Captain Cook's Navigator and Coleridge's Poem: William Wales, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'

Seitenzahl:

208

Erschienen bei:

Otago University Press

Kurzbeschreibung

In 1956, Australian art historian Bernard Smith published an article in which he linked the navigator on Cooks second voyage, William Wales, to Coleridges celebrated poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Smith had found that Wales taught Coleridge mathematics at school and that the journal he wrote on the voyage must have been a source for the poem. This connection has been virtually ignored by Coleridge scholars, many of whom have seen the poem as a fantasy. The author came across Smiths article while planning a tramping trip into Dusky Sound, visited by Cook in 1773 on his second voyage. As he says in the book, Wales was moved by these surroundings and, to my eye, his description of this waterfall seemed to re-emerge in Coleridges poem Before I knew it, the Coleridge vortex had sucked me in and had autocratically demanded right of way. In this absolutely fascinating and assiduously researched book, Bill Whelen traces the connections between the two men and the Ancient M

Mehr über...

Mehr über:  Literature - Classics / Criticism, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Mehr von: 

Mehr von:  Bill Whelen, Otago University Press