Coleridge’s Sublime Later Prose and Recent Theory

Murray J. Evans is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Winnipeg and Retired Fellow at St John’s College, University of Manitoba, Canada. He has taught medieval literature and medievalism, Coleridge, children’s literature, “Inklings” C.S. Lewis et al., literary history, and literary theory. He is the author of Rereading Middle English Romance (1995) and Sublime Coleridge: The Opus Maximum (Palgrave, 2012) and has also published essays on Malory and the Malory manuscript, Chaucer, Piers Plowman, Coleridge, and C.S. Lewis.

“Coleridge’s Later Prose and Recent Theory: Kristeva, Adorno, Rancière, by Murray Evans, in some ways serves as a case study of the issues that arise in so many of the articles in Duffy’s collection. … It also attempts to make the subject more present and relevant by addressing contemporary philosophers and urgent issues … . result is a collection of very interesting thought experiments that is possibly less historically rigorous than it might be but is nonetheless intriguing and worthwhile.” (Stephen Hancock, European Romantic Review, February 26, 2025) “Coleridgeans … with little interest in modern theory, should read this book, as it provides fresh insights into the later Coleridge not ordinarily available from single-author analyses. Evans’ comparative breadth can only deepen our appreciation of the persistence of the Coleridgean milieu.” (Peter Larkin, The Coleridge Bulletin, Vol. 63, 2024)

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Touchstones for Sublimity: Coleridge’s Lay Sermons (1816–17) and the 1818 Lectures on Literature.- 3. Sublime Boundaries of Belief and Unbelief: Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (wr. 1824) and Julia Kristeva’s This Incredible Need to Believe (2006).- 4. Sublime Disintegration: Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection (1825) and Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (1970) .-5. Sublime Politics: Coleridge’s On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and Jacques Rancière’s Aisthesis (2011).- 6. Conclusion: The Sublime in Coleridge, Kristeva, Adorno, and Rancière