Class Blog

Although Coleridge explicitly depicts traditional gender roles and dynamics in the first half of “Christabel”, he inverts these gender norms in the second half of the poem through the characterization of Christabel and her relationship with Geraldine. The speaker introduces Christabel as a well-off young woman with dreams of meeting a knight and falling in love; the speaker repeatedly uses the phrase “lovely lady” when first describing or referring to Christabel (l. 23, 38, 47). The alliterative nature of this phrase emphasizes the soft, light “L” sound, which exudes the same daintiness that thus far characterizes Christabel. Additionally, the word “lovely” has feminine connotations within the gender binary due to the beauty and mannerism standards for women; Christabel, then, is considered lovely due to her adherence to traditional gender standards. The phrase “lovely lady” ultimately situates her well within the traditional gender expectations for women. 

In the poem, Christabel leaves the castle to pray under a tree when she meets Geraldine. Meeting Geraldine and learning about her situation initiates Christabel’s shift from fulfilling a traditionally feminine gender role to a more masculine one. Because Geraldine, who the speaker repeatedly characterizes as “faint and sweet”, describes being captured by a group of men, she portrays the “damsel in distress” trope (l. 68, 73). Christabel, by saving Geraldine and taking her to safety, then acts as the savior of the damsel in distress. Traditionally, a knight or other prominent male figure fulfills this savior role, but having Christabel save the damsel inverts gender roles and shows a sense of female agency. By physically lifting Geraldine over the gate, tending to Geraldine’s needs, and eventually sleeping with her, Christabel’s displays of agency subtly align with the traditionally masculine traits of physical strength and sexual prowess. This implies that although Christabel has agency, the only legitimate form of agency is that which stems from traditionally masculine values. The consequences of Christabel’s agency also promote this patriarchal ideology, as it becomes clear that the “damsel in distress” being saved is actually some sort of witch, demon, or other dangerous and mystical being. Considering her true identity, Geraldine gaining access to Christabel’s home has dangerous implications, and it is due to Christbel’s displays of agency that Geraldine has this access in the first place. Therefore, Christabel’s inverted gender roles does more harm than good and reinforces the idea that women should not stray from their expected gender roles. 

A graphic novel I’ve read for another of my classes contains a quote from “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley as a minor detail, the specific excerpt of “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”. However, I found it fascinating that they chose this specific excerpt considering the wider context of the poem, as one of the characters of the graphic novel was meant to relate to this quote. The graphic novel focuses on many political and social themes, with the character being a “king” of sorts. I thought it might be fitting to apply a political/social lens back to the poem itself to see what interpretation it yields. 

One key aspect of the poem is the overconfidence of the king, Ozymandias, who becomes a sort of character in the poem. The above quote alone displays this show of power: he is not just a king, but a king of kings. He commands all people to fall under his rule and his land, as well as preserve all his creations. 

However, the poem details a traveler meeting someone and telling them of the statue on which this is engraved—a broken-down, sad-looking old sculpture surrounded by nothing but barren land. The “visage,” or face, of the statue is “shattered,” its detached pieces are “lifeless.” Not only is it broken, the poem’s main voice of the traveler (speaking through quotations) goes to great lengths to show how the statue is truly in ruin. They call the pile of stone “decay,” a word that isn’t often used in the context of such a sturdy material. Stone can be weathered and broken, but “decay” is usually reserved for things that were previously living: such as bodies. The traveler, then, seems to see the “Wreck” as something that, though made of stone, previously had a life to it. This “life” might’ve been the sheer power it displayed, with its “sneer of cold command”—this would make sense, considering that statues such as this one have been used for a long time to remember and pay respect to political leaders and other important figures. 

Why the traveler takes great care, then, to emphasize that the sculpture’s reign is long gone, might be interesting. The voice of the traveler doesn’t seem overjoyed nor sad to see the state of the statue, but they do describe in detail how broken it is. The traveler is likely interested by the irony of the statue’s engraved words and the fact that no “works” to “look upon” remain: “Nothing beside remains”, they say, remarking about this irony. 

The graphic novel’s excerpt of the poem invites focus on the figure of Ozymandias as incredibly influential but cruel within his time, as it refers to a powerful character within the graphic novel who controls the lives of many people and is a huge public figure. Applying this political/social lens to the original poem, the traveler seems to not only be thinking of the statue as an isolated and ironic story, but the suggested history in all its complexity—here lies a king who was so important and brash, now reduced to nothing though he thought his influence would remain over the wider population forever. Perhaps it hints at the fact that the wider public not only will recognize this hubris and irony, but also that the population can reshape, over time, what is put in place by those in power. 

