The Fallen World in Coleridge’s Poetry, Agneta Lindgren

The Fallen World in Coleridge’s Poetry
Agneta Lindgren

Lund University Press 1999. Mjuk pärm 259 sidor. Mycket gott skick.
ISBN 9179665551

This study examines the motif of the Fallen World in Coleridge’s major poems The Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan. The use of Milton’s Paradise Lost as an intertextual foil throughout allows themes and metaphors inherent in the Fallen World motif to emerge in Coleridge´s poetry.
A Fall presupposes a standard from which one had been separated downwards. Primarily, it is understood as man’s separation from perfection and wholeness. Consequences ofa Fall are evil in all its manifestations, as well as repercussions on psychological, ontological and epistemological levels. However, in the displacement from unity to fragmentariness, man undergoes a change from a static to a dynamic condition. Made out of fragments, his creations, while never perfect, can be splendid in parts.