It's even more interesting in the face of Coleridge's history of unease with women (Grossberg 152).
The two main characters in this piece are Christabel and Geraldine. Geraldine's appearance coincides with a mysterious sound that is never identified, and is but one indication of her supernatural origins. It has been suggested that Geraldine is the first appearance of a vampire in literature, though she is referred to as a witch in the text itself. She has a strongly homoerotic connection to Christabel, one of Sir Leoline's, the baron who owns the castle where the poem takes place, daughters. Christabel is enchanted by Geraldine, whether literally or figuratively, though she is terrified as well. Essentially Christabel and Geraldine set up a clear dichotomy of good and evil in the work. Of course it isn't just the words and characters that lend any meaning to the poem.
The physical structure itself of the poem seems to communicate a number of things. The first part of the poem seems to be very mysterious, almost tentative in that neither the reader nor the narrator seem very sure whether Geraldine is in fact evil. The beginning of the tale unfolds much like the tender youth of Christabel, though we already see signs of her independence in that she is out alone at night to encounter Geraldine. Still, things are not nearly as dark in the first part as they are in the second. This serves to illustrate several things through this structure; one is for the reader to see the passage of time. It is necessary to understand that these events did not happen quickly, and that Christabel grows...
The very description of the dog conjures up an image of a massive dog, wearing a studded and dangerous collar, salivating in wait for any evil attempt at entering the castle. The mastiff old did not awake, Yet she an angry moan did make! And what can ail the mastiff *****? Never till now she uttered yell Beneath the eye of Christabel" (Coleridge) Christabel fails to heed the warning of the mastiff, and so, her
Plato's Phaedo and STC's "Christabel" In Phaedo 80ff, Socrates outlines Plato's theory of Forms, particularly attempting to prove that the eternal Forms are of divine origin. Through analogy with the living body and the dead body, Socrates in dialogue with Cebes forces his interlocutor to admit that the body-soul dualism admits to a qualitative difference between the two, and then Socrates begins to describe the separation of body and soul, such
Her blooming full-pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the never-read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing from the daylight. (Eliot, XXVIII) However it is worth noting the implicit paradox expressed here in the notion of a married woman's "oppressive liberty." Dorothea Brooke marries sufficiently well
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