M.A:- Sem 1
Roll No:- 28
Enrollment No:- 2069108420170002
Paper No:-3
Unit:-4
Sub:- Literary theory and criticism
Topic:- The Biographia Literaria by
Samuel Coleridge
College :- Department of English
(M.K.B.U)
Email:-priyankabaraiya8895@gmail.com
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who,
with his friend William Wordsworth,
was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was
highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture.
In
the wonderful “ Ode to Dejection” from which the above fragment is taken, we
have a single strong impression of Coleridge’s whole life – a sad , broken ,
tragic life. In marked contrast with the peaceful extence of his friend
Wardsworth for him self . During the greater part of his life . The poet had
only grief and remorse as his portion, But for anybody else. For the audience
that were charred by the brilliancy of
his literary lectures. For the friends who gathered about him to be inspired by
his ideals and conversation, and for all his readers who found unending delight
in the little volume which holds his poetry. He had and still has a cheering
message full of hope and beauty and inspiration. Coleridge a man of grief who
makes world glad.
Early
life:-
Samuel's father was the
Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), the well-respected vicar of St Mary's Church, Ottery St
Mary and
headmaster of the King's School, a free grammar school established by King Henry VIII (1509–1547) in the town. He had
previously been Master of Hugh Squier's School in South Molton, Devon, and Lecturer of nearby Molland.
John Coleridge had three
children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr.
Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809),probably the daughter of John
Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, in 1726.
Coleridge
suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read
"incessantly" and played by himself.
After John Coleridge died in 1781,
8-year-old Samuel was sent to Christ's Hospital, a charity school which was founded in
the 16th century in Greyfriars, London, where he remained throughout
his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became
friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles.
In one of a series of
autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole, Coleridge wrote: "At six
years old I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip
Quarll – and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments – one tale of which (the tale of a man
who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me
(I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was
haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark – and I distinctly remember the
anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which
the books lay – and whenever the sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it
by the wall, and bask, and read."
Throughout his life,
Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship
with his mother was more problematic. His
childhood was characterised by attention seeking, which has been linked to his
dependent personality as an adult. He
was rarely allowed to return home during the school term, and this distance
from his family at such a turbulent time proved emotionally damaging.
He later wrote of his
loneliness at school in the poem "Frost at Midnight": "With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my
sweet birthplace."
Literary criticism
Biographia Literaria
In addition to his poetry, Coleridge also wrote influential
pieces of literary criticism including Biographia Literaria, a
collection of his thoughts and opinions on literature which he published in
1817.
The work delivered both biographical
explanations of the author's life as well as his impressions on literature. The
collection also contained an analysis of a broad range of philosophical
principles of literature ranging from Aristotle to Immanuel
Kant and Schelling and
applied them to the poetry of peers such as William Wordsworth.
Coleridge's
explanation of metaphysical principles
were popular topics of discourse in academic communities throughout the 19th
and 20th centuries, and T.S. Eliot stated
that he believed that Coleridge was "perhaps the greatest of English
critics, and in a sense the last." Eliot suggests that Coleridge displayed
"natural abilities" far greater than his contemporaries,
dissecting literature and applying philosophical principles of metaphysics in a
way that brought the subject of his criticisms away from the text and into a
world of logical analysis that mixed logical analysis and emotion. However,
Eliot also criticises Coleridge for allowing his emotion to play a role in the
metaphysical process, believing that critics should not have emotions that are
not provoked by the work being studied.
Hugh Kenner in Historical
Fictions, discusses Norman Fruman's Coleridge,
the Damaged Archangel and
suggests that the term "criticism" is too often applied to Biographia Literaria, which
both he and Fruman describe as having failed to explain or help the reader
understand works of art. To Kenner, Coleridge's attempt to discuss complex
philosophical concepts without describing the rational process behind them
displays a lack of critical thinking that makes the volume more of a biography
than a work of criticism.[44]
In Biographia
Literaria and his poetry,
symbols are not merely "objective correlatives" to Coleridge, but
instruments for making the universe and personal experience intelligible and
spiritually covalent. To Coleridge, the "cinque spotted spider,"
making its way upstream "by fits and starts," Biographia Literaria is
not merely a comment on the intermittent nature of creativity, imagination, or
spiritual progress, but the journey and destination of his life. The spider's
five legs represent the central problem that Coleridge lived to resolve, the
conflict between Aristotelian logic and Christian philosophy. Two legs of the
spider represent the "me-not me" of thesis and antithesis, the idea
that a thing cannot be itself and its opposite simultaneously, the basis of the
clockwork Newtonian world view that Coleridge rejected. The remaining three
legs—exothesis, mesothesis and synthesis or the Holy trinity—represent the idea
that things can diverge without being contradictory. Taken together, the five
legs—with synthesis in the center, form the Holy Cross of Ramist logic. The
cinque-spotted spider is Coleridge's emblem of holism, the quest and substance
of Coleridge's thought and spiritual life.
Works
of Coleridge’s:-
Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English
poetry. His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the
age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more
rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey
and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence on
Wordsworth is particularly important because many critics have credited
Coleridge with the very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of
utilising common, everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas
for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in
Coleridge’s mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, The Excursion or The
Prelude, ever having been written without the direct influence of
Coleridge’s originality.
As important as Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he was
equally important to poetry as a critic. His philosophy of poetry, which he
developed over many years, has been deeply influential in the field of literary
criticism. This influence can be seen in such critics as A. O.
Lovejoy and I. A.
Richards.
The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan.
Coleridge is probably best known for his long
poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Even those who have never read the Rime have come under its influence: its
words have given the English language the metaphor of an albatross around
one's neck, the quotation of "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to
drink" (almost always rendered as "but not a drop to drink"),
and the phrase "a sadder and a wiser man" (again, usually rendered as
"a sadder but wiser man"). The phrase "All creatures great and
small" may have been inspired by The
Rime: "He prayeth best, who loveth best;/ All things both great and
small;For the dear God who loveth us;He made and loveth all." Christabel is known for its musical rhythm,
language, and its Gothic tale.
Kubla
Khan, or, A
Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known. Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional "Romantic" aura
because they were never finished. Stopford Brooke characterised
both poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical
movement" and "imaginative phrasing."
In
xanadu did Kubla Khan
A
stately pleasure-dome decree
Where
Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through
caverns measureless to man
Down
to a sunless sea.
Conclusion:-
The
work of Coleridge’s criticism and biographia literaria and lectures on
Shakespeare are very important in our English Literature. He was influenced by
many contemporary writers of his age. The influences which were most potent in
shaping the views and theories of Coleridge and wordswarth.
Hey nice article, it's well written and I think readers can easily understand it, however if anybody need more detailed analysis, you can visit Biographia literaria: Fancy and imagination
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