Abstract
In their phrenological studies, Gall and Spurzheim named the “organ of ideality” that, when enlarged, reduced the distinction between perception and reality. This chapter argues that ideas come to obsess characters in Romantic works like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner ” and Poe’s titular short stories. In “Rime,” the negatively sublime feelings precipitated by the storm and the mariner’s isolation become contained in the figure of the albatross. In this way, the idea itself occasions horrors and apparitions. This idea becomes a reality, as does the notion of the eye in “Tell Tale Heart” or, in “Beatrice,” teeth. These texts posit that the “compulsion ” to write, to tell stories, comes from just this type of ideation.
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Béres Rogers, K. (2019). Ideality and Art in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “Berenice” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. In: Creating Romantic Obsession. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13988-9_6
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