Biographia Literaria

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor; Engell, James; Bate, Walter Jackson

• ISBN13: 9780691018614
• ISBN10: 0691018618
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-02-01
• Publisher: Bollingen Foundation

Summary

Biographia Literariahas emerged over the last century as a supreme work of literary criticism and one of the classics of English literature. Into this volume poured 20 years of speculation about the criticism and uses of poetry and about the psychology of art. Following the text of the 1817 edition, the editors offer the first completely annotated edition of the highly allusive work.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xiii
Editors' Preface: Plan of This Edition; Acknowledgements	xv
Editorial Practice, Symbols, and Abbreviations	xix
Chronological Table	xxix
Editors' Introduction	xii
Biographia Literaria Volume I
The motives of the present work---Reception of the Author's first publication---The discipline of his taste at school---The effect of contemporary writers on youthful minds---Bowles's sonnets---Comparison between the Poets before and since Mr. Pope	5	(25)
supposed irritability of men of Genius---Brought to the test of Facts---Causes and Occasions of the charge---Its Injustice	30	(18)
The author's obligations to critics, and the probable occasion---Principles of modern crilicism---Mr. Southey's works and character	48	(21)
The lyrical ballads with the preface---Mr. Wordsworth's earlier poems---on fancy and imagination---The investigation of the distinction important to the fine arts	69	(20)
On the law of association---Its history traced from Aristotle to Hartley	89	(17)
That Hartley's system, as far as it differs from that of Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor founded in facts	106	(10)
Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian theory---Of the original mistake or equivocation which procured admission for the theory---Memoria Technica	116	(13)
The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes---Refined first by Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Harmonia prœstabilita---Hylozoism---Materialism---Neither of these systems, on any possible theory of association, supplies or supersedes a theory of perception, or explains the formation of the associable	129	(11)
Is philosophy possible as a science, and what are its conditions?---Giordano Bruno---Literary aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order---The author's obligations to the Mystics---to Immanuel Kant---The difference between the letter and the spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of prudence in the teaching of philosophy---Fichte's attempt to complete the critical system---Its partial success and ultimate failure---Obligations to Schelling; and among English writers to Saumarez	140	(28)
A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the nature and genesis of the imagination or plastic power---On pedantry and pedantic expressions---Advice to young authors respecting publication---Various anecdotes of the author's literary life, and the progress of his opinions in religion and politics	168	(55)
An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel themselves disposed to become authors	223	(9)
A Chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or omission of the chapter that follows	232	(63)
On the imagination, or esemplastic power	295
Biographia Literaria Volume II
Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally proposed---Preface to the second edition---The ensuing controversy, its. causes and acrimony---Philosophic definitions of a poem and poetry with scholia	5	(14)
The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a critical analysis of Shak-speare's Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece	19	(10)
Striking points of difference between the Poets of the present age and those of the 15th and 16th centuries---Wish expressed for the union of the characteristic merits of both	29	(11)
Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth---Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especially unfavorable to the formation of a human diction---The best parts of language the product of philosophers, not clowns or shepherds---Poetry essentially ideal and generic---The language of Milton as much the language of real life, yea, incomparably more so than that of the cottager	40	(18)
Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially different from that of prose---Origin and elements of metre---Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby imposed on the metrical writer in the choice of his diction	58	(31)
Continuation---Concerning the real object which, it is probable, Mr. Wordsworth had Before him, in his critical preface---Elucidation and application of this---The neutral style, or that common to prose and poetry, exemplified by specimens from chaucer, Herbert, &c	89	(9)
The former subject continued	98	(9)
Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals	107	(12)
The characteristic defects of Words- ` worth's poetry, with the principles from which the judgement, that they are defects, is deduced-Their proportion to the beauties---For the greatest part characteristic of his theory only	119	(88)
Satyrane's Letters
Letter I	160	(14)
Letter II	174	(17)
Letter III	191	(16)
[Critique on Bertram]	207	(27)
Conclusion	234	(67)
EDITORS' APPENDIXES
A. Unacknowledged Uses of German Works in Chapters 5--9, 12--13	251	(4)
B. The Critique of Bertram in the Courier	255	(26)
C. Letters Concerning the Publication of the Biographia	281	(20)
Index	301