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This volume, dedicated to the memory of Peter Laver, explores the tension in Coleridge's theory and practice between the Imagination and the Natural.
Cover -- Half Title Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original Title Page -- Original Copyright Page -- Contents -- General Editor's Preface -- 1 Imagination and the Association of Ideas -- 2 Coleridge's Distinction between Fancy and Imagination -- 3 Symbol and Concept -- Bibliography -- Index
Why should anyone bother with Coleridge either as a theologian or a political theorist? At first in desperation, but now quite deliberately, Alan Gregory convincingly suggests that one should bother because Coleridge mounted an imporant critique of reductionist explanations of human society and moral agency, and because Coleridge has much regarding that important enterprise to teach us still. While Gregory also offers a perceptive outline of early British conservatism, his main concern is with Coleridge's attack on reductionism, including his defense of the will against associationism, his criticisms of Enlightenment historiography, his discussions of the inadequacies of political economy, and the Trinitarian arguments against monism. There is, Gregory remarks, no grasping the range or inner dynamic of Coleridge's thought without appreciating his religious vision, his theology. Indeed, Coleridge himself affirmed that should we try to conceive a man without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite...the man will have vanished.
Though left uncompleted, “Kubla Khan” is one of the most famous examples of Romantic era poetry. In it, Samuel Coleridge provides a stunning and detailed example of the power of the poet’s imagination through his whimsical description of Xanadu, the capital city of Kublai Khan’s empire. Samuel Coleridge penned “Kubla Khan” after waking up from an opium-induced dream in which he experienced and imagined the realities of the great Mongol ruler’s capital city. Coleridge began writing what he remembered of his dream immediately upon waking from it, and intended to write two to three hundred lines. However, Coleridge was interrupted soon after and, his memory of the dream dimming, was ultimately unable to complete the poem. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
Grounded in the thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Romanticism and Transcendence explores the religious dimensions of imagination in the Romantic tradition, both theoretically and in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. J. Robert Barth suggests that we may look to Coleridge for the theoretical grounding of the view of religious imagination proposed in this book, but that it is in Wordsworth above all that we see this imagination at work. Barth first argues that the Romantic imagination--with its profound symbolic import--of its very nature has religious implications, and notes parallels between Coleridge's view of the imagination and that of Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises. He then turns to the role of religious experience in Wordsworth, using The Prelude as a privileged source. Next, after comparing the conception of humanity and God in Wordsworth and Coleridge, Barth considers the role of religious experience and imagery in two of Coleridge's central poetic texts, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Finally, Barth examines the continuing role of the Romantic idea of the religious imagination today, in literature and all the arts, linking it with the thought of theologian Karl Rahner and literary critic George Steiner. Romanticism and Transcendence brings together literary theory, poetry, and religious experience, areas that are interrelated but are often not seen in relationship. By exploring levels of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's poetry that are often ignored, Barth provides insight into how and why the imagination was so important to their work. He also demonstrates how rich with religious value and meaning poetry and the arts can be. The interdisciplinary nature of this important new study will make it useful not only to Wordsworth and Coleridge scholars and other Romantic specialists, but also to anyone concerned with the intellectual history of the nineteenth century and to theologians in general.
This ambitious study, first published in 2000, offers a radical reassessment of one of the most important concepts of the Romantic period - the imagination. In contrast to traditional accounts, John Whale locates the Romantic imagination within the period's lively and often antagonistic polemics on aesthetics and politics. In particular he focuses on the different versions of imagination produced within British writing in response to the cultural crises of the French Revolution and the ideology of utilitarianism. Through detailed analysis of key texts by Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Hazlitt, Cobbett and Coleridge, Imagination under Pressure seeks to restore the role of imagination as a more positive force within cultural critique. The book concludes with a chapter on the afterlife of the Coleridgean imagination in the work of John Stuart Mill and I. A. Richards. As a whole it represents a timely and inventive contribution to the ongoing redefinition of Romantic literary and political culture.
