낭만주의 시와 교정: 코울리지와 워즈워스의 시에 나타난 감옥 개혁

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between Romantic poetry and correction by reading together Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem and William Wordsworth’s printed in Lyrical Ballads (1798). Both Coleridge and Wordsworth participated in prison reform which was part of the great movement to reform British society in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I argue that Coleridge and Wordsworth wrote “The Dungeon” and “The Convict” respectively in response to John Howard’s demand for prison reform. Moreover, both poets appropriate Caleb Williams’ lamentation over the horrible conditions of the dungeon that marks unjust and unhealthy treatment of the incarcerated in William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams. Both Coleridge and Wordsworth were equally fascinated and obsessed with the themes of crime and punishment in their early poems. More precisely, Coleridge deeply elaborates upon the mysterious effects of guilt and repenting process in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Osorio. Wordsworth, meanwhile, endeavors to grapple with the question of guilt and the miscarriages of the legal justice in the Salisbury Plain Poems and The Borderers. While Coleridge focuses on the physical condition of the prison in “The Dungeon,” Wordsworth’s poem penetrates into the heart of the condemned in “The Convict” through the observer-speaker’s sympathy. Yet both poems emphasize the efficacy of wholesome environment that helps prisoners to repent their crimes and consequently to redeem the criminals from their guilt. In conclusion, both Coleridge and Wordsworth urge the necessity for correction of the correction system by critiquing the limits of the legal institution and prison facilities.