Coleridge's Writings – serie

'This is an important and illuminating collection, however, which could only have been assembled by a formidably learned scholar.' - N. Fruman, Choice From Coleridge's vast writings this book assembles excerpts from Coleridge's inquiries into the workings of consciousness and the soul; man's evolution and divergence from animals; the varieties of human weakness and evil and the creation of culture and belief join to suggest an underlying coherence in Coleridge's interdisciplinary thought. The editor has arranged material from an assortment of public and private writings, and has provided linking commentary to the texts and notes. This volume follows John Morrow's volume, the first in the series, On Politics and Society (1990).

This collation from S. T. Coleridge's contributions to the theory of language presents an imposing revision of the enlightenment approach to language. Selections from his verse, notebooks, journalism and ephemera are arranged under headings including the language of politics; language and culture; the language of poetry; theory of language; words and things; organ of language; and the language of religion. The editor's introduction situates Coleridge's thinking in its period, and with modern theory in mind.

Of all the wide-ranging interests Coleridge showed in his career, religion was the deepest and most long lasting, and Beer demonstrates in this book how none of this work can be fully understood without taking this into account. Beer also reveals how Coleridge was preoccupied by the life of the mind and how closely this subject was intertwined with religion in his thinking.

This new volume demonstrates the extent and diversity of Coleridge's writings on the sublime. It highlights the development of his aesthetic of transcendence from an initial emphasis on the infinite progressiveness of humanity, through a fascination with landscape as half-revealing the infinite forces underlying it, and with literature as producing a similar feeling of the inexpressible, to an increasing emphasis on contemplating the ineffable nature of God, as well as the transcendent power of Reason or spiritual insight.

Coleridge's contributions to the theory of language presents an imposing revision of the enlightenment approach to language. Selections from his verse, notebooks, journalism and ephemera are arranged under headings including the language of politics; language and culture; the language of poetry; theory of language; organ of language;

Of all the wide-ranging interests Coleridge showed in his career, religion was the deepest and most long lasting, and Beer demonstrates in this book how none of this work can be fully understood without taking this into account. Beer also reveals how Coleridge was preoccupied by the life of the mind and how closely this subject was intertwined with religion in his thinking.