This work elaborates R. W. Emerson s modification of S. T. Coleridge s central philosophical-aesthetic notions, such as imagination, reason, genius and symbol. Although Kant s and Schelling s idealistic philosophy, various pantheistic theories and Neoplatonism are identified as Coleridge s and Emerson s congenial intellectual and spiritual background, the author draws yet more attention to subtle differences between the English Romantic Coleridge and the American transcendentalist Emerson, which allow us to recognize that we deal with two distinct philosophical and poetic theories. The first part concentrates on Coleridge s intellectual development from the eager empiricist disciple to a philosopher dedicated to the impossible enterprise of formulating the unified theory of life, which would incorporate Kant s transcendental philosophy, pantheism and Christianity. Coleridge s letters, diary entries and notebook citations reveal a thinker unwilling to sacrifice neither the fervor of his Christian belief nor the poetic potential of pantheistic doctrines to the cool intellectuality of any single philosophic system. The outcome of Coleridge s synthesizing effort was thus the Romantic aesthetics which was not a substitute for religion, but religion artistically redefined. Within this context, particular attention has been given to Coleridge s radical adjustment of Kant s differentiation between reason and understanding on the one hand, and of the neoclassicist differentiation between imagination and fancy on the other hand, to his own needs. Coleridge s tendency to use Christian arguments as the cohesive force that would secure the unity of his theory made Coleridge over-emphasize the spiritual dimension at the cost of the intellectual and thus fascilitate a significant shift in thinking, which was responsible for the creative misinterpretation of his theories by the next generation of thinkers in the United States. As it is shown, James Marsh's publication of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection!, in which Coleridge elaborates his concept of the spiritual religion and of the notion of reason which approximates the inner light theories and nearly erases the Christian balance between the Creator and the Creation, plays an exceptionally important role in this process. In the second part, the author delineates Emerson's transformation from the Unitarian to the transcendentalist and explores in detail to what extent Emerson's formulation of his transcendentalist philosophy derived from his inclination to read Coleridge as a mystic, that is, to regard Coleridge's Christian bias as a whim which does not essentially affect the core of Coleridge's theory. It is shown that Emerson, neglecting flatly Coleridge's careful distinctions aimed at preserving the balance between dualism and monism, resolves Coleridge's theoretical ambiguity by exclusively concentrating on the part of Coleridge's system which favors the irrational and the unconscious dimension. As a consequence, Emerson's philosophy and aesthetics, with their emphasis on reason and imagination understood as inspiration, that is, the inflow of the divine into the mind of the artist, represent a radicalized version of Coleridge's neatly supressed monistic tendencies. In Emerson's interpretation, Coleridgean imagination becomes equated with Plotinian soul, that is, Coleridgean reason becomes a synonym for the utter mystical depersonalization. Finally, the delicate and easily overlooked Emersonian shifts with regard to Coleridge's theory point at the significance of Emerson's theoretical solutions in the transition from romanticim to modernism, a transition to which, ironically enough, Coleridge himself unintentionally and indirectly gave valuable contribution.
This new edition of the Biographia supersedes all previous editions. Crucially, it takes into consideration 3 decades of research and scholarship on Coleridge and includes all Coleridge's references and allusions. In tracing all unattributed references, Adam Roberts has in some cases opened up whole new avenues of interpretation for the text, materially altering or changing the way we read this classic work. This new scholarly edition for a 21st-century readership includes a detailed Critical Introduction, a Textual Introduction, the text of the Biographia Literaria, including Coleridge's notes and editorial footnotes; Endnotes; and a Bibliography. It is likely to stand as the definitive textual edition for many years to come. Key Features:. The first edition of the Biographia in 3 decades and the first ever to identify all of Coleridge's many allusions and quotations Draws on the most up-to-date scholarship on the text Fully explains the genesis, the poetic and philosophical contexts and debates surrounding the text Provides the chance to revitalise Romanticism studies more generally