The document discusses William Bartram's influence on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the connections between Bartram's Travels and Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan." It summarizes several sources that analyze passages from Travels that inspired images in "Kubla Khan." The document also considers how Bartram's "floundering eloquence" differed from Coleridge's poetry, and how Coleridge transformed what he read from Bartram into great poetry. It explores avenues the author's own research could take, such as how Bartram and Coleridge viewed nature differently.
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<Your Name>
Michael T. Simpson
American Literature 1
23 August 2010
Research on William Bartramâs Influence on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
When talking about William Bartramâs influence on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, almost everyone
cites John Livingston Lowesâs The Road to Xanadu. Lowes bases his analysis on a notebook Coleridge
kept between 1795 and 1798 that was published by a German professor in 1886. In his chapter âThe
Sleeping Images,â Lowes spends several pages on passages from Bartramâs Travels that Coleridge was
âardently transcribingâ (365) into his notebook. Loweâs basic argument is that certain passages from
Bartramâs Travels â his description of crocodiles, the Isle of Palms, and a fountain â coalesced with other
things Coleridge was reading to create key images in the poem âKubla Khan.â
Another book I found on Bartram, this one by Bryllion Fagin, goes over the same passages but
suggests that the âinfluence of Bartram on Coleridge was even greater.â (148) Fagin points out that
âBartram was still in Coleridgeâs mindâ as late as 1827 when Coleridge is quoted as stating, âthe latest
book of travels I know, written in the spirit of the old travelers, is Bartramâs account of his tour in the
floridas.â (149)
I also discovered a short article published by John K. Wright in the American Quarterly in which
he identifies the fountains Bartram described (and Coleridge used) to be âthe Blue Sink, The Manatee
Spring, and Salt Springs Run in Florida.â (2) In his article, Wright observes that in âpictures these springs
are hardly as impressive as one might expect from Bartramâs and Coleridgeâs words.â (6) The most
current article I found, though not particularly useful, was a speech read at a SAMLA Luncheon in
Chapel Hill and printed in the South Atlantic Review in 1986. In his speech, Lewis Leary quips,
âWilliam Bartram would be at home among us. He spent a lot of time at trading posts. And what, among
other things, is SAMLA but a trading post?â (4)
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When I did a Google search on the phrase âWilliam Bartramâ combined with the words âKubla
Khan,â one the top results was Web Writing That Works, a website offering a âhyper-textâ version of
âKubla Khanâ that âexplores the links between text that Samuel Taylor Coleridge read, and the images in
his poem.â For key lines in the poem, the web site provides links to possible âinfluences.â For example,
for the line âA might fountain momently was forced,â the page has 5 lines with Bartramâs name, but it
also has links to Herodotus, John Milton, Virgil, Seneca, and Mary Wollstonecraft. The references to
Lowesâs book are extensive; Jonathan Price, who maintains the website, states âIâve created this hypertext
to honor Nelsonâs vision of a web of associative links, Professor Lowesâs strange but intriguing book, and
Coleridgeâs magical poem.
My Google search also brought up a long article on the website for the American Philosophy
Society. The title is lengthy, remarkable, and only partially related to Bartram and Coleridge: âRoaring
Alligators and Burning Tigers: Poetry and Science from William Bartram to Charles Darwin.â The article
intends to âoffer several examples of the interconnections between science and poetry in the decades
representedâ by an exhibit the Society was sponsoring. Bartram, Nichols says, was âimportant to
Romantic writersâ because his prose:
â. . . is full of lyrical descriptions, sensuous language, and metaphors worthy of a poet. In
addition, his rhetorical technique combines remarkably accurate field observations with an ability
to link these details through imaginative and analogical thinking.â (306)
Unfortunately, Nichols goes on to relate Bartram more to Wordsworth than to Coleridge.
* * * *
What first interested me in the connection between Bartram and Coleridge was that Bartram was
a âscientistâ observing nature for âscientificâ research, cataloging and describing unusual plants and
animals that he encountered in the âwildsâ of America. Coleridge, on the other hand, was the very
opposite of the scientist; he was the romantic poet addicted to drugs and more interested in âsubjectiveâ
experience than in the dry catalogues of science. Yet there was a kinship, and I decided it could have to
do with Bartramâs piety and reverence for nature. In the University of Georgia edition of Bartramâs
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Travels, the editor quotes Thomas Carlyle as saying that Bartram had âa wondrous kind of floundering
eloquence.â (Bartram, xxvii) What I might explore in my research is the difference between Bartramâs
âfloundering eloquenceâ and Coleridgeâs âpoetry.â How did Coleridge change what Bartram wrote to
make it âgreatâ poetry? What did he add, and what did he take away?
But my thesis could go in other directions too. For example, there is the paradox that Coleridge
wrote a romantic description of a landscape he never saw. The vivid landscape of âKubla Khanâ is made
up of words he has read and copied in his notebook from a book. There is also the fact that Bartram is a
certain type of scientist, an âinnocentâ scientist with a pious reverence for nature that we donât see in all
scientists.
When I consider Bartram as a âscientist,â it leads me to questions of how nature is viewed
differently by Coleridge and Bartram. Coleridge wants to make a poem out of it. But what does Bartram
want? He seems content to catalog it, but at moments he tries to articulate the spell that nature weaves
around him when he is alone and immersed in it. One of the first notebook entries of Coleridge that
Lowesâ quotes in regard to âKubla Khanâ is this: ââsome wilderness-plot, green and fountainous and
unviolated by man.â (364) For me, the key phrase is âunviolated by man.â What Bartram experienced
and Coleridge wanted to recreate was a single individualâs relationship to nature in contrast to our
collective approach to nature. As a species we routinely âviolateâ nature; we seem compelled to do it.
But as individuals . . . maybe thatâs what impressed Coleridge about Bartram. In his Travels, Bartram
approached nature as an individual seeking the same kind of spiritual connection the romantics were so
keen on.
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Works Cited
Bartram, William. The Travels of William Bartram: Naturalist Edition. Ed. Francis Harper. Athens:
University of Georgia Press 1998.
Fagin, N. Bryllion. William Bartram, Interpreter of the American Landscape. Baltimore. 1933.
âKubla Khanâ Web Writing That Works. Ed. Lisa and Jonathan Price. 20 September 2006
http://www.webwritingthatworks.com/DXanSOURCE01.htm
Leary, Lewis. âTwo to Remember: A Homily.â South Atlantic Review. Vol 51, No.2. May, 1986), 3-8.
Lowes, John Livingston. The Road to Xanadu. Boston. 1927
Nichols, Ashton. âRoaring Alligators and Burning Tygers: Poetry and Science from William Bartram to
Charles Darwin.â American Philosophical Society. Vol. 149, No. 3, September 2005.
http://www.asp-pub.com/proceedings/1493/490302.pdf
Wright, John K. âFrom âKubla Khanâ to Floridaâ. American Quarterly Vol. 8, No. 1. Spring 1956. 76-80.