Article: Coleridge's 'Christabel,' lines 23-42. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

That strange fragment, Christabel,(1) begins at midnight as Christabel ventures alone into the forest beyond her father's castle to pray "for her lover that's far away" (line 30). A "furlong from the castle gate" (26) she kneels beneath "a huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree" (42), only to be startled by a moan coming from the opposite side of the tree (39-42). The sound emanates from the lovely Geraldine, "perhaps the most extraordinary of all Coleridge's poetic creations [and] an embodiment of pure sexual energy," who corrupts Christabel in a bedroom scene replete with suggestions of vampirism and witchcraft.(2)

What appears to have escaped notice in this initial ...

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