attitude but they are found to occupy the central position in the poems.Lucy Poems are the best examples of capturing the soul of Nature and seeing them through a feminine lens adds more to it.

References

Abrams, M.H. “The Romantic Period”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume

 2A.7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.

Beer, John. Wordsworth and the Human Heart. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. 

Hall, Spencer. "Wordsworth's 'Lucy' Poems: Context and Meaning". Studies in Romanticism 10

 (1971): 159–75.

Hartman, Geoffrey. Wordsworth's Poetry 1787–1814. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

Matlak, Richard. “Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems in Psychobiographical Context”. PMLA 93. 1

 (January 1978): 46–65.

Rolfe, William J. William Wordsworth, Select Poems of William Wordsworth. New York:

            American Book, 1889.

Oliver Twist : Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Failure of Charity

Much of the first part of Oliver Twist challenges the organizations of charity run by the church and the government in Dickens’s time. The system Dickens describes was put into place by the Poor Law of 1834, which stipulated that the poor could only receive government assistance if they moved into government workhouses. Residents of those workhouses were essentially inmates whose rights were severely curtailed by a host of onerous regulations. Labor was required, families were almost always separated, and rations of food and clothing were meager. The workhouses operated on the principle that poverty was the consequence of laziness and that the dreadful conditions in the workhouse would inspire the poor to better their own circumstances. Yet the economic dislocation of the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for many to do so, and the workhouses did not provide any means for social or economic betterment. Furthermore, as Dickens points out, the officials who ran the workhouses blatantly violated the values they preached to the poor. Dickens describes with great sarcasm the greed, laziness, and arrogance of charitable workers like Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Mann. In general, charitable institutions only reproduced the awful conditions in which the poor would live anyway. As Dickens puts it, the poor choose between “being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.”

The Folly of Individualism

With the rise of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, individualism was very much in vogue as a philosophy. Victorian capitalists believed that society would run most smoothly if individuals looked out for their own interests. Ironically, the clearest pronunciation of this philosophy comes not from a legitimate businessman but from Fagin, who operates in the illicit businesses of theft and prostitution. He tells Noah Claypole that “a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.” In other words, the group’s interests are best maintained if every individual looks out for “number one,” or himself. The folly of this philosophy is demonstrated at the end of the novel, when Nancy turns against Monks, Charley Bates turns against Sikes, and Monks turns against Mrs. Corney. Fagin’s unstable family, held together only by the self-interest of its members, is juxtaposed to the little society formed by Oliver, Brownlow, Rose Maylie, and their many friends. This second group is bound together not by concerns of self-interest but by “strong affection and humanity of heart,” the selfless devotion to each other that Dickens sees as the prerequisite for “perfect happiness.”

Purity in a Corrupt City

Throughout the novel, Dickens confronts the question of whether the terrible environments he depicts have the power to “blacken [the soul] and change its hue for ever.” By examining the fates of most of the characters, we can assume that his answer is that they do not. Certainly, characters like Sikes and Fagin seem to have sustained permanent damage to their moral sensibilities. Yet even Sikes has a conscience, which manifests itself in the apparition of Nancy’s eyes that haunts him after he murders her. Charley Bates maintains enough of a sense of decency to try to capture Sikes. Of course, Oliver is above any corruption, though the novel removes him from unhealthy environments relatively early in his life. Most telling of all is Nancy, who, though she considers herself “lost almost beyond redemption,” ends up making the ultimate sacrifice for a child she hardly knows. In contrast, Monks, perhaps the novel’s most inhuman villain, was brought up amid wealth and comfort.

The Countryside Idealized

All the injustices and privations suffered by the poor in Oliver Twist occur in cities—either the great city of London or the provincial city where Oliver is born. When the Maylies take Oliver to the countryside, he discovers a “new existence.” Dickens asserts that even people who have spent their entire lives in “close and noisy places” are likely, in the last moments of their lives, to find comfort in half--imagined memories “of sky, and hill and plain.” Moreover, country scenes have the potential to “purify our thoughts” and erase some of the vices that develop in the city. Hence, in the country, “the poor people [are] so neat and clean,” living a life that is free of the squalor that torments their urban counterparts. Oliver and his new family settle in a small village at the novel’s end, as if a happy ending would not be possible in the city. Dickens’s portrait of rural life in Oliver Twist is more approving yet far less realistic than his portrait of urban life. This fact does not contradict, but rather supports, the general estimation of Dickens as a great urban writer. It is precisely Dickens’s distance from the countryside that allows him to idealize it.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Disguised or Mistaken Identities

