Terrorist Fiction and Coleridge

"Terrorist Fiction" is a VERY witty critique of the genre. Do you believe that the anonymous author is seriously disturbed by it or not? Why? Also, what do you think of his (or her?) recipe for creating a piece of this kind of fiction? Also discuss here the opening of Coleridge's review of The Monk.

I think the anonymous author simply dislikes this new genre. They don’t care for murders and fantastical things such as these. They are probably of Wordsworth’s mind set and think this sort of writing is dulling down the population with its own popularity. The fact that female readers are specifically mentioned however makes the point clear. They find these novels too dark for ladies. They feel that ladies will get ideas in their heads about murderers and bandits being made up as romantic characters, and then they’ll start traipsing about looking for these dark dismal castles where they’ll find a fantastic but terrifying adventure of their own. I find this ridiculous, not because women won’t do this but because anyone could easily get these ideas into their heads! Its books and stories, they’re supposed to be an escape, but just some ho-hum every day event. I’d much rather read about a lady being chased about a castle full of dead bodies and ghosts than sitting quietly and knitting socks. But I’m hopelessly flawed in that, I’m sure. There will of course be people in the world discontent with their lives and wish they could be a part of a novel, but they could think that about Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” or the wildlife of Wordsworth’s “Prelude” just as easily. Also, while I think the recipe could be true, there’s obviously more to it, as can be said for a guilty pleasure genre of mine, romance.
Coleridge at least sees the excellence in construction of “The Monk” though he makes it clear that he doesn’t care for this genre either. He hopes that the world will become “wearied with fiends” and does tear down the genre he comes at it from a more academic standpoint I feel. Coleridge suggests that “the merit of a novelist is in proportion to the pleasurable effect which he produces” and I feel that Coleridge takes no pleasure in these novels and feels others cannot do so either. He feels the books are too full of romance to be proper for younger readers as well, which looking back at “The Castle of Otranto” I do feel he could have a point, but this relates back to a point brought up in another course, What should your child be reading? What is the definition of literature for children? I think it might be safe to say that it was generally thought during this time that parents were not keen on the idea of their children reading this genre of novels.

Biographia Literaria

In the second excerpt from Chapter 4 "[On Fancy and Imagination . . .]" and the excerpt from Chapter 13, how does he define fancy and imagination, and what distinctions does he make between them?
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Coleridge feels that “fancy” and “imagination” are two fully separate concepts, though they are often confused for the same idea. Imagination he felt was “the living power and prime agent of all human perception” though it also came in a secondary form that seems to be on a slightly more conscious level. This secondary Imagination sort of takes what you process from the real world and messes with it, “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to recreate”. It’s striving to make things perfect, “to idealize and to unify”. While Fancy he seems to think is recalling things, but changing them by your own means. “The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time; and blended with… Choice.” Though Fancy too requires reality to base things off of.
By these terms, I’m curious where he feels his own works fall. Taking him and Wordsworth and example, I feel that Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner falls into Fancy. He is purposefully changed events that he might not recall directly, but he has a good basis for their forming. Wordsworth I feel just in general is more towards the Imagination area with his work. Something like “The Prelude” that has such a strong basis in life and reality, but it likely gently shifted and added to by the means of imagination, which Wordsworth admitted to when he showed concern for his recollections truly getting across his feelings of the events he described in his past in Book First.

The Kubla Khan

5) Discuss the poem in terms of Coleridge's introduction to it. How is it like a dream? What makes him call it "A Fragment"? NOTE: "a person from Porlock" has since become a saying common to poets and other writers who speak of work that has been interrupted.
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The Kubla Khan came to him in a dream that was likely brought on by the drugs Coleridge had been prescribed. The images still seem to flow well. Personally, from the way he was introduced this piece I don’t feel like it’s a fragment of the dream, I feel like this is not the same beautiful piece he saw in his mind. “As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character…” This is something entirely different, not what had come into his head, but a couple of verses that describe the scene about him. In this, I wonder if the actual piece that had come to him is more narrative, as this to me sounds like a description of a vision as opposed to the vision itself.
The images are interesting and capture your attention with direct use of colors and images. This poem does seem to crave to be read out loud though. The repeating sounds and rhyme scheme catch your ear easily. What makes me feel he was at least under some influence is the fact that he does in fact claim it is based from a dream and the fact that it sounds like one with “incense-burning trees”, a “woman wailing for her demon-lover”, and this “dome of pleasure” are all strange images amongst many strange images.
He calls it “A Fragment” because he feels it isn’t complete. Of course, that gets subjective, when is a work actually complete? When the author/poet/artist/whatnot says so is generally my belief. He originally had much more in his mind, “he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines” but that was before the interruption from this “person from Porlock.” He then says he had only retained “some vague and dim recollection of the general puport of the vision” and all that was left to him then was “some eight or ten scattered lines and images”. I think though the poem is unusual and not the result of a perfectly aware and lucid mind exactly, it could easily just be on its own and be acceptable. If the poet says it’s a fragment, I’m inclined to believe him, but that’s just me.

