UNIT 3 COLERIDGE :BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

Structure

Objectives
Introduction
Fancy and Imagination
Coleridge's View of Poetry and of 'The Poet'
The German Angle
A Comparison of Wordsworth and Coleridge as Critics
Let Us Sum Up
Questions
Suggested Readings

3.0 OBJECTIVES

In this unit we shall take up Coleridge's major critical work Biographia Literaria
with special attention to his theory of Imagination and his view of poetry. In doing
so, we shall also touch upon the influence of German thinkers on his thought.

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Biographia Literaria was begun by its author as a literary autobiography but ended
up in discussions about Kant, and Schelling and Coleridge's perceptive criticism of
Wordsworth's poetry and a comprehensive statement on creative imagination which
constitutes his most signal contribution to literary criticism and theory. As was his
wont, oler ridge has let his awe-inspiringly powerful mind loose on aestheiics, its
philosophical foundations and its practical application in an almost desultory manner.
The result is a mine of inexhaustible potential called Biographia Literaria to which
critics of all shades of opinion have turned for help and inspiration and very seldom
has any one of them been disappointed. Arthur Symons justly described the work as
rthe greatest book of English criticism']. Coleridge has sometimes been accused of
borrowing from the Germans, particularly from Kant, Sckelli~~g and the Schlegels,
but most of his ideas were originally arrived at and, in my case. the system into which
these ideas were f;tt~A was the creation of his own great mind.

Coleridge's whole aesthetic - his definition of poetry, his idea of the poet, and h ~ s
poetical criticism - revolve around his theory of creative imagination. From this
point of view chapters XI11 and XIV of Biographin Liter~rri~l are most sign~ticant.

The statement of the theory of imagination in Biographia Litercrria is preceded by a

prolix and, at time, abstruegn";losophical discourse in the form of certain theses or
propositions whose crs is Coleridge's attempt to define Nature and Self. Nature - the
sum of all that is objective - is passive and unconscious while Self or Intelligence -
the sum of all that is subjective - is vital and conscious. All knowledge is the
product of the coalescence of the subject and the object. This coalescence leads to
the act of creation, I AM. It is in this state of self-consciousness that ['object ar.d
subject, being and knowledge, are identical'] and the reality of ['the one life in us and
abroad'] is experienced and affirmed and chaos is converted into z cosmos. What
happens is that the Self or Spirit views itself in all objects which as objects are dead
and finite. Coleridge's theory of creativeymagination is essentially grounded ir, ihis
perception. Hence Coleridge's view of the .=lagination approximates to the ~riecvsol
Schelling and Kant. Like Coleridge they recognise the interdependence of subject Coleridge
and object as complementary aspects of a single reality. Also they all agree about
the self conceived 2s a totality: thought and feeling in their original identity and not
as an abstraction.

3.2 FANCY AND IMAGINATION

Coleridge builds his theory on the basic distinction between Fancy and Imagination -
terms which were used before him more-or-less indistinguishably to express the same
import. He first refers to this significant distinction in Chapter IV of Biographia
Literaria. The occasion is his consideration of the excellence of Wordsworth's mind
as reflected in his poetry:
Repeated meditations led me first to suspect (and a more
intimate analysis of human faculties, their appropriate
marks, functions and effects matured my conjecture into
full conviction) that fancy and imagination were two
distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being,
according to the general belief, either two names with one
meaning, or, at furthest, the lower and higher degree of one
and the same power.
Coleridge ultimately uses the term 'Fancy' for the eighteenth century view of
imagination which was essentially mechanical and determined by the law of
association. Imagination, on this view, does not modify, much less does it transform
the materials that it deals with but merely reproduces them. In Kantian terms we
should call it the reproductive imagination. 'Fancy', says Coleridge, 'has no other
;~uiltersto play with, but fixities and definities. ...Fancy must receive all its
materials ready-made from the law of association.' Our brief discussion of the theory
of association in the context of the eighteenth century view of imagination above
would make it clear that although Coleridge does assign a minor role to Fancy in the
production of poetry, it is with him essentially a pejorative term, because as
Shawcross explains, the distinction between imagination as universally active in
consciousness and the same faculty in a heightened power as creative in a poetic
sense.
In contrast to Fancy, Imagination is essentially creative. Coleridge subdivides it into
the Primary and the Secondary Imagination:
he Primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and
prime Agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in
the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I
AM.
The Primary Imagination is the elemental power of basic human perception which
enables us to identify, to discriminate, to synthesize and thus to produce order out of
disorder. In this it is analogous to the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The
Secondary or artistic Imagination co-exists with the conscious will and is different in
degree and mode of operation from the Primary Imagination. First it is essentially
vital even as all objects as objets are fixed and dead. That is to say, it is active and
projective in nature and has a life-bestowing capacity which informs the world of
objective phenomena with attributes which make it responsive and hospitable to man.
Secondly, it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process
is rendered impossible, yet still at all events, it struggles to idealise and to unify. In
other words, the creative imagination, through a process of dissolution, diffusion and
dissipation creates a chaos and then sets out to create a universe from it. It is a
coadunaring and esernplastic power which reconciles opposites, unifies disparate -,27
elements and synthesises dialectically opposed forces. It idealises and reshapes the
Romantic Criticism
data of experience to create a new reality out of them and this reality has the prime
attribute of organic unity in it.

3.3 COLERIDGE'S VIEW OF POETRY AND 'THE POET'

Coleridge's definition of poetry and the poet naturally arises from his views on
imagination. He begins with a distinction between 'poetry' and 'poem'. Poetry is a
term of wider connotation which he uses to cover most of the forms of imaginative
literature and other fine arts whose immediate purpose is to impart pleasure through
the medium of beauty. In his essay entitled 'On the Principles of Genial Cl.~tic~sm',
which forms of part of Biographia Literaria, he writes:
All the fine arts are different species of poetry. . . They
admit, therefore, of a natural division into poetry