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Romantic Psychology and the Inner Senses: Coleridge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Judson S. Lyon
Judson S. Lyon*
Affiliation:
State University College, New Paltz, New York
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Extract

The english Romantics had a special affinity for metaphors and similes of inner eyes, inner ears, and inner senses. These ancient and commonplace figures are widely pervasive and often conspicuously prominent in the literature of the period, appearing under myriad modifications and serving a wide variety of functions. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats used them in some of the most familiar and pivotal passages in their works, apparently seeking to charge them with new meaning. In fact, these figures are so prominent in Romantic literature that they must have been found serviceable to some particularly urgent expressive need of the time. I believe it was the Romantics' intense preoccupation with psychological theory, and the particular types of psychological theory they wished to support and oppose, which led them to explore and exploit afresh the possibilities of inner-sense figures.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , June 1966 , pp. 246 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 “Coleridge on Imagination and Fancy,” PBA, xxxii (1946), 181. Symbols used for Coleridge's works are: Shedd—The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. W. G. T. Shedd (New York, 1884), 7 vols.; AP—Anima Poetae, ed. E. H. Coleridge (London, 1895); AR—Aids to Reflection (1825, Shedd, Vol. i); BL—Biographia Literaria (1817), ed. J. Shawcross (London, 1907), 2 vols.; CL—Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs (Oxford, 1956–59), 4 vols.; F— The Friend (1818, Shedd, Vol. ii); Notebooks—The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London, 1957–), 2 vols.; PW—The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. H. Coleridge (Oxford, 1912), 2 vols. (used for all quotations from Coleridge's poetry and drama); SM—The Statesman's Manual (1817, Shedd, Vol. i); TT—The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Oxford, 1917).

2 For a modern criticism of the concept of “inner seeing,” see Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London, 1949), passim.

3 Blake to T. Butts, 22 Nov. 1802, Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. G. Keynes (London, 1939), pp. 860–862.

4 “Prospectus” to “The Recluse,” l. 41.

5 21 May 1807, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Middle Years, ed. E. de Selincourt (Oxford, 1939), p. 128.

6 For a preliminary account of Wordsworth's references to inner senses, see my The Excursion: A Study (New Haven, 1950), pp. 97–104.

7 James R. Caldwell, John Keats' Fancy: The Effect on Keats of the Psychology of His Day (Ithaca, N. Y., 1945).

8 See, e.g., “Alastor,” l. 156; “Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici,” ll. 10–12; “Epipsychidion,” ll. 109–110.

9 A. D. Snyder, Coleridge on Logic and Learning (New Haven, 1929), p. 137.

10 See L. E. Wagner, “Coleridge's Use of Laudanum and Opium as Connected with his Interest in Contemporary Investigations Concerning Stimulation and Sensation,” Psychoanalytic Rev., xxv (1938), 309–334

11 “The Soul and Its Organs of Sense” (originally published as #174 in Southey's Omniana), TT, pp. 360–364. For another example, see CL, iv, 751.

12 See Coleridge on Logic and Learning, p. 112; Shedd, v, 261; and Remorse, i, i, 109.

13 Notebooks, #2486 (1805).

14 AP, p. 235; Notebooks, #2372; “Hexameters,” ll. 26–34; Remorse, iii, ii, 124–126.

15 CL, ii, 706; iv, 574; TT, pp. 188–189.

16 SM, App. B, p. 459; Coleridge on Logic and Learning, p. 135.

17 “Metaphysician or Mystic?” in Coleridge: Studies by Several Hands on the Hundredth Anniversary of His Death, eds. E. Blunden and E. L. Griggs (London, 1934), p. 194.

18 To avoid overburdening the page with notes, I omit references for the expressions in the following catalog; some occur many times in Coleridge's writings, others somewhat less frequently, and a few only once or twice.

19 William Empson, “Sense in the Prelude,” KR, xiii (Spring 1951), 285–302.

20 “Fragment of an Essay on Taste,” in BL, ii, 248.