Let me add, this made me recall a page in a certain webcomic I like and thought might be interesting to some folks. http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/the-person-from-porlock/

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The wedding guest is an important part of Coleridge's strategy here, in part a stand-in for the reader. Look at his speeches. How does he react to the Mariner's tale as it unfolds? How do his reactions compare to your own?

First the wedding guest is completely against whatever it is this “grey-beard loon” has to tell him. Once the Mariner “hath his will,” or rather has the Wedding Guest mesmerized. The next time the Guest speaks it’s in fear of the Mariner. We as the reader would fear him as well, consider he had just told his tale up to the point where his shipmates had just fallen down dead “With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,//They dropped down one by one.” Without knowing the rest, it is easy to assume that the Mariner is dead and either a walking dead-man or a ghost. Neither are good signs. I’d be rather bothered by that as well, but I’d like to think I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, but that much is hard to say. The Mariner is “long, and lank, and brown,//As is the ribbed sea-sand.” and has a “skinny hand” that could easily be associated with a corpse at this point. Later, the Wedding guest again claims to fear the Mariner, and that’s rightfully so, but the Mariner puts him at ease swiftly. The fear is essentially for the same reasons as before, there was just a scary part in the tale where the Mariner’s crewmates rose from the dead.“The mariners all ‘gan work the ropes,//Where they were wont to do;//They raised their limbs like lifeless tools” and honestly, the fact that “Twas not those souls that fled in pain… But a troop of sprits blest” would not comfort me much. We see in the end that the Mariner had to tell someone his story. The Wedding Guest might not be happy for it, but he is taught from the amazing story and will take this lesson to heart.
When I see the Wedding Guest and the Mariner, I think of a young person being bothered by a homeless man for money. The Mariner is much more than just some ragged man we learn as we listen, but the Wedding Guest as any of us would be is reluctant and worries that this will be nothing but madness. In the end, it might be a story of madness with spirits and bodies come to life, but this storyteller has learned a lesson that was hard on him mentally and physically. This is more than he would have experienced at the joyous event of his friends’ marriage.

We Are Seven

Is Wordsworth the "I" in this poem? Don't just answer "yes" or "no"--support your answer with references to the text and the material I provide above. In doing this, also explicate the poem, keeping in mind that it's a dialogue, and relate the rest of the poem to the opening stanza.

Wordsworth is in the fact that the speaker can not understand the logic of the child initially. I feel he very much relates to the speaker. Our poet starts with the final line in the final stanza when the speaker had given up trying to explain to the Girl why she is wrong and he feels he is right. He still does not accept it, but it sounds that he will accept that she will not agree with him. "'Twas throwing words away; for still/The little Maid would have her will" He even knows here that she won't agree as he speaks out. This leads us to believe that the poet went into this knowing the frustration of the speaker.

We also see him in his admiration of the child. At the start he speaks of her fair eyes and her beauty, going as far to say that "Her beauty made me glad" which is not at all a matter of enjoying the beauty of the child both in her appearance and in her spirit. While our Speaker gets frustrated with this girl, he continues to try with her, explaining that her two siblings are gone so she is no longer of seven children. Where he suggests that she is alive because she can move and live, "You run about, my little Maid//Your limbs they are alive" she counters that their graves are alive, "Their graves are green, they may be seen" and though I'm sure in her mind she understands that they no longer function and are not alive, she also does not see them as gone from her family either.

So in the end, the speaker is the poet, but not explicitly. The poem itself is actually sort of sweet in the way it flows with the ABAB fashion. You do get the feeling of being part of a discussion with a child who fully believes that she is correct. Not that she's wrong, of course.