Coleridge biography summary format template

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Samuel taylor coleridge death

Chapters Key Figures. Important Quotes. Essay Topics. Discussion Questions. The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Biographia Literaria , his semiautobiographical work on aesthetic theory, in Coleridge remarks on the temperament of men of genius and the state of contemporary criticism. This leads him to address the critiques made of the preface to the Lyrical Ballads , a collection of poems on which he and Wordsworth collaborated.

Coleridge argues that rather than merely receiving ideas and impressions from the world, mind has agency in perceiving reality.

Samuel taylor coleridge works

In Chapter 8 Coleridge entertains but interrogates Cartesian dualism. After a digression during which Coleridge recounts the trials and successes of his early literary career, he returns to discussing the nature of reality. To illustrate his theories, Coleridge examines exemplary poems by Shakespeare and contrasts 16th-century and contemporary literature.

Coleridge argues that poetry is inevitably artificial and that it is consciousness, not commonness, that defines poetic genius. Despite his criticisms of Wordsworthian theory, Coleridge lauds his friend as the greatest poet of his era.