I want to first outline the uses of sex in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and then try and understand what they are doing for the poem. First, and most mysteriously, is the the pleasure dome. Although its name is evocative, it is not linked much further to sex. According to the first stanza it is “twice five miles of fertile ground / With walls and towers…girdled round” and when it reapers in the third stanza it follows “Ancestral voices prophesying war!” Both of these references to the pleasure dome make it seem to be an implement of war, but the idea is complicated in the remainder of the poem. In the third stanza the dome “Floated midway on the waves… A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!” and then in the fourth stanza: “That with music loud and long / I would build that dome in air- / That sunny dome, those caves of ice!” So the poem has appeared on land, in the sea, and in the air, and seems to have very little to do with pleasure, so what is that word doing there?

The Second stanza helps move towards an answer. We begin with a “deep romantic chasm…athwart a cedarn cover!” The effect of which is immediately compared to a “woman wailing for her demon lover!” It’s very Georgia O’keefe to say the least. And that is before “this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, / A mighty fountain momently was forced” From this sexual event the River on which the Pleasure dome is built is born. And thus the two are connected. Furthermore, the event “Huge fragments vaulted” which may have been used to build the dome, and the Ice in the caves may be fed by “sacred river.” In this way the pleasure dome is birthed by the Earth’s sexual climax.

Making the next step in this analysis feels difficult without having fed on honey-dew and “drunk the milk of Paradise”. But, since the dome is built from the earth’s pleasure, its title of pleasure dome makes more sense. Additionally, the fact that the feminine earth’s sexual action is sublimated by Kubla Khan and the Ancestral voices into a military act, and that the “damsel with a dulciminer[‘s]…symphony and song” is used by the speaker to reconstruct the pleasure dome, suggests a patriarchichal structure within the poem. The women of the poem, and their sexuality, are instruments of masculine power.

Sonnets open the tiny rose-coloured window to show the greyer world waiting just beyond. In essence, a sonnet’s utility expertly strikes upon the heart as it shows both grief/loss and love/passion intermingling and meshing into one amalgamation quite smoothly, however, it’s also evident that the sheer power of the sonnet isn’t felt in every one person, as William Wordsworth notes in his sonnet circa 1802 Scorn not the Sonnet. Producing and viewing through a literary lens his argumentative sonnet uses the Italian sonnet form with a rhyming couplet to express how the sonnet, through many great literary geniuses, should stand to be relevant. Still, as the last three words tell us, these great men could not make the sonnet impressive enough for critics’ sake.

The sonnet itself mentions seven male poets/epic writers: Shakespeare; Petrarch; Tasso; Camӧens; Dante; Spenser; Milton—all of whom had used the sonnet form, whether English or Italian, to express a profound emotion in simply 14 lines. It’s intriguing that Wordsworth decides to name these seven poets in this order, as evident, they do not chronologically occur in this order as it was Petrarch that influenced Wyatt who then decided to write what we now know to be the English sonnet form (sorry, Shakespeare, but it’s true). Either way, in choosing these men to symbolize the sonnet and what the sonnet can evoke from literary passion and emotion, Wordsworth emphasizes how versatile and creative the stagnant form is. None of these named poets utilized the sonnet similarly to produce their idea or theme. For Shakespeare, he used the sonnet to hide his love for his “master mistress” from sonnets one to 126, followed by his irrevocable pining and lamentations for his “dark lady” for the rest of the sonnets. Petrarch wrote about the lovely pain he has for Laura, his unattainable beloved, and used the sonnet to express this duality and then, once she passes, to immortalize her forever with him and in her grand beauty. Vitally, this difference or shift from one style to another is something Wordsworth wishes to be cognizant of rather than dismiss.

Therefore, by beginning the sonnet by addressing a critic for scorning the sonnet for having “frowned mindless of its just honours,” this opening seeks to implore the critic to not criticize the sonnet as one, a genre, and two, as devoid of freedom and expression (l. 1-2). Literary speaking, the sonnet allows for expansion into multiple feelings and resolutions, although it has been categorized as strictly love-related. Most sonnets in the very general sense are thought, as I had once, to be typically written as being in love but that love sparks grief or even the poetic voice is grieving a loss but that loss with be loved anyhow. But, the poets Wordsworth selects branches that out a little bit to combat the critic’s brash and altogether unprecedented scorn. Each poet has done with the sonnet amazing things: “Shakespeare unlocked his heart;” “Camӧens soothed an exile’s grief;” “Spenser, called from Faery-land/to struggle through dark ways;” Milton…blew soul-animating strains” (l. 3,6,10,12-14). All these things through the literary lens had blown the sonnet form, the original critique of the critic, out of the water and used it of their own volition. Even Wordsworth himself in his sonnet changes the form by breaking the first and second lines with punctuation, which defies Shakespeare’s and Petrarch’s usage of the line structure. Yet, despite all of this, Wordsworth understands—or says lamentably—that although these great poets created great works, “alas” it was “too few” (l. 14). These historical literary marvels are lost behind the genre, not to be seen for their impressive use of the form and mode.

