Coleridge and Textual Instability The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems

by Stillinger, Jack

• ISBN13: 9780195085839
• ISBN10: 0195085833
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-05-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Jack Stillinger establishes and documents the existence of numerous different authoritative versions of Coleridge's best-known poems: sixteen or more of The Eolian Harp , for example, eighteen of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , and comparable numbers for This Lime-Tree Bower , Frost at Midnight , Kubla Khan , Christabel , and Dejection: An Ode . Such multiplicity of versions raises interesting theoretical and practical questions about the constitution of the Coleridge canon, the ontological identity of any specific work in the canon, the editorial treatment of Coleridge's works, and the ways in which multiple versions complicate interpretation of the poems as a unified (or, as the case may be, disunified) body of work. Providing much new information about the texts and production of Coleridge's major poems, Stillinger's study offers intriguing new theories about the nature of authorship and the constitution of literary works.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction: The Current State of Coleridge's Poetic Texts	p. 3
The Multiple Versions	p. 26
The Eolian Harp	p. 27
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison	p. 43
Frost at Midnight	p. 52
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	p. 60
Kubla Khan	p. 73
Christabel	p. 79
Dejection: An Ode	p. 91
Coleridge as Reviser	p. 100
A Practical Theory of Versions	p. 118
Texts and Apparatuses	p. 141
The Eolian Harp	p. 142
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison	p. 148
Frost at Midnight	p. 154
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	p. 158
Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream	p. 185
Christabel	p. 189
Dejection: An Ode	p. 216
A Letter to	p. 226
Notes	p. 237
Index	p. 251
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