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Coleridge's Metacriticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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I borrow metacriticism from J. H. Muirhead, who has described Coleridge as combining “a genius for criticism” with “the metacritical craving for a theory of aesthetic.” And I am aware that the framework of critical “modes” into which Coleridge is fitted in the essay that follows is quite an arbitrary one; how arbitrary is readily shown by a glance at a recent anthology of critical writing edited by Mark Schorer, Josephine Miles, and Gordon McKenzie. Coleridge appears there alongside Aristotle as a critic who emphasizes the “form” of poetry rather than its “source” or “end.” I have used the same kind of triple relationship to define “poetry,” although I have called the relationship that of Poet, Poem, and Reader rather than Source, Form, and End. But I have preferred to treat Coleridge as a “romantic” critic who attempts a synthesis of Aristotelian form and Platonic end by placing his critical emphasis on the source of poetry in the poet's creative imagination.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
∗ This essay appears in its present form as a result of some leisure time given me by a grant-in-aid from the Carnegie Foundation and Birmingham-Southern College: I gratefully acknowledge the pleasant terms of the grant.
1 Coleridge as Philosopher (New York, 1930), p. 213. The relevance of Coleridge's philosophy to his criticism has been clearly stated more recently by Herbert Read, “Coleridge as Critic,” Sewanee Rev. (Autumn 1948), and by James Benziger, “Organic Unity: Leibniz to Coleridge,” PMLA (March 1951).
2 Criticism: The Foundations of Modern Literary Judgment (New York, 1948).
3 Miscellaneous Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), pp. 137-138.
4 Letters, ed. E. H. Coleridge (New York, 1895), i, 386.
5 Anima Poetae, ed. E. H. Coleridge (Boston, 1895), p. 24.
6 Complete Works, ed. W. G. T. Shedd (New York, 1853), iv, 34.
7 Shakespearean Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), ii, 96.
8 Unpublished Letters, ed. E. L. Griggs (New Haven, 1933), ii, 264-265.
9 The World's Body (New York, 1938), p. 193.
10 “An Apologie for Poetrie,” in Criticism: the Foundations of Modern Literary Judgment, p. 410.
11 Essays, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1926), i, 207.
12 Ibid., i, 96.
13 Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), i, 410.
14 Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross (Oxford, 1907), i, 4.
15 Complete Poetical Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge (Oxford, 1912), i, 37.
16 Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher, in Criticism: The Foundations of Modern Literary Judgment, p. 204.
17 Cf. The Friend, No. 16 (7 Dec. 1809), p. 251. “Satyrane's Letters,” first published in The Friend, appear again in 1817 to pad out the second volume of the Biographia.
18 Quoted in I. A. Richards, Coleridge on Imagination (London, 1934), p. 20.
19 Complete Poetical Works, i, 481 and note.
20 Cf. Alice D. Snyder, The Critical Principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites as Employed by Coleridge (Ann Arbor, 1918).
21 Reason in Madness (New York, 1941), p. 48.
22 Organic Unity in Coleridge, Univ. of Calif. Pub. in Eng., vii (1939), 72.
23 Cf. Muirhead, p. 198.
24 MS. Semina Rerum; quoted in Muirhead, p. 195.
25 “On Poesy or Art,” Biog., ii, 257.
26 Cf. Robert Penn Warren, “A Poem of Pure Imagination: An Experiment in Reading,” The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .. . With an Essay (New York, 1946), pp. 121-122, n. 29.
27 Univ. of Kansas City Rev., viii (Spring 1942), 199-202.
28 A History of Criticism (New York, 1900), iii, 231.