Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria - The Author & The Age

 

Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria

The Author & The Age 

Coleridge is considered one of the most significant poets and critics in the English language. He is best known for three poems, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” and “Christabel” as well as one volume of criticism, Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. While “The Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” and “Christabel” were poorly received during Coleridge’s lifetime, they are now praised as classic examples of imaginative poetry, illuminated by Coleridge’s poetic theories, of which he said in the Biographia Literaria, “My endeavors should be directed to persons and characters spiritual and supernatural, or at least romantic.”

Coleridge was born in Devon in 1772. At the age of ten he was sent to Christ’s Hospital, a boarding school in London where he was befriended by fellow student Charles Lamb. Later, he was awarded a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge University, showing promise as a gifted writer and brilliant conversationalist. In 1794, before completing his degree, Coleridge went on a walking tour to Oxford where he met poet Robert Southey and was inspired by the initial events of the French Revolution. In 1796 he met the poet William Wordsworth, with whom he had corresponded casually for several years. Their rapport was instantaneous, and the next year Coleridge moved to Nether Stowey in the Lake District, the site of their literary collaboration. Following the publication of Lyrical Ballads, with a few Other Poems, completed with Wordsworth, Coleridge traveled to Germany where he developed an interest in the German philosophers Immanuel Kant, Friedrich von Schelling, and brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm von Schlegel; he later introduced German aesthetic theories in England through his critical writing. He was addicted to opium and alcohol. Coleridge also gave a series of lectures on poetry and Shakespeare, which are now considered the basis of his reputation as a critic. In the last years of his life Coleridge wrote the Biographia Literaria, his greatest critical writing. Coleridge died in 1834 of complications stemming from his dependence on opium.

About the Age

Many scholars say that the Romantic period began with the publication of “Lyrical Ballads” by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in 1798. The volume contained some of the best-known works from these two poets including Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Wordsworth’s “Lines Written a Few Miles from Tintern Abbey.” Other Literary scholars place the start for the Romantic period much earlier (around 1785), since Robert Burns’ Poems (1786), William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” (1789), Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” and other works which already demonstrate that a change has taken place — in political thought and literary expression.

Other “first generation” Romantic writers include: Charles Lamb, Jane Austen, and Sir Walter Scott. There was a “second generation” of Romantics (made up of poets Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats) who died young and were outlived by the first generation of Romantics. Mary Shelley, famous for “Frankenstein” (1818) — was also a member of this “second generation” of Romantics. The Romantic period ended with the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837, as it was the beginning of the Victorian Period. The Romantic writers, were influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. William Hazlitt, who published a book called “The Spirit of the Age,” says that the Wordsworth school of poetry “had its origin in the French Revolution... It was a time of promise, a renewal of the world — and of letters.” Instead of embracing politics as writers of some other eras might have, the Romantics turned to Nature for self-fulfillment. They were turning away from the values and ideas of the previous era, embracing new ways of expressing their imagination and feelings. Instead of a concentration on “head,” the intellectual focus of reason, they preferred to rely on the individual freedom. Instead of striving for perfection, the Romantics preferred “the glory of the imperfect.”