Title: Shaping Spirits, or, Imagination and "Abstruse Research": the perils of metaphysics and Coleridge's loss of form in the years of his philosophical accomplishment
Abstract: The mystical nature of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan” has intrigued readers for over two centuries. Of these full poems only the “Rime” is complete and yet they all still enjoy the scrutiny of a wide audience. This thesis examines the circumstances surrounding Coleridge’s inability to continue writing such poems of imaginative force. In the years immediately following the composition of these great imaginative poems, Coleridge identified himself as lost in “the unwholesome quicksilver mines of mataphysic”, and in “Dejection: An Ode” confessed that he lost his “shaping spirit of Imagination” through “abstruse research” (PW I ii 700, ll. 86,89). John Lowes refers to this loss as Coleridge’s loss of power (Lowes, 1951, 476n). This thesis ascertains the factors, both primary and secondary, that contributed to Coleridge’s loss of imaginative force, and it also identifies factors that enhanced his imagination. Increasingly Coleridge made reasoned engagements with the metaphysics of German Idealism. This essentially rendered his poetic access redundant as well as occluding empirical engagement. My primary argument is that Coleridge lost his imaginative force as a result of shifting his interest from a mostly empirical philosophy, to one based in German Idealism of the Kantian inheritance. Coleridge’s loss of imaginative force correlates with his residence in Germany from 1798-99, when he studied at the University of Gottingen. Thus the predominant focus of this thesis is on Coleridge’s early career. The reason for this choice of subject is that Coleridge himself considered his loss of imaginative force to be significant, and regarded these poems as exemplary examples of a poetics of imagination that he could not regain. In elucidating Coleridge’s loss of imaginative force the methodology of this thesis will move between the secondary sources of other critics and the copious biographical information on Coleridge. It will also include my own analysis of the poems, and alongside these, gently suggest my own theories of imagination. Coleridge’s imagination poems predominantly define the self and his ideas on the will. Coleridge wrote on a variety of subjects relating to philosophy, sociology, politics, epistemology and religion, and in these he includes his intrigue with the faculty of the will. The will is also central to the different philosophies that Coleridge studied before, during and after he wrote his imagination poems. As such, Coleridge’s treatment of the will must be closely examined in its role as a participating factor in his imagination poetry. Such an examination must include scrutiny of necessitarianism and Calvinism because these doctrines involve the will in their theories of predetermination and causation. Coleridge’s ideas on the imagination are closely associated with the will, and in his theories on these topics he considered the secondary imagination to echo the primary imagination, and to co-exist with the conscious will (BL I 304). Factors affecting Coleridge between 1795 and 1801 are important to this thesis as they influence the development and loss of his imagination poetry, mostly written between 1797 and 1798. Such factors include his marriage to Sara Fricker, abandonment of pantisocracy, friendship with William Wordsworth, the shift from radical politics towards conservatism, deprecating criticism of his imagination poetry from Wordsworth and Southey among others, opium use, and meeting Sara Hutchinson. These poems shall finally be examined in the context of their classification as Romantic poems that define the individual and the self in solitude. As much as Coleridge’s great poems of the imagination are located in his struggle for a comprehensive account of the self and the will, working towards a Romantic statement of the individual, and the self in solitude, they also need to be defined as characteristically irreducible, unfathomable and mystical. The conclusion of this thesis maintains its introductory assertion that the primary cause of Coleridge’s loss of imagination was the result of his research in German Idealism. In particular, his metaphysical speculations diverted him from empirical philosophy and weakened his imaginative force, and are primarily responsible for his loss of imaginative force. The conclusion asserts Coleridge’s accomplishment with the imagination poems, but also acknowledges his achievement in his texts of the nineteenth-century, written after his imaginative faculty was effectively lost.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot