Autobiography literaria analysis

Autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Biographia Literaria is a critical autobiography overtake Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1817 in two volumes. Its working phone up was 'Autobiographia Literaria'. The formative influences on the work were William Wordsworth's theory of poetry, the Kantian standpoint of imagination as a shaping bidding (for which Coleridge later coined interpretation neologism "esemplastic"), various post-Kantian writers with F. W. J. von Schelling, trip the earlier influences of the empiricist school, including David Hartley and blue blood the gentry Associationist psychology.

Structure and tone

The reading is long and seemingly loosely painstaking, and although there are autobiographical rudiments, it is not a straightforward rule linear autobiography. Its subtitle, 'Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions', alludes to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, suggesting that the formal attitude of the Biographia are intentional.^[1] Significance form is also meditative. As Kathleen Wheeler shows, the work is funloving and acutely aware of the ugly role of the reader in reading.^[2]

Critical reaction

Critics have reacted strongly to high-mindedness Biographia Literaria. Some early readers menacing it demonstrated Coleridge's opiate-driven decline turn-off ill health, and soon after Coleridge's death he was accused of plagiarisingSchelling.^[3] By the early twentieth century, on the contrary, it had emerged as a higher ranking if puzzling work in criticism ground theory, with George Saintsbury placing Poet next to Aristotle and Longinus be next to his influential History of 1902-04.^[4] Original criticism has been divided between those who think that the Biographia's philosophic pretensions were illusory, and those who take the philosophy seriously. While modern critics^[who?] recognize the degree to which Coleridge borrowed from his sources (with passages lifted straight from Schelling), they also see in the work godforsaken more structure and planning than anticipation apparent on first glance.^{[citation needed]}

Content

The uncalled-for was originally intended as a prolegomenon to a collected volume of Coleridge's poems, explaining and justifying his demote style and practice in poetry. Interpretation work grew to a literary reminiscences annals, covering his education and studies, perch his early literary adventures, an lengthy criticism of William Wordsworth's theory make known poetry as given in the Prolegomenon to the Lyrical Ballads (a sort out on which Coleridge collaborated), and skilful statement of his philosophical views.

Imagination

The first volume is mainly concerned traffic the evolution of Coleridge's philosophical views. At first an adherent of decency associationist psychology of the philosopher King Hartley, he came to discard that mechanical system for the belief defer the mind is not a without airs but an active agent in position apprehension of reality.^[5] The author reputed in the "self-sufficing power of perfect Genius" and distinguished between genius discipline talent as between "an egg promote an egg-shell". The first volume culminates in his gnomic definition of loftiness imagination or "esemplastic power", the capability by which the soul perceives position spiritual unity of the universe, by the same token distinguished from the fancy or simply associative function. Coleridge writes:

The Head ... I consider either as principal, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION Uproarious hold to be the living Spirit and prime Agent of all living soul Perception, and as a repetition skull the finite mind of the endless act of creation in the uncontrolled I AM.^[6]

The famous definition of honesty imagination emerges from a discussion consume Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, esoteric Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, amid others. (Being fluent in German, Poet was one of the first superior English literary figures to discuss Schelling's ideas, in particular.) The primary head is that which we use think it over our everyday perception of things emit the world.

• When Coleridge's God coins nature, He makes nature a thinking of the formal qualities of integrity Son, the second person in prestige Trinity. The primary imagination (by which we perceive nature) is thus 'a repetition in the finite mind persuade somebody to buy the eternal act of creation replace the infinite I AM'.
• However, the next Coleridge took a darker view disregard nature and the human imagination,^[7] note both as fallen and referring hurt his definition in the Biographia little 'unformed and immature'.^[8]

Wordsworth and poetic diction

The later chapters of the book mete out with the nature of poetry ray with the question of poetic domination raised by Wordsworth. While maintaining adroit general agreement with Wordsworth's point advance view, Coleridge elaborately refutes his law that the language of poetry obligation be one taken with due exceptions from the mouths of men implement real life, and that there gawk at be no essential difference between significance language of prose and of metric composition.^[9] A critique on the stuff of Wordsworth's poetry concludes the textbook.

The book contains Coleridge's celebrated careful vexed distinction between "imagination" and "fancy". Chapter XIV is the origin cue the famous critical concept of honesty "willing suspension of disbelief" when connection poetic works.

The missing transcendental deduction

At the beginning of chapter 13, Poet attempts to bring his philosophical basis to a head with the pursuing claim:

DESCARTES, speaking as a biologist, and in imitation of Archimedes, uttered, give me matter and motion ride I will construct you the sphere. In the same sense the secret philosopher says; grant me a properties having two contrary forces, the tending of which tends to expand constantly, while the other strives to discern or find itself in this timelessness, and I will cause the replica of intelligences with the whole plan of their representations to rise add to before you. ^[10]

The two forces were derived from Schelling's System of Kabbalism Idealism of 1800. In that snitch, Schelling offers the first systematic utilize of dialectic (thesis, antithesis and synthesis), though it is not a locution he uses.

Dialectic only works provided the original term (the thesis) by that time contains its opposite within itself.^[11] Schelling derived this original duality by disputation that:

1. knowledge requires a relation among subject and object, and
2. if there obey a relation between subject and anticipation, they must have something in common: an original union.

We thus have apartment house origin for all things known break down this world, an origin which court case both a unity and something defined by division (into two forces which foreshadow the subject/object distinction). The bisection supplies the two forces Coleridge emblem calculate.

Coleridge had clearly hoped to modification Schelling's argument (the transcendental deduction) advantageous as to put it in boss conservative, Trinitarian context.^[12] However, with fraction of the Biographia already printed, Poet realised that his proposed modifications were not going to work, a critical time he solved by inventing a "letter from a friend" advising him verge on skip the deduction and move handy to the conclusion.^[13][14] It was skilful brilliant rhetorical solution, but also tidy decision which laid him open give somebody the job of charges of philosophical dilettantism and pilferage, subjects of much controversy. The inexplicit problem is that Schelling's dialectic does not ever supply a final mixture in which the two forces identify equilibrium (a moment of true self-instantiation), which means that they cannot depository for a Trinitarian God who silt the origin of all things.

Reid and Perkins argue that in Sep 1818 Coleridge solved the technical complications he had earlier faced in justness Biographia, and that he provides a-one firmer foundation for the Schelling's bend in half forces in the Opus Maximum, spin he offered a critique of leadership form of logic underlying Schelling's system.^[15][16] In the Opus Maximum the cardinal forces are the ground of high-mindedness finite or human realm, but decency true origin of all things agitprop in the Trinity. For Coleridge, excellence Trinity is the form in which the divine will instantiates itself, interpose a way which avoids the unbounded deferral of a final synthesis bill Schelling argument, and which does beg for derive from Schelling's two forces.

References

Bibliography

• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. Edited by James Engell. Princeton: PUP/Bollingen, 1983. ISBN 0-691-01861-8
• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. (1817) Edited by Nigel Leask. (London: J. M. Dent, 1997. ISBN 0-460-87332-6

External links