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Coleridge As A Critic
Coleridge As A Critic
8 JUNE 2020
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LITERARY CRITICISM
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INTRODUCTION
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
(born October 21, 1772, Ottery
St. Mary, Devonshire, England—
died July 25, 1834, Highgate,
near London), English lyrical
poet, critic, and philosopher.
His Lyrical Ballads, written with
William Wordsworth, heralded the
English Romantic movement, and
his Biographia Literaria
(1817) is the most significant
work of general literary criticism
produced in the English Romantic
period.
The function of criticism for Coleridge was to find out these elements and to
lift them into conscious awareness, rather than merely to prescribe or to
describe rules or forms. As a social critic, literary critic, and psychologist,
Coleridge expressed and explain an underlying creative principle that is
fundamental to both human beings and the universe as a whole.
"So, then there abide these three – Aristotle, Longinus and Coleridge.”
Richards considers him as the fore-runner "of the modern science of semantics",
Rene Wellek is of the view that he is a link,
Most recent American Literary critics discuss none of the older critics except
COLERIDGE and ARISTOTLE. Constant references are made to Coleridge’s principle
of the reconciliation of opposites to his definition of the imagination, to the idea of the
organic whole, and to his distinction between symbol and allegory.
It is generally believed that Coleridge was one of the greatest critics. According to one
school of thought, Coleridge is to be admired as a critic mainly for having made insight
observations on particulars works and authors.
According to the other school of thought, Coleridge reputation rests on his successful
and suggestive traetment of abstract literary problems. The two points of view are not
mutually contradictory. The actual fact is that there is a direct and close relationship
Coleridge tried to reform a social attitudes of people of his times by trying to change
their methods of thinking. He also tried to reform literary criticism. In the Biographia
Literaria (chapter XXI) Coleridge says that the critics should first establish the
principles which he holds for the foundation of poetry in general and should only then
proceed with his judgement of the merits and faults of a literary works.
A critic he says should prepare his “CANONS OF CRITICISM FOR PRAISE AND
CONDEMNATION” and should then proceed to particularize the most striking
passages to which those canons are applicable, faithfully noting the excellences and
defects. He laments the fact that “ARBITRARY AND PETULANT VERDICTS “ are
common and that these verdicts are seldom supported by quotations from the work
condemned . this then may be regarded as Coleridge’s first claim to greatness as a
critic.
“Coleridge differs from almost all preceding English writers by his claim to
an epistemology and metaphysics from which he drives his aesthetics and
his literary theory and critical principles”
Coleridge says clearly says in “BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA” that the critic should
support his judgements by references to fixed canons of criticism, previously
established and “deduced from the nature of man”. (means these principles must be
based on human nature).
Is the living power and prime agent of all humans perceptions, and it is a repetition in
the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite “I AM”.
Is an echo of the primary , it co-exists with the conscious will, and its differ from the
primary not in kind but only in degree and in the mode of its iperations. This
imagination dissolves , diffuses , or to idealize and to unify.
It was the union of deep feeling (heart) and profound thought (head) which stuck
Coleridge in WILLIAM WORDSWORTH poem “GUILT AND SORROW”
In his critique of Shakespears two poems Coleridge points out the importances of
thoughts he speaks of the “depth and energy of thoughts “ in Shakespears VENUS AND
ADONIS...and then adds that
“no man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a
profound philosopher “
About Poetry he says ....
“poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge human
thoughts, human passion, emotions, language.”
“the man who has no music in his soul can never be a genuine poet”
“the principles of grammar , logic, and psychology” that is the basic elements of the
writer’s medium(language) of his instrument (the human mind) and the human
capacities and need