The plot of Oliver Twist revolves around the various false identities that other characters impose upon Oliver, often for the sake of advancing their own interests. Mr. Bumble and the other workhouse officials insist on portraying Oliver as something he is not—an ungrateful, immoral pauper. Monks does his best to conceal Oliver’s real identity so that Monks himself can claim Oliver’s rightful inheritance. Characters also disguise their own identities when it serves them well to do so. Nancy pretends to be Oliver’s middle-class sister in order to get him back to Fagin, while Monks changes his name and poses as a common criminal rather than the heir he really is. Scenes depicting the manipulation of clothing indicate how it plays an important part in the construction of various characters’ identities. Nancy dons new clothing to pass as a middle-class girl, and Fagin strips Oliver of all his upper-class credibility when he takes from him the suit of clothes purchased by Brownlow. The novel’s resolution revolves around the revelation of the real identities of Oliver, Rose, and Monks. Only when every character’s identity is known with certainty does the story achieve real closure.

Hidden Family Relationships

The revelation of Oliver’s familial ties is among the novel’s most unlikely plot turns: Oliver is related to Brownlow, who was married to his father’s sister; to Rose, who is his aunt; and to Monks, who is his half-brother. The coincidences involved in these facts are quite unbelievable and represent the novel’s rejection of realism in favor of fantasy. Oliver is at first believed to be an orphan without parents or relatives, a position that would, in that time and place, almost certainly seal his doom. Yet, by the end of the novel, it is revealed that he has more relatives than just about anyone else in the novel. This reversal of his fortunes strongly resembles the fulfillment of a naïve child’s wish. It also suggests the mystical binding power of family relationships. Brownlow and Rose take to Oliver immediately, even though he is implicated in an attempted robbery of Rose’s house, while Monks recognizes Oliver the instant he sees him on the street. The influence of blood ties, it seems, can be felt even before anyone knows those ties exist.

Surrogate Families

Before Oliver finds his real family, a number of individuals serve him as substitue parents, mostly with very limited success. Mrs. Mann and Mr. Bumble are surrogate parents, albeit horribly negligent ones, for the vast numbers of orphans under their care. Mr. Sowerberry and his wife, while far from ideal, are much more serviceable parent figures to Oliver, and one can even imagine that Oliver might have grown up to be a productive citizen under their care. Interestingly, it is the mention of his real mother that leads to Oliver’s voluntary abandonment of the Sowerberrys. The most provocative of the novel’s mock family structures is the unit formed by Fagin and his young charges. Fagin provides for and trains his wards nearly as well as a father might, and he inspires enough loyalty in them that they stick around even after they are grown. But these quasi-familial relationships are built primarily around exploitation and not out of true concern or selfless interest. Oddly enough, the only satisfactory surrogate parents Oliver finds are Brownlow and Rose, both of whom turn out to be actual relatives.

Oliver’s Face

Oliver’s face is singled out for special attention at multiple points in the novel. Mr. Sowerberry, Charley Bates, and Toby Crackit all comment on its particular appeal, and its resemblance to the portrait of Agnes Fleming provides the first clue to Oliver’s identity. The power of Oliver’s physiognomy, combined with the facts that Fagin is hideous and Rose is beautiful, suggests that in the world of the novel, external appearance usually gives a fair impression of a person’s inner character.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Characters’ Names

The names of characters represent personal qualities. Oliver Twist himself is the most obvious example. The name “Twist,” though given by accident, alludes to the outrageous reversals of fortune that he will experience. Rose Maylie’s name echoes her association with flowers and springtime, youth and beauty. Toby Crackit’s name is a lighthearted reference to his chosen profession of breaking into houses. Mr. Bumble’s name connotes his bumbling arrogance; Mrs. Mann’s, her lack of maternal instinct; and Mr. Grimwig’s, his superficial grimness that can be removed as easily as a wig.

