Subject: What is the subject of this poem? What is it about?
- The dangers of bringing a stranger home
- People are not necessarily what they seem
- Initially seems that Geraldine is innocent, but she comes to seem evil – people who seem good aren’t necessarily
- Wariness of blind trust
- Christabel is in the woods praying by a tree, she finds Geraldine, who says she was kidnapped by a group of men – there are implications that something worse happened – Christabel takes pity on her and brings her home – something bad happens – supernatural confrontation with Christabel’s dead mom – weird naked sleep-over – what is the symbolism of the wine? – did Christabel drug her, or…?
- No one really knows what’s going on
Form: What is the form of the poem?
- Just cuts off – fragmentary, unfinished, left to readers to imaginatively complete
- Rhyme scheme – a bit sing-song-y (especially toward the beginning) – not quite regular
- Meter or rhythm – not quite regular
- Scansion
- Why does the rhythm change in particular lines? Could it mark the transition from speaker to speaker?
- Why does the 4-accent rule break on “a wel-a-day! / … / These words did say”? Could it mark a change of tone in the poem? Or some kind of transformation?
- Enjambment – makes you expect something else from the conclusion of the sentence
Word choice or diction: What do you notice about Coleridge’s choice of words? What’s the tone of the poem? Is there any repetition, whether of a particular word or of an image?
- “lovely”
- “Jesu Maria!”
- “oak tree”
- what is the significance of an oak tree? Solid, strong, been around for a while? Could indicate something about the power dynamics of the characters?
- Very gendered – Geraldine and Christabel are both women, even the mastiff is female – call Geradline “maiden” often
- Speech, power of speech – ability to tell / knowledge / sin
- Sameness and difference, doubling, self?
