Coleridge's Dejection Ode completes J.C.C. Mays’ analysis of Coleridge’s poetry, following Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner (Palgrave 2016) and Coleridge’s Experimental Poetics (Palgrave 2013). "Dejection: An Ode" stands alone in Coleridge's oeuvre: written at a time of personal crisis, it reaches far back and deeply into his thinking in an attempt to find a poematic solution to ideas and problems he had mulled over for a long time. Mays reveals how the poem also marks the opening of the second half of Coleridge's career as both poet and thinker. In three central chapters Mays examines the new style that evolved in the process of writing the Ode: the technical means of metrics, rhyme and grammar; language and allusion; and symbol and structure. He recounts the complex, sometimes controversial critical history of the Ode, and suggests an editorial solution to the problem created by the Letter to Sara Hutchinson; re-evaluates the position of Wordsworth in the poem apropos the political statement it makes; clarifies the distinction between the views on Imagination expressed and those contained in Biographia Literaria; and traces the links of the concept "dejection" as it underpins Coleridge's late poems.

This book offers a history of Coleridge's great Dejection poems, and presents the earliest manuscripts and earliest printed versions of these poems, along with the only known manuscript of another poem of Coleridge's, "The Day-Dream." In his introduction, Stephen Parrish traces the early development of the Dejection poems from their genesis in Coleridge's unhappy personal situation through the circumstances of their composition and revision. Reading texts of the recently discovered version of "Letter" and "The Day-Dream" are presented here for the first time, together with reading texts of a transitional version of "Letter," the October 1802 and 1817 published versions of "Dejection," and the only version of "The Day-Dream" published by Coleridge. The volume also contains photographs and transcripts of the principal manuscripts. Where appropriate, a record of variants is provided in the form of an apparatus.

As part of the Literature Network, Chris Beasley presents the full text of the poem entitled "Dejection: An Ode." This poem was written by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Coleridge was one of the founders of the English Romantic movement in literature, together with the English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Though left uncompleted, “Kubla Khan” is one of the most famous examples of Romantic era poetry. In it, Samuel Coleridge provides a stunning and detailed example of the power of the poet’s imagination through his whimsical description of Xanadu, the capital city of Kublai Khan’s empire. Samuel Coleridge penned “Kubla Khan” after waking up from an opium-induced dream in which he experienced and imagined the realities of the great Mongol ruler’s capital city. Coleridge began writing what he remembered of his dream immediately upon waking from it, and intended to write two to three hundred lines. However, Coleridge was interrupted soon after and, his memory of the dream dimming, was ultimately unable to complete the poem. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.