고려대학교

초록/요약

HongsangYeoA major poet and critic of the first generation Romantics, S. T. Coleridge was a key figure in the development of modern ecological literature and criticism. Incorporating the ideas of the nineteenth-century German philosophy, he developed his own ecological thoughts, which had a great influence on American transcendentalism. However, few critics, except for M. H. Abrams, James McKusick, and Karl Kroeber, have paid a due attention to his seminal significance as an early ecological writer. This study tries to investigate some of Coleridge's prosaic and poetic works in terms of his pioneering role as an early ecological poet and critic. The coined word “ecopoetics” in the title refers to a more active, productive notion of Coleridge's ecological poetics, namely, his organic idea of poetic genius and imagination, which is discussed in the first part of the paper. Focusing on the ecopoetic relationship between imagination and nature, the main body of the paper attempts to provide a close reading of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” some of the so-called Conversation Poems such as “The Eolian Harp,” “The Nightingale,” “Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement,” “Frost at Midnight,” and “Dejection: An Ode,” and two other poems entitled “Hymn before Sun-rise in the Vale of Chamouni” and “To a Young Ass.” Summing up the reading of poems, the conclusion reflects on a broader ecological ramifications of Coleridge's notion of poetry and nature.