Bonjour !
Dans cette séquence de langues, littératures et cultures étrangères (anglais), tu vas chercher à répondre à la grande question écrite en haut de la page. Elle se fait en 2 séances. Pour chaque séance : lis la consigne, étudie les documents, réponds aux questions sur ta feuille ou sur l'ENT, puis recopie l'essentiel dans ton cahier. Tu peux imprimer cette page avec le bouton « Imprimer ».
À la fin, je serai capable de :
- Analyser un poème visionnaire romantique (*Kubla Khan*)
- Comprendre la distinction de Coleridge entre *imagination* et *fancy*
- Rédiger une synthèse courte en anglais et traduire un passage poétique
Les mots importants
Ressources de la séquence
Les notions, les repères et les pistes pour aller plus loin, utiles pour toutes les séances.
Les notions à maîtriser
- Imagination (Coleridge)
- Primary imagination: the power of perception itself; secondary imagination: the poet's conscious power which « dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create ».
- Fancy
- A lesser faculty which combines ready-made images, « a mode of Memory ».
- Fragment
- An unfinished work presented as such; the Romantics turned incompleteness into an aesthetic value.
- Sublime
- Mixture of awe and fear before what exceeds human measure (« caverns measureless to man »).
- Iambic tetrameter
- Line of four iambs (da-DUM ×4): « In Xan/a-du/ did Ku/bla Khan ».
- Framing
- The prose preface frames the poem and shapes how we read it.
Repères
| Date | Événement |
|---|---|
| 1797 | Coleridge says he composed the poem after reading Purchas's Pilgrimage. |
| 1798 | Coleridge and Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads. |
| 1816 | Publication of « Kubla Khan », with the preface, at the urging of Lord Byron. |
| 1817 | Biographia Literaria: the theory of imagination. |
Pour aller plus loin
- Read · « Kubla Khan », with its preface (full text on Wikisource).
- Read · Biographia Literaria, chapter 13 (full text on Wikisource).
Sources et bibliographie
- John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination, Houghton Mifflin, 1927.
- Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989.
- M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, Oxford University Press, 1953.
Mon parcours : je choisis mon rythme
- Pour les élèves qui ont besoin de plus de temps : texte annoté (glossaire anglais-français, contexte en français), questions guidées, synthèse à rédiger à partir d'un plan et d'amorces de phrases.
- Pour les élèves qui avancent vite : lecture du texte intégral (lien Wikisource), synthèse supplémentaire en temps limité, comparaison avec une œuvre d'une autre époque ou d'un autre art.
Séance 1 · In Xanadu: a dream turned into a poem
65 minSéance approfondie : cours développé, documents sourcés, activités exigeantes avec coups de pouce.
La question du jour
How does the poem make us see a world that never existed?
Mon plan de travail
- 10 min → Lancement en classe virtuelle : Je suis le lancement (ou j'écoute la capsule) et je recopie la problématique.
- 12 min → Travail autonome : Je fais l'activité 1 ; j'utilise les coups de pouce seulement si je bloque.
- 18 min → Travail autonome : Je fais l'activité 2 ; j'utilise les coups de pouce seulement si je bloque.
- 15 min → Travail à rendre : Je fais l'activité 3 et je la dépose sur l'ENT (ou j'envoie une photo) dans les trois jours.
- 10 min → Mise en commun : Je corrige avec une autre couleur et je complète la trace écrite.
Le cours à lire · A visionary poem
« Kubla Khan » was published in 1816 with a prose preface in which Coleridge, speaking of himself as « the Author », claims he composed two or three hundred lines in a dream, then lost most of them when « a person on business from Porlock » interrupted him. The poem is therefore presented as a fragment. Its first stanza builds a paradise (gardens, incense, « sunny spots of greenery ») enclosed by walls; the second opens a savage chasm, a « mighty fountain » and « Ancestral voices prophesying war ». The music of the lines (alliteration « measureless to man », « mazy motion »; rhymes; tetrameter) makes the vision almost hypnotic.
Document 1 · Coleridge, « Kubla Khan » (1816), lines 1 to 11
Poem, 1816 (public domain).
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, And folding sunny spots of greenery.
Source : S. T. Coleridge, « Kubla Khan », 1816 (full text on Wikisource).
stately: majestueux ; decree: ordonner ; girdled: entourés ; rills: ruisseaux ; sinuous: sinueux.
Document 2 · Coleridge, preface to « Kubla Khan » (extract)
Prose preface, 1816 (public domain).
The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines […] At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpose of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast
Source : S. T. Coleridge, preface to « Kubla Khan », 1816 (full text on Wikisource).
external senses: les sens tournés vers le dehors ; mortification: vive contrariété ; cast: jeté.
Activité 1 · Understand
12 minSupports : Documents 1 and 2
Read the two documents and answer in English.
