The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Description

Author of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', 'Kubla Khan' and 'Christabel', and co-author with Wordsworth of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the great writers and thinkers of the Romantic revolution. This innovative introduction discusses his interest in language and his extraordinary private notebooks, as well as his poems, his literary criticism and his biography. John Worthen presents a range of readings of Coleridge's work, along with biographical context and historical background. Discussion of Coleridge's notebooks alongside his poems illuminates this rich material and finds it a way into his creativity. Readers are invited to see Coleridge as an immensely self-aware, witty and charismatic writer who, although damaged by an opium habit, responded to and in his turn influenced the literary, political, religious and scientific thinking of his time. Cover The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge Title Copyright Contents Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Works by Coleridge Bollingen edition of Coleridge's Works Other works Chapter 1 Early life and contexts: 1772–1802 The least beloved Unitarian Pantisocrat and democrat Journalist Friend Self-watcher Metaphysician and Kantian Opium user Lover Writer Chapter 2 Poetry The poetry of extreme states The unfinished, the revised 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ 'Christabel’ 'Kubla Khan’ 'Conversation’ poems 'Letter’ poems and 'Dejection’ 'Asra’ poems Theatre writing Later poetry Chapter 3 Notebooks Keeping notebooks A writer’s life: nine kinds of notebook entry The notebook as commonplace book Dreams, fantasies, terrors Travel writing and the natural world Coleridge revealed What do the notebooks omit? Reading the notebooks Chapter 4 Mid-life works and contexts: 1803–1814 The Friend Coleridge and the operation of the senses Incipient disaster Chapter 5 Language The right word The language of thought The origins of language Grammar Words as things Poetry and prose The natural language of poetry Copying and coining Language’s debt to Coleridge Chapter 6 Criticism Shakespeare lectures Other Shakespeare criticism Criticism in notebooks and marginalia Biographia Literaria The attack on Wordsworth Fancy and Imagination The publication and problems of the Biographia The nature of the Biographia Another kind of autobiography Intellectual property and the Biographia Onwards from the Biographia Chapter 7 Later works and contexts: 1815–1834 Religion Lay Sermons Faustus Aids to Reflection On the Constitution of the Church and State Later life Talking and thinking Logic and Opus Maximum Afterword Notes Preface 1 Early life and contexts: 1772–1802 2 Poetry 3 Notebooks 4 Mid-life works and contexts: 1803–1814 5 Language 6 Criticism 7 Later works and contexts: 1815–1834 Afterword Further reading General reading Biography Language Notebooks Poetry Religion and philosophy Index