Bull’s-eye

Bill Sikes’s dog, Bull’s-eye, has “faults of temper in common with his owner” and is a symbolic emblem of his owner’s character. The dog’s viciousness reflects and represents Sikes’s own animal-like brutality. After Sikes murders Nancy, Bull’s-eye comes to represent Sikes’s guilt. The dog leaves bloody footprints on the floor of the room where the murder is committed. Not long after, Sikes becomes desperate to get rid of the dog, convinced that the dog’s presence will give him away. Yet, just as Sikes cannot shake off his guilt, he cannot shake off Bull’s-eye, who arrives at the house of Sikes’s demise before Sikes himself does. Bull’s-eye’s name also conjures up the image of Nancy’s eyes, which haunts Sikes until the bitter end and eventually causes him to hang himself accidentally.

London Bridge

Nancy’s decision to meet Brownlow and Rose on London Bridge reveals the symbolic aspect of this bridge in Oliver Twist. Bridges exist to link two places that would otherwise be separated by an uncrossable chasm. The meeting on London Bridge represents the collision of two worlds unlikely ever to come into contact—the idyllic world of Brownlow and Rose, and the atmosphere of degradation in which Nancy lives. On the bridge, Nancy is given the chance to cross over to the better way of life that the others represent, but she rejects that opportunity, and by the time the three have all left the bridge, that possibility has vanished forever.

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Notes made from internet source 

TYPES OF NOVEL

Epistolary Novel

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use. The word epistolary is derived from Latin from the Greek word ἐπιστολή epistolē, meaning a letter (see epistle).

The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator.

The epistolary novel as a genre became popular in the 18th century in the works of such authors as Samuel Richardson, with his immensely successful novels Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1749). In France, there was Lettres persanes (1721) by Montesquieu, followed by Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), which used the epistolary form to great dramatic effect, because the sequence of events was not always related directly or explicitly. In Germany, there was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774) (The Sorrows of Young Werther) and Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion. The first North American novel, The History of Emily Montague (1769) by Frances Brooke was written in epistolary form.

Starting in the 18th century, the epistolary form was subject to much ridicule, resulting in a number of savage burlesques. The most notable example of these was Henry Fielding's Shamela (1741), written as a parody of Pamela. In it, the female narrator can be found wielding a pen and scribbling her diary entries under the most dramatic and unlikely of circumstances. Oliver Goldsmith used the form to satirical effect in The Citizen of the World, subtitled "Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London to his Friends in the East" (1760–61). So did the diarist Fanny Burney in a successful comic first novel, Evelina (1788).

The epistolary novel slowly fell out of use in the late 18th century. Although Jane Austen tried her hand at the epistolary in juvenile writings and her novella Lady Susan (1794), she abandoned this structure for her later work. It is thought that her lost novel First Impressions, which was redrafted to become Pride and Prejudice, may have been epistolary: Pride and Prejudice contains an unusual number of letters quoted in full and some play a critical role in the plot.

The epistolary form nonetheless saw continued use, surviving in exceptions or in fragments in nineteenth-century novels. In Honoré de Balzac's novel Letters of Two Brides, two women who became friends during their education at a convent correspond over a 17-year period, exchanging letters describing their lives. Mary Shelley employs the epistolary form in her novel Frankenstein (1818). Shelley uses the letters as one of a variety of framing devices, as the story is presented through the letters of a sea captain and scientific explorer attempting to reach the north pole who encounters Victor Frankenstein and records the dying man's narrative and confessions. Published in 1848, Anne Brontë's novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is framed as a retrospective letter from one of the main heroes to his friend and brother-in-law with the diary of the eponymous tenant inside it. In the late 19th century, Bram Stoker released one of the most widely recognized and successful novels in the epistolary form to date, Dracula. Printed in 1897, the novel is compiled entirely of letters, diary entries, newspaper clippings, telegrams, doctor's notes, ship's logs, and the like.

There are 3 types of epistolary novels: monologic (giving the letters of only one character, like Letters of a Portuguese Nun and The Sorrows of Young Werther), dialogic (giving the letters of two characters, like Mme Marie Jeanne Riccoboni's Letters of Fanni Butler (1757), and polylogic (with three or more letter-writing characters, such as in Bram Stoker's Dracula). In addition, a crucial element in polylogic epistolary novels like Clarissa, and Dangerous Liaisons is the dramatic device of 'discrepant awareness': the simultaneous but separate correspondences of the heroines and the villains creating dramatic tension.

An important strategic device in the epistolary novel for creating the impression of authenticity of the letters is the fictional editor.