Nuns Fret Not by William Wordsworth is an Italian style sonnet with a volta around line 7 or 8. This is where the speaker shifts from a lighter tone to a more serious one; in the beginning the sonnet lists examples of people who choose to be confined to a small space, and show that they are content there. The list includes nuns, students, and maids, but the one that stood out to me most was the line about bees: “bees that soar for bloom/High as the highest peak of Furness Fells/Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells” (Wordsworth 5-7). This line specifically calls upon the natural world to show how living things need their narrow spaces to feel at home in. No  matter how high the bees fly, they always return “by the hour” to their foxglove bell homes. The bees have more freedom than the humans listed in a literal sense because they can fly, something no human can do, yet the natural and human world imitate each other by creating these “prisons” as the poem refers to them. However, in the line directly after the prison is mentioned, the poem contradicts itself by saying that these spaces are actually not prisons at all, but provide something similar that the “sonnet’s scanty plot of ground” (Wordsworth 11) provides to a poet. Wordsworth says that he has found “short solace” in the confines of a sonnet, and suggests that others “who have felt the weight of too much liberty” (Wordsworth 13) could do the same. The sonnet is a place to talk about ideas that are very broad or complicated in a condensed form, which forces the writer and the reader both to think critically about each word, each line, and to analyze the way that each idea in the poem is laid out in this specific form. In Nuns Fret Not, the sonnet starts out with fairly simple pictures of nuns in a convent, or bees in a flower, but then zooms outward to impress upon the reader what the true topic of the poem is. And just when the ideas are falling into place, the 14 lines come to an end, leaving the reader to think about it themself. 

 

Mary Robbinson’s “Sappho and Phaon” describes the love-struck Sappho’s infatuation with Phaon that ultimately results in her fatal end. The long poem is broken up into sonnets, each titled and reserved for a specific emotion or scene. Sappho’s desire and yet her condemnation of these desires color Robbinson’s poem and result in the transformation of the blazon.

In the section titled, “Describes Phaon” Sappho’s awareness of the danger that accompanies her lust and the lust itself come to a head. Robbinson writes, “Dangerous to hear is that melodious tongue, / And fatal to the sense those murderous eyes,” (lines 127-8). Already, the adjectives Sappho is using to describe her beloved have negative connotations, creating tension in the traditional blazon form. These opposing alliterate adjectives being used to describe the physical attributes of Phaon, melodious and murderous, serve to amplify what is at the core of Sappho’s emotions: confusion. Sappho is being torn in two different directions by her heart and head which ultimately results in a blazon that is not traditional. Instead, we end up with a paradoxical blazon, one that lists the beauties and charms of a beloved but also seems to demonstrate an understanding of the harmful and dangerous effect these attributes have on the beholder. Nevertheless, Sappho continues to describe Phaon invoking images of an arrow in a sapphire sheath made to represent the danger that lurks in Phaon’s beautiful but haunting eyes (lines 129-30).  Sappho’s descriptions take a sharp turn, represented as the volta of the sonnet, as she positively describes her beloved’s “smooth cheek” (line 132) and “polished brow” (line 135). Robbinson writes, “That lip, like Cupid’s bow, with rubies strung,” (line 134) can be paralleled to the earlier description of the arrow in a sapphire sheath. Much like how Cupid has a bow and an arrow, something that can kill and something that cannot, Phaon has the power to evoke both desire and danger in Sappho through his physical characteristics.

Sappho’s processing of this information results in a transformed blazon.  Robbinson modifies the blazon by simply writing in this form as a woman and cataloging the physical attributes of a male beloved. However, the blazon is also transformed through the opposing feelings regarding love, which are danger and desire. The beloved doesn’t have eyes that are “nothing like the sun” (Sonnet 130, Shakespeare) but instead eyes that are murderous. The beloved’s tongue while melodious and pleasurable inspires feelings of danger. Through this formation of what I have coined the paradoxical blazon, one can begin to see commentary on love emerging. Sappho, and therefore Robbinson, are acknowledging the pain that accompanies love. By reworking the blazon and creating space within it to talk about the danger of lust and the power physical attractiveness can have over individuals, Robbinson is providing commentary on our traditional notions of love and desire. The feeling of danger that arises as one begins to fall in love, or lust, is just as strong as the lust itself and therefore, deserves to be written about.

