The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

925 Pages·2009·4.25 MB·English

by  Frederick Burwick

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
A practical and comprehensive reference work, the Oxford Handbook provides
the best single-volume source of original scholarship on all aspects of
Coleridge’s diverse writings. Thirty-seven chapters, bringing together the
wisdome of experts from across the world, present an authoritative, in-depth, and
up-to-date assessment of a major author of British Romanticism. The book is
divided into sections on Biography, Prose Works, Poetic Works, Sources and
Influences, and Reception.
The Coleridge scholar today has ready access to a range of materials previously
available only in library archives on both sides of the Atlantic. The Bollingen
edition of the Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, forty years in
production, was completed in 2002. The Coleridge Notebooks (1957–2002) were
also produced during this same period, five volumes of text with an additional
five companion volumes of notes. The Clarendon Press of Oxford published the
letters in six volumes (1956–1971). To take full advantage of the convenient
access and new insight provided by these volumes, the Oxford Handbook
examines the entire range and complexity of Coleridge’s career. It analyzes the
many aspects of Coleridge’s literary, critical, philosophical, and theological
pursuits, and it furnishes both students and advanced scholars with the proper
tools for assimilating and illuminating Coleridge’s rich and varied
accomplishments, as well as offering an authoritative guide to the most up-to-
date thinking about his achievements.
Frederick Burwick, Professor Emeritus at UCLA, is author and editor of twenty
four books and over a hundred articles. He is editor of Coleridge’s Biographia
Literaria: Text and Meaning (1989), and more recently, with James McKusick,
Faustus, translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from the German of Goethe
(OUP, 2007). His Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination (1996) won the
Barricelli Book of the Year Award of the International Conference on
Romanticism. He has been named Distinguished Scholar by both the British
Academy (1992) and the Keats-Shelley Association (1998).
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Edited by
FREDERICK BURWICK
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX 2 6DP
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Oxford University Press 2009
© in chapter 2, Richard Gravil
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2009
First published in paperback 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication
Data Data available
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire
ISBN 978-0-19-922953-6 (Hbk.)
978-0-19964417-9 (Pbk.)
2 4 6 8 1 0 9 7 5 3 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Hundreds of scholarly works have laid the foundation for the present Oxford
Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Of particular value are Earl Leslie
Griggs’s edition of the letters (1956–1971), and the edition of the notebooks
(1957–2002), commenced by Kathleen Coburn and carried forward by Merten
Christensen and Anthony John Harding. But the grandest development in
Coleridgean scholarship has been The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1969–2002). The major task of this Handbook is to address the vast
scope, to assimilate, and to elucidate the manifold facets of Coleridge’s literary
career. The most profound acknowledgment, then, is owed to the dedicated and
capable editors who have provided these indispensible editions. Happily, a few
scholars who were involved in the editing of Coleridge’s works have also been
able to contribute to the Handbook. A second round of gratitude must therefore
go to the thirty-four authors who accepted the formidable task of synthesizing
their expertise in Coleridge’s works and providing the chapters for this volume.
They were given a rigorous schedule, and as editor I am extremely grateful for
their dedication in meeting deadlines and their patience with the final revisions.
In coping with the proof-reading and revisions, my fellow contributors will join
me in thanking Claire Thompson and Andrew Hawkey for their meticulous
attention to the text. My final word of thanks is to Andrew McNeillie for inviting
me to undertake this project. In spite of its being far more work than I had
anticipated, I must also say that it has been a rewarding learning experience.
CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Frederick Burwick
PART I BIOGRAPHY
1. Coleridge’s Early Years
Nicholas Roe
2. Coleridge and Wordsworth: Collaboration and Criticism from Salisbury Plain
to Aids to Reflection
Richard Gravil
3. Coleridge’s Publisher and Patron: Cottle and Poole
John-David Lopez
4. Coleridge’s Marriage and Family
Neil Vickers
5. Coleridge’s Travels
Tilar J. Mazzeo
6. Coleridge’s Self-Representations
Anya Taylor
PART II THE PROSE WORKS
7. Coleridge’s Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion
Peter J. Kitson
8. Coleridge as Editor: The Watchman and The Friend
Michael John Kooy
9. Coleridge in the Newspapers, Periodicals, and Annuals
Angela Esterhammer
10. Coleridge’s Lectures 1808–1819: On Literature
Matthew Scott
11. Coleridge as Literary Critic: Biographia Literaria and Essays on the
Principles of Genial Criticism
Raimonda Modiano
12. Coleridge on Politics and Religion: The Statesman’s Manual, Aids to
Reflection, On the Constitution of Church and State
Pamela Edwards
13. Coleridge’s Lectures 1818–1819: On the History of Philosophy
Jeffrey Hipolito
14. Coleridge as Reader: Marginalia
H. J. Jackson
15. Coleridge’s Notebooks
Paul Cheshire
16. Coleridge as Talker: Sage of Highgate, Table Talk
David Vallins
17. Coleridge as Thinker: Logic and Opus Maximum
Murray J. Evans
PART III THE POETIC WORKS
18. Coleridge on Allegory and Symbol
Nicholas Halmi
19. Coleridge’s Early Poetry, 1790–1796
David Fairer
20. Coleridge’s Genres
Michael O’Neill
21. Coleridge as Playwright
George Erving
22. Coleridge as Translator
Frederick Burwick
PART IV SOURCES AND INFLUENCES
23. Coleridge and Plagiarism
Andrew Keanie
24. Coleridge: Biblical and Classical Literature
Anthony John Harding
25. Coleridge as a Theologian
Douglas Hedley
26. Coleridge and Shakespeare
Charles Mahoney
27. Coleridge and the English Poetic Tradition
Christopher R. Miller
28. Coleridge and European Literature
Matthew Scott
29. Coleridge’s Dialogues with German Thought
Elinor Shaffer
30. Coleridge and Language Theory
James C. McKusick
31. Coleridge and Philosophy
Christoph Bode
32. Coleridge and the Arts
Julian Knox
33. Coleridge and Science
Eric G. Wilson
PART V RECEPTION
34. Coleridge’s Literary Influence
Seamus Perry
35. Coleridge’s Early Biographers
Morton D. Paley
36. Coleridge’s Reception on the Continent
Elinor Shaffer