PICARESQUE NOVEL

The picaresque novel (Spanish: picaresca, from pícaro, for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society.^[1] Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire. This style of novel originated in Spain in 1554 and flourished throughout Europe for more than 200 years, though the term "picaresque novel" was only coined in 1810. It continues to influence modern literature. The term is also sometimes used to describe works, like Cervantes' Don Quixote and Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers, which only contain some of the genre's elements.

According to the traditional view of Thrall and Hibbard (first published in 1936), seven qualities distinguish the picaresque novel or narrative form, all or some of which an author may employ for effect:^[2]

·         A picaresque narrative is usually written in first person as an autobiographical account.

·         The main character is often of low character or social class. He or she gets by with wits and rarely deigns to hold a job.

·         There is little or no plot. The story is told in a series of loosely connected adventures or episodes.

·         There is little if any character development in the main character. Once a pícaro, always a pícaro. His or her circumstances may change but these rarely result in a change of heart.

·         The pícaro's story is told with a plainness of language or realism.

·         Satire is sometimes a prominent element.

·         The behavior of a picaresque hero or heroine stops just short of criminality. Carefree or immoral rascality positions the picaresque hero as a sympathetic outsider, untouched by the false rules of society.

In the English-speaking world, the term "picaresque" is often used loosely to refer to novels that contain some elements of this genre; e.g. an episodic recounting of adventures on the road.

EXAMPLES : Henry Fielding proved his mastery of the form in Joseph Andrews (1742), The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great (1743) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), though Fielding attributed his style to an "imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote".

William Makepeace Thackeray is the master of the 19th Century English picaresque. Like Moll Flanders, Thackeray's best-known work, Vanity Fair A Novel Without a Hero (1847-1848), (a title ironically derived from John Bunyan's Puritan allegory of redemption The Pilgrim's Progress(1678)), follows the career of fortune-hunting adventuress Becky Sharp. His earlier novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) recounts the rise and fall of an Irish arriviste conniving his way into the 18th century English aristocracy.

Aleko Konstantinov wrote the novel Bay Ganyo (1895) about a Bulgarian rogue of that name who does business and swindles around Europe, and returns home and gets into politics and newspaper publishing. Bay Ganyo is a well-known stereotype in Bulgaria.

GOTHIC NOVEL

Gothic fiction, which is largely known by the subgenre of Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature and film that combines fiction and horror, death, and at times romance. Its origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled (in its second edition) "A Gothic Story". The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. It originated in England in the second half of the 18th century where, following Walpole, it was further developed by Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Thomas Beckford and Matthew Lewis. The genre had much success in the 19th century, as witnessed in prose by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the works of Edgar Allan Poe as well as Charles Dickens with his novella, A Christmas Carol, and in poetry in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron. Another well known novel in this genre, dating from the late Victorian era, is Bram Stoker's Dracula. The name Gothic, which originally referred to the Goths, and then came to mean "German",^[1] refers to the medieval Gothic architecture, in which many of these stories take place. This extreme form of Romanticism was very popular throughout Europe, especially among English- and German-language writers and artists. The English Gothic novel also led to new novel types such as the German Schauerroman and the French Roman Noir.

The novel usually regarded as the first Gothic novel is The Castle of Otranto by English author Horace Walpole, which was first published in 1764. Walpole's declared aim was to combine elements of the medieval romance, which he deemed too fanciful, and the modern novel, which he considered to be too confined to strict realism.^[3] The basic plot created many other staple Gothic generic traits, including threatening mysteries and ancestral curses, as well as countless trappings such as hidden passages and oft-fainting heroines.

Walpole published the first edition disguised as a medieval romance from Italy discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. When Walpole admitted to his authorship in the second edition, its originally favourable reception by literary reviewers changed into rejection. The reviewers' rejection reflected a larger cultural bias: the romance was usually held in contempt by the educated as a tawdry and debased kind of writing; the genre had gained some respectability only through the works of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding.^[4] A romance with superstitious elements, and moreover void of didactical intention, was considered a setback and not acceptable. Walpole's forgery, together with the blend of history and fiction, contravened the principles of the Enlightenment and associated the Gothic novel with fake documentation.

HISTORICAL NOVEL

Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting located in the past. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for the historical novel, it can also be applied to other types of narrative, including theatre, opera, cinema and television, as well as video games and graphic novels.

An essential element of historical fiction is that it is set in the past and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the period depicted.^[1] Authors also frequently choose to explore notable historical figures in these settings, allowing readers to better understand how these individuals might have responded to their environments. Some subgenres such as alternate history and historical fantasy insert speculative or ahistorical elements into a novel.