- What did Kubla Khan order, and where?
- According to the preface, how was the poem composed?
- Why is the poem a fragment?
Ce qui est attendu (6 pts) : Comprehension
Activité 2 · Analyse
18 minSupports : Document 1
Find and analyse the sound effects and images of the first stanza.
- Find two alliterations and say what they suggest.
- Which words create a paradise, which ones a threat?
- What does the enclosure (« walls and towers ») suggest?
Ce qui est attendu (7 pts) : Analysis
Activité 3 · Speak
15 minSupports : Documents and lesson
Record a 2-minute oral reading of lines 1 to 11, then explain in 1 minute which image you find most striking and why.
Ce qui est attendu (7 pts) : Oral production
Trace écrite · document à compléter (papier ou ENT)
Complète la trace écrite avec les mots de la banque, puis recopie-la dans ton cahier.
« Kubla Khan » is presented as a ________ of a dream poem. Xanadu combines a ________ (gardens, sunny dome) and the _______ (caverns « measureless to man »). Coleridge uses ____________ and tetrameter to make the vision musical.
Séance 2 · Imagination or fancy? The poet as a maker
65 minSéance approfondie : cours développé, documents sourcés, activités exigeantes avec coups de pouce.
La question du jour
What is the difference between inventing and creating?
Mon plan de travail
- 10 min → Lancement en classe virtuelle : Je suis le lancement (ou j'écoute la capsule) et je recopie la problématique.
- 12 min → Travail autonome : Je fais l'activité 1 ; j'utilise les coups de pouce seulement si je bloque.
- 18 min → Travail autonome : Je fais l'activité 2 ; j'utilise les coups de pouce seulement si je bloque.
- 15 min → Travail à rendre : Je fais l'activité 3 et je la dépose sur l'ENT (ou j'envoie une photo) dans les trois jours.
- 10 min → Mise en commun : Je corrige avec une autre couleur et je complète la trace écrite.
Le cours à lire · Coleridge's theory of imagination
In Biographia Literaria (1817, chapter 13) Coleridge distinguishes three powers. The primary imagination is the living power of all perception, a human « repetition » of divine creation. The secondary imagination, the poet's power, works with the conscious will: it « dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create », it seeks to unify. Fancy is only a form of memory: it combines « fixities and definites » already given. The end of « Kubla Khan » illustrates this: the poet longs to « revive » the song of the Abyssinian maid in order to « build that dome in air », and becomes a figure of sacred terror: « Beware! Beware! »
Document 1 · Coleridge, « Kubla Khan », final lines
Poem, 1816 (public domain).
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she play'd, Singing of Mount Abora, Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread: For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drank the milk of Paradise.
Source : S. T. Coleridge, « Kubla Khan », 1816 (full text on Wikisource).
damsel: jeune fille ; dulcimer: tympanon ; revive: faire revivre ; thrice: trois fois ; dread: crainte sacrée ; honey-dew: miellée.
Document 2 · Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, chapter 13 (extract)
Critical prose, 1817 (public domain).
The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space
Source : S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, vol. 1, ch. 13, 1817 (full text on Wikisource).
agent: force qui agit ; degree: degré ; counters: jetons ; fixities and definites: choses fixes et définies.
Activité 1 · Understand
12 minSupports : Document 2
Read the extract and answer in English.
- What is the primary imagination?
- What does the secondary imagination do?
- Why is fancy inferior?
Ce qui est attendu (6 pts) : Comprehension
Activité 2 · Interpret
18 minSupports : Documents 1 and 2
Write a paragraph (about 150 words): « In the final lines of the poem, is the poet a man of imagination or of fancy? »
Ce qui est attendu (8 pts) : Written production
Activité 3 · Translate
15 minSupports : Document 1
Translate into French the lines « Could I revive within me … I would build that dome in air ».
Ce qui est attendu (6 pts) : Translation
Trace écrite · document à compléter (papier ou ENT)
Complète la trace écrite avec les mots de la banque, puis recopie-la dans ton cahier.
Coleridge distinguishes the primary ___________ (perception), the secondary imagination which « dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to _________ », and ______, a mode of ______ which only combines what is given.
Fiche à trous · je complète
Complète le texte avec les mots de la banque (sur papier ou dans le document de l'ENT).
Coleridge says the poem came to him in a ______ / vision; a visitor from _______ interrupted him.
For Coleridge, the secondary imagination « dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to _________ ».
______ only plays with « fixities and definites »: it combines ready-made images, like ______.
Ce que j'ai appris
- Analyser un poème visionnaire romantique (*Kubla Khan*)
- Comprendre la distinction de Coleridge entre *imagination* et *fancy*
- Rédiger une synthèse courte en anglais et traduire un passage poétique