The title of  “A Red Red Rose” by William Blake already gives an insight into the different levels of complexity in the rest of the poem. At first read, this poem is clearly about a deep love that is described in metaphor to a red rose. However, I think that the title “A Red Red Rose” indicates that this rose is not only red in its color, but it is also on fire. There are several parts of this poem that also support this idea of the rose burning. The themes of water in contrast to the dry, blazing temperatures of June indicate that this rose is existing in either the extremity of blazing heat or the vast sea. However, the line, “And I will love thee still my dear,| Till a’ the seas gang dry”(7-8)  points to the idea of this vast ocean being drained and leaving us with the emptiness of dry sand. I think that this not only supports the idea that this rose is experiencing the extremity of the heat, but also the idea that this love (that the rose is representing) is so extreme that it will remain so long until even when the ocean no longer remains, this love will. This love is filled with such passion that is so burning that it is destructive.  

Blake conveys an intensity that can only be shown through an imagery of a burning rose. A rose is often seen as gentle, delicate, and even sacred. To show a rose burning is to emphasize to the reader the dual emotion of pain and beauty in a love so deep. There is a pain in watching this sacred rose burn, yet the flame against the petals is also a rarely beautiful sight.  

Blake uses this imagery of a burning red rose to convey the urgency and intensity of a love that is in turn self-destructive. Blake is drawing readers to the idea that similar to nature, love is uncontrollable and needs to be left alone to be tended to. 

This idea takes us back to the uncontrollable complexity that is nature. Blake is telling us that love and nature go hand in hand. It is all in the same because both love and nature are things that cannot be controlled and should not be controlled.

My first introduction to this poem was the absolutely gorgeous painting of the same name by Frank Bernard Dicksee. I love it so much that it is hanging in my dorm room, and now having read the poem in this class (finally), the painting takes on a whole new meaning. While Dicksee depicts the romance between the knight and the fairy maiden as loving and fantastical, awash in bright colors and longing gazes, the poem by Keats is less about the romance and more about the danger of it. I argue that Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci warns against obsessive love using the frame of a medieval romance, and that the metaphors and descriptors he uses ultimately describe a metaphorical death for the knight. 

The story follows the very basic plot of an ‘otherworldly romance,’ which are very common in the courtly romances of the Middle Ages. I took a class on Medieval Romance literature last semester, and wrote my final paper on the complicated and independent nature of these otherworldly female fairy lovers. Essentially, in a majority of these romances, female fairies arrive in ‘our world’ (or the world of knights and kings) to offer herself as a lover to some worthy man, either with happy or disastrous results. In Keats’ poem, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (or ‘The Beautiful Lady without Mercy’) takes on a deceitful role, luring the knight in with her beautiful appearance and “fairy’s song” (Line 24). 

The essential point of this recounting of the experience, to me, is when the knight tells of how there was “nothing else [I] saw all day long,” which alludes to his overwhelming obsession with his lover (Line 22). After he meets this lady in the meadow, he cannot do or think of anything else but her, and when “she lulled me asleep” he saw the other “death-pale” past lovers of the lady (Line 33, 38). I argue that when the knight enters this slumber, he metaphorically dies due to the loss of his lady. 

Keats hints at this death with how the poetic speaker describes the knight after he has ‘awoken’ — he asks twice “Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms” and describes the man as “alone and palely loitering,” “haggard and so woe-begone,” and almost withering away (Line 1, 2, 5, 6). The repetition of specific phrases and the structure of the questions quickly establish the disheveled and dissociative state of the knight. Keats then employs two metaphors to discuss the knight’s appearance, with the speaker mentioning how they “see a lily on thy brow” (Line 9). The whiteness of the lily can allude to the paleness of the knight, but lily’s also represent grief and death, which the knight seems to embody. The speaker also mentions a “fading rose” on his cheek, which is both the fading color from his complexion (which connects to the pale and sickly appearance of the knight) and the fading of love, which the rose symbolizes. 

Although the poem does center around the love affair with the lady, to me it is not the main focus of the poem. Unlike the painting which depicts the love affair as perfect, romantic, and otherworldly, Keats spends more time describing and capturing the grief and distress of the knight after the lady abandons him. The knight seems to undergo a metaphorical death, or at least he is close to it when the speaker finds him. Heartbroken, sickly, and alone, the knight’s tale seems to warn against the dangers of obsessive love. 