21 Prelude vi.600–602; “Tintern Abbey,” ll. 47–49.

22 SM, pp. 437–438 [my italics].

23 Enn. vi, ix, 10; v, iii, 3. F, pp. 144–145.

24 BL, i, 167; AP, pp. 48–49.

25 Notebooks, #1678, 2164 n. (1803–04).

26 J. J. De Boer, The Theory of Knowledge of the Cambridge Platonists (Madras, 1931), p. 39.

27 Muirhead, Coleridge as Philosopher, pp. 106 ff.

28 Cf. Matt, xiii.13, Mark viii.18, Jer. v.21, etc.

29 F, p. 146; cf. I John iv.12.

30 AR, Introductory Aphorism ix, 120.

31 Ecclesiastical Polity, i, vii, 2; F, First Landing-Place, Essay 5, p. 145.

32 Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, ed. R. F. Brinkley (Durham, N. C., 1955), p. 304.

33 See De Boer, pp. 30–42.

34 See J. B. Beer, Coleridge the Visionary (London, 1959), pp. 150 ff.

35 Three Dialogues of the Supersensual Life (London, 1901), p. 14.

36 Essay on Human Understanding, ii, i, 4.

37 C. D. Thorpe, “Addison and Hutcheson on the Imagination,” ELH, ii (1935), 225.

38 D. D. Raphael, The Moral Sense (London, 1947), passim.

39 Adapted from H. N. Fairchild by R. Haven, “Coleridge, Hartley, and the Mystics,” JHI, xx (1959), 483.

40 SM, App. E, p. 479; Coleridge on Logic and Learning, pp. 94–102; BL, ii, 247 & n.; CL, iv, 852 (1818).

41 Notebooks, #1710, 1715, 1705 n. For recent studies of Coleridge's divergence from Kant, supplementing René Wellek's indispensable basic treatment in Immanuel Kant in England: 1798–1838 (Princeton, 1931), see unpubl. diss. (Michigan, 1951) by Kenneth Millar, “The Inward Eye: A Revaluation of Coleridge's Psychological Criticism,” passim, and James D. Boulger, Coleridge as Religious Thinker (New Haven, 1961), p. 125.

42 TT (28 June 1834), p. 311.

43 CL, iv, 874 (1818); Notebooks, #2447 (1805).

44 Coleridge's relation to Jacobi is thoroughly examined in E. Winkelmann, “Coleridge und die Kantische Philosophie,” Palaestra, clxxxiv (1933), to which I am indebted in the following five sentences.

45 W. Schrickx, “Coleridge and F. H. Jacobi,” RBPH, xxxvi (1958), 812–850.

46 Muirhead, “Metaphysician or Mystic?” passim.

47 J. D. Sinclair, ed., The Divine Comedy (London, 1948), iii, 357.

48 SM, p. 460; “Essay on Faith,” Shedd, v, 561.

49 See, e.g., AP, p. 246; CL, iii, 127 (1808).

50 See my The Excursion: A Study, p. 103.

51 Kant in England, p. 109.

52 “S. T. Coleridge: His Theory of Knowledge,” TWA, xlvii (1958), 221–232.

53 See, e.g., Shedd, ii, 164 n.; v, 70; vi, 139, 140; Coleridge on Logic and Learning, pp. 27, 102.

54 AR, App. A, p. 367; SM, Apps. A, B, pp. 455, 459.

55 Kant in England, p. 109.

56 Note on Field, Shedd, v, 70.

57 “Essay on Faith,” Shedd, v, 561.

58 SM, p. 460 n. (1827); F, pp. 144–145; Note on Field, Shedd, v, 70; The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (New York, 1949), p. 394.

59 Note on Sherlock, Shedd, v, 389.

60 Marginal note to Jacobi, quoted by Schrickx, p. 843.

61 Notebooks, #1612 (1803).