Works of historical fiction are sometimes criticized for lack of authenticity because of readerly or genre expectations for accurate period details. This tension between historical authenticity, or historicity, and fiction frequently becomes a point of comment for readers and popular critics, while scholarly criticism frequently goes beyond this commentary, investigating the genre for its other thematic and critical interests.

Historical fiction as a contemporary Western literary genre has its foundations in the early-19th-century works of Sir Walter Scott and his contemporaries in other national literatures such as the Frenchman Honoré de Balzac, the American James Fenimore Cooper, and a later Russian, Leo Tolstoy. However, the melding of "historical" and "fiction" in individual works of literature has a long tradition in most cultures; both western traditions (as early as Ancient Greek and Roman literature) as well as Eastern, in the form of oral and folk traditions (see mythology and folklore), which produced epics, novels, plays and other fictional works describing history for contemporary audiences.

Realistic Novel

The Realistic Novel and its Formation
The realistic novel was quite different than what has been seen with earlier literature. The most popular form of literature had always been poetry. The realistic novel changed that. This form of literature used journalistic techniques in order to make the literature something closer to real life with facts and general stereotypes of human nature. The attention to detail was made to just report the facts, not commenting or judging on the scene or character.

The novels were about the common man, which also happened to be the struggles of the lower class. These struggles usually included a lower class citizen trying to gain upward mobility. Thus, a subgenre called Social Realism was born. One of the most popular novels of this time is in the Social Realism genre. In Charles Dickens Great Expectations, the novel goes through a boy named Pip’s life, as he unexpectedly comes into money and is asked to become a gentleman. The novel follows Pip’s struggles, and focuses on telling the whole truth about the character, both his good and bad actions and the reasons behind them. He was meant to be a very tangible person, one that the average person of this time could relate to. Pip was written to be very “real”, with all his flaws and positive attributes.

The Rise of the Novel
Prior to the Victorian Era, poetry had been the dominant form of literature. However, changes in class structure saw the novel rise in popularity. As the middle class expanded and more people became literate, the popularity of the novel exploded. These works also became more accessible as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of newspapers and the periodical press. Most notably, the works of Charles Dickens were frequently serialized in newspapers or journals, his first being Pickwick Papers in 1836. As a result of this serialization and a focus on character rather than plot, Dickens’ works are sometimes criticized for having weak plots. The subject matter of realistic Victorian novels also helped increase their popularity. Dickens particularly would portray the lives of working class people, creating characters that the new rising middle class audience could relate to. The realistic Victorian novel focused on characters and themes such as the plight of the poor and social mobility that was being afforded to a new middle class and the rising middle class were eager to consume these novels.

Psychological Novel

Psychological fiction (also psychological realism) is a literary genre that emphasizes interior characterization, as well as the motives, circumstances, and internal action which is derivative from and creates external action; not content to state what happens, it rather reveals and studies the motivation behind the action. Character and characterization are prominent, often delving deeper into characters' mentalities than other genres. Psychological novels are known as stories of the "inner person." Some stories employ stream of consciousness, interior monologues, and flashbacks to illustrate characters' mentalities. While these textual techniques are prevalent in literary modernism, there is no deliberate effort to fragment the prose or compel the reader to interpret the text.

The Tale of Genji, written in 11th-century Japan, was considered a psychological novel by Jorge Luis Borges.^[1] In the west, the origins of the psychological novel can be traced as far back as Giovanni Boccaccio's 1344 Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta; that is before the term psychology was coined.

The first rise of the psychological novel as a genre is said to have started with the sentimental novel of which Samuel Richardson's Pamela is a prime example.

In French literature, Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Madame de La Fayette's The Princess of Cleves are considered early precursors of the psychological novel.^[2] The modern psychological novel originated, according to The Encyclopedia of the Novel, primarily in the works of Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun – in particular, Hunger (1890), Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894) and Victoria (1898).

One of the greatest writers of the genre was Fyodor Dostoyevsky. His novels deal strongly with ideas, and characters who embody these ideas, how they play out in real world circumstances, and the value of them, most notably The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment.

In the literature of the United States, Henry James, Patrick McGrath, Arthur Miller, and Edith Wharton are considered "major contributor[s] to the practice of psychological realism."

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Notes prepared from Internet Sources.