Upon initially reading “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poem seems to be a typical Romantic work containing the figure of the traveler and dealing with themes of foreign adventure, the passage of time, and the struggle of man versus nature. However, the sonnet form supports more of a double meaning. The poetic voice is retelling a story told to them by a “…traveller from an antique land” (Shelley 1), immediately contextualizing the poem as more of a “tale” than a direct report. The romantic obsession with the past and the exotic is present in this line. The poem goes on to describe a decrepit statue which has been broken down and lost to the passage of time, despite what appears to be an assertion of the statue’s sake’s strength, “And on the pedestal, these words appear:/My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! /Nothing beside remains” (Shelley 9-12). This moment perfectly encapsulates the double meaning present in Shelley’s sonnet.

The strict contrast between the declaration “Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair” and its immediate successor “Nothing beside remains” alludes to multiple intentions behind Shelley’s poem, which is not only concerned with an ancient civilization but an ancient regime. As “Ozymandias” was written during a period of political upheaval, and Ozymandias himself is said to be a “King of Kings” (Shelley 10), Shelley is likely writing with the current monarchies in mind, whether the fallen French or the persisting English. In my initial reading of lines 11-12, I saw irony in the contrast between the declaration of great “Works” and complete barrenness of the desert. In this reading, Shelley demonstrates the lack of self-awareness felt by the English monarchy in their inevitable obsolescence. However, my alternate reading of lines 11-12 perceived a self-awareness from Ozymandias himself, he is warning that the absence of his “Works” around his statue is the reason for despair from the “Mighty” he is speaking to. They too will be lost to the passage of time. According to the Longman Anthology reading, “With ever fresh fears of invasion, the [British] government clamped down on any form of political expression that hinted at French ideas” (Damrosch 17). With this historical context in mind, Shelley is affirming that the tightening of British law and increase of oppression is due to their fear of the failure of the French regime–just as Ozymandias’ fell. Or, to revisit my former reading of lines 11-12, Shelley could be suggesting that no matter what the British do to clutch to their power, they will inevitably lose it and become Ozymandias.

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” he juxtaposes beautiful and petrifying scenery together in order to fully encapsulate the sublime.  In the second stanza, he describes a deep “chasm” as “romantic,” and a “savage” place as “holy” and “enchanted” (lines 12 and 14).  He sets up the location to be frightening with its chasms, caverns, caves, etc, and yet describes these things to still be beautiful.  

During the romantic era, the sublime was present in many poets’ works, and this poem is no exception.  In a romantic context, the sublime consists of an image of nature that is so grandiose or extreme in some way that it inspires strong emotions within the viewer, especially awe.  “Kubla Khan” embodies this by depicting such an extraordinary and breathtaking sight and playing up the emotion of fear in its descriptions while the speaker projects a romantic lens onto it.  The petrifying diction of “chasm” and “savage,” as well as the later supernatural inclusions of “haunted” and “demon” illustrate a scene that evokes a strong emotion, which is that of fear.  Coleridge then takes this strong emotion and builds on it by weaving magnificent diction such as “holy,” “enchanted,” and “romantic” between the frightening diction.  Although this move diminishes the overall terror of the scenery, it does not do so to the overall emotion.  Instead, Coleridge capitalizes on the readers’ fear by turning it into awe.  He writes the speaker to be a true romanticist, who looks at dangerous rushing waters, deep caves, and debris from a geyser and sees the beauty in it.  Of course, it helps that the pleasure dome and its surroundings are not all treacherous territory but genuinely peaceful and wonderful.   

Coleridge takes his depiction of the sublime in “Kubla Khan” a step further by including the supernatural.  The scenery of the pleasure dome is so hauntingly beautiful that it conjures the image of a “woman wailing for her demon lover,” and on line 30, Kubla hears “ancestral voices prophesying war” (line 16).  These supernatural elements also emit a feeling both terrifying and romantic.  Passionate wailing, demons, mysterious voices, and war are clearly frightening, and yet paired with the speaker’s romantic lens, they only serve to further the sublime aspect of the pleasure dome.  Through this lens, the image of lovers and of ancestors can actually be quite comforting.  Combined with the description of the scenery, the pleasure dome’s supernatural atmosphere does not inspire fear so much as it heightens its own extraordinary and astounding image.  The significance of the supernatural or uncanny in this work is that it indicates that the picture of the pleasure dome is so amazing and astonishing that it transcends what is physically possible in the mortal plane.  This location in Xanadu is almost literally unreal.

In “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge blurs the lines between emotions of fear and awe, employing contrasting diction in order to heighten readers’ intense emotions and embody the sublime.  He understands that any intense reaction to nature can prove its magnificence, and wrote this poem with that knowledge.  Coleridge utilizes the sublime as a tool to thoroughly make known the miraculous nature of the pleasure dome.