Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Christabel PDF

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Notes on the poem 'Christabel' by Coleridge. Both lecture and seminar notes included....

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel 22/10/19 - “The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult in the whole field of romance – witchery by daylight – and the success is complete.” o Coleridge, Table Talk, 1833) Reception - Published at Byron’s behest o Had already circulated in manuscript and influenced many by this point. o Coleridge said it had better reception before rather than after the publication. - ‘In parts of Christabel there is a great deal of beauty, both of thought, imagery, and versification; but the effect of general story is dim, obscure, and visionary. It is more like a dream than a reality, the mind, when reading it, is spellbound. The sorceress seems to act without power, Christabel to yield without resistance.’ (Hazlitt, 1816) Incongruity - ‘Mr Coleridge’s style is essentially superficial, pretty, ornamental, and he has forced it into the service of a story which is petrific.’ o Petrific:  Having the quality of petrifying or turning into stone; causing petrifaction; (Med.) causing the formation of a calculus. o Hazlitt means that the poem has to do with death. Part I ‘Tis […] shroud’ What is Gothic about this? - ‘Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,’ o Being set at night and in a castle, this is what makes this poem straight away appear Gothic. o This poem is set in a medieval time.

o The middle of the night is considered a ‘witching’ time. - ‘Hath a toothless mastiff bitch, […] Sixteen short howls, not over loud;’ o The idea of a dog that is wolf-like. - ‘Some say, she sees my lady’s shroud,’ o The involvement of death, a supernatural element. o A ‘shroud’ is what you wear when you are dead.  The dog should not be seeing this, but animals are able to see those belonging to the afterlife. - The use of numbers throughout Christabel is occult-like.

Christabel Metre - ‘[…] Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, in the nature of the imagery or passion.’

Christabel: The events - Christabel, the knight’s daughter, is out in the woods in the middle of the night. She’s gone out to pray for her betrothed and finds an oak tree to pray under. Just as she’s kneeling, there is a noise from the other side of the tree which turns out to be a beautiful lady. The lady explains she is Geraldine, and that she’s been put under the tree by a band of warriors who abducted her the day before. Christabel takes her home, and they go to bed. Something happens. - The next day she introduces Ger to her dad, Sir Leoline, who realises she is the child to an old friend, Sir Roland. - Leoline embraces Ger, whereupon Christabel hisses but can’t explain why. - Leoline tells his poet, Bracy, to go to Sir Roland to tell him Ger is with him. Bracy doesn’t want to go because he’s had a bad dream about a snake strangling a dove. Leoline tells Ger he will protect her, at which point Christabel sees Geraldine as having snake eyes. - She asks Leoline to send Ger away, but, again, can’t explain why. - Leoline gets very angry.

- The poem ends here. Some questions raised by Christabel - Where has Geraldine really come from? What happened to her? - Why can’t Geraldine cross thresholds? o “The lady sunk, belike through pain, / And Christabel with might and main / lifted her up, a weary weight, / Over the threshold of the gate.” (II. 152 – 53) - Why doesn’t the dog like her? o “Perhaps it is the owlet’s scritch: / For what can ail the mastiff bitch?” (II. 152 – 53) - Can Geraldine, like the dog, see the ghost of Christabel’s mother? o (II. 208 – 09)

Liminality – Turner - Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1969) Witches – and liminality. - Challenge to property, status and sexuality. - Geraldine is written as a witch. Sexuality - Christabel as an adolescent o She is at the age where she is expected to be getting married (within the medieval age) o Are we ever actually told how old she is? Or just given clues?  Betrothed but not yet married; innocent until she meets Geraldine. What is Geraldine wearing? - Robe of white; bare arms; bare footed; gems entangled in her hair, glittering. - Celestial; matches Turner’s descriptions of the costume of liminal beings. Christabel is the retelling of the temptation story?

- Geraldine seems to seduce Christabel in order to have her take her back ‘save’ her and allow her into her home. o Like the serpent. - Liminality: in terms of the behaviour that Christabel displays after meeting Geraldine. ‘Their behaviour is usually passive …. Subversive - An undoing of the coming of age story. - OED: ‘That challenges and undermines Christabel (Christ) / Geraldine (Germanic Origin: spear-ruling, controlling, powerful, potentially satanic, warrior-like) / Leoline – lion-like. - This poem trades in symbols. Everything has a symbolic meaning to it (Occult: a secret meaning) Manipulative - The narrative is manipulative. Especially from the readers perspective. - The narrator could tell us more than they do, Geraldine could explain more than she does, even Christabel could tell us more if she tried to overcome the hissing problem. Frantic - Christabel’s struggle to communicate. - Her suffering itself can be seen as quite wild – certainly by the point at which the poem ends. Pagan - Wildness here too. - Association with the outdoors. Heretic - The undoing of religion by mysterious forces. - Symbolic meaning of the Oak trees. o Oaks and witches, oaks and druids....