Coleridge as Poet and Religious ThinkerIn the nineteenth century there was a definite divide between those who read Coleridge as a religious thinker and those who read him as a poet. Even now, readers and critics find it hard not to consider one aspect of his work to the exclusion of the other. Here David Jasper considers Coleridge as a poet, literary critic, theologian and philosopher, seeing him as occupying a representative place in European and English Romantic thought on poetry, religion and the role of the artist. His earliest writings are closely linked to his mature religious and critical thought, and his greatest poems, ‘Kubla Khan’, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and the ‘Dejection’ Ode, are a necessary prelude to the prose writings of the middle period of Coleridge’s life. Self-reflection upon the processes of creating poetry and art, particularly in the Biographia Literaria, is an important development in Coleridge’s sense of the relation of the finite to the infinite through the inspiration of the poet. Attention to the nature of inspiration, imagination and irony in creative writing leads directly to his later discussions of man’s need of a divine redeemer and the nature of divine revelation. In the later poetry, attention is given to the theme of self-reflection in which spiritual growth is part and parcel of poetic development, each balancing the other. The final part of the book considers Coleridge’s later prose, linking his reflections upon poetry with an epistemology, which he learnt principally from Kant and Fichtee in a discussion of revelation and radical evil. In conclusion, Coleridge’s religious position is summed up through the late, and still unpublished notebooks, and the fragmentary remains of the long-projected Opus Maximum. The last chapter links Coleridge with a more recent debate on the nature of inspiration, poetic and divine, which arises out of Austin Farrer’s Bampton Lectures The Glass of Vision. |
From inside the book
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Page vii
... Irony 3 THE EARLY WRITINGS AND “THE EOLIAN HARP” I Early Religious Writings and The Watchman (1796) II. The Early Prefaces to Poems and Early Critics III “At once the Soul of each, and God of all': Jacob Boehme and “The Eolian Harp' IV ...
... Irony 3 THE EARLY WRITINGS AND “THE EOLIAN HARP” I Early Religious Writings and The Watchman (1796) II. The Early Prefaces to Poems and Early Critics III “At once the Soul of each, and God of all': Jacob Boehme and “The Eolian Harp' IV ...
Page 9
... irony; these are some of the themes of Romanticism to which Coleridge was peculiarly Sensitive. As poet, theologian, philosopher and literary critic his contribution was profoundly significant for English literature and theology in the ...
... irony; these are some of the themes of Romanticism to which Coleridge was peculiarly Sensitive. As poet, theologian, philosopher and literary critic his contribution was profoundly significant for English literature and theology in the ...
Page 18
... IRONY Coleridge summed up his speculations about the one and the many in the familiar phrase, 'multeity in unity',” which is an example of irony, according to a definition of the term which would include any sharp or seeming contrast ...
... IRONY Coleridge summed up his speculations about the one and the many in the familiar phrase, 'multeity in unity',” which is an example of irony, according to a definition of the term which would include any sharp or seeming contrast ...
Page 19
David Jasper. infinitude. Irony then becomes, in Tieck's phrase, 'Das GöttlichMenschliche in der Poesie' (the divine-human in poetry).” The force of irony residing in the tension of opposites, the Romantics developed the concept to ...
David Jasper. infinitude. Irony then becomes, in Tieck's phrase, 'Das GöttlichMenschliche in der Poesie' (the divine-human in poetry).” The force of irony residing in the tension of opposites, the Romantics developed the concept to ...
Page 28
... irony as contradicting the temptation to Settle upon finite conclusions, and of faith as a yearning in the finite being to reach out to the infinite where all coheres in the Absolute and the One, of which we now perceive but the many ...
... irony as contradicting the temptation to Settle upon finite conclusions, and of faith as a yearning in the finite being to reach out to the infinite where all coheres in the Absolute and the One, of which we now perceive but the many ...
Contents
8 | |
20 | |
KUBLA KHAN THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT | 43 |
S THE CRITICAL PROSE | 73 |
THREE LATER POEMS | 103 |
THE LATER PROSE AND NOTEBOOKS | 116 |
INSPIRATION AND REVELATION | 144 |
Notes | 156 |
Bibliography of Secondary Sources | 178 |
Index | 191 |
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Coleridge as Poet and Religious Thinker: Inspiration and Revelation David Jasper Limited preview - 1985 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Aids to Reflection Ancient Mariner artist Austin Farrer Biographia Literaria Boehme Christ Christian Coleridge's Coleridge's writings Confessio Fidei consciousness context creation creative Dejection described divine doctrine Eolian Eolian Harp Essays eternal experience faith Farrer finite fragment Friedrich Schlegel Friend(CC Glass of Vision God’s Hartley Helen Gardner human Ibid ideas individual infinite infinity inspiration intellectual intuition irony John John Thelwall Kant Kant's Kermode Kubla Khan language Lectures letter Lewesdon Hill Limbo literary criticism literature London M. H. Abrams man’s Mary Midgley McFarland metaphysical mind moral mystery narrative nature object Opus Maximum Owen Barfield Oxford perceived philosophical Piranesi's poem poet poetic poetry Polar Logic principle prose reader reading religion religious revelation Romantic S. T. Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge Schelling secondary Imagination self-reflection sense Spirit suggests symbol theology theory things thought tradition truth unity universal Wordsworth