Blog Postings by Alfred and Yuliana

Joseph

Work/Discussion: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Topics discussed: Joseph discusses his surprise upon reading Coleridge that the two, Wordsworth and Coleridge, differ in tone such that Wordsworth seems more concerned with death but with Coleridge there is at least a redemptive aspect to death and dying.

Bill

Work/Discussion: McKusick’s “Coleridge and the Economy of Nature”/The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Topics discussed: Bill discusses the diachronic features of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with respective to the successive versions of the poem, all of which elided the epochal blurring of the first version.  These epochs represent discrete passages of time in the English language, and allow us as readers to be reacquainted with an extinct lexicon.

Amber

Work/Discussion: Coleridge’s Rime and The Eolian Harp

Topics discussed: Amber raises some very important questions in both poems which center on the fervent imaginings of the speakers, the respective speakers’ motivations, and the power of the passive mind.

Johnny

Work/Discussion: Kubla Khan

Topics discussed: Johnny utilizes the opening lines of the poem to explore the natural track of the river Alph with respect to the sexual act: first pleasure (dome), then fertility, and finally sterility.  The erotic sexual act is differentiated from the natural sexual act.  This is interesting because Coleridge’s personal sexual fantasies, then, are unnatural?

Alfred

Work/Discussion: Rime

Topics discussed: Alfred discusses the theme of transgression and expiation and the subconscious desire to understand the natural world.

Ryan
Work: Neil Evernden’s “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and Pathetic Fallacy”
Topics discussed/Questions: scientific minutiae and human nature, absence of human concerns in Evernden, conceptual distance. "How, for instance, would one's studying or being made aware of the various examples of bacteria in the human stomach ever lead a person to the knowledge of the Sistine Chapel? Or Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon? Or the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse?" 

Rosanna
Work: Neil Evernden’s “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and Pathetic Fallacy”
Topics discussed/Questions: interrelatedness, fluidity within nature, holistic approach to ecology, individual-in-context, bridging the gap between man and nature in the modern world. How would a holistic ecological approach translate in practice?  

Jeff

Works: Neil Evernden’s “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and Pathetic Fallacy” and James C. McKusick’s “Coleridge and the Economy of Nature”
Topics discussed/Questions: The interrelatedness of the humanities and science, the symbiosis of language and the environment, mankind’s relationship and symbiosis with the natural environment, utility and aesthetics.
 Zuly
Work: Neil Evernden’s “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and Pathetic Fallacy”
Topics discussed/Questions: humanity’s primordial relationship to nature, environment and private property, nature as commodity, utility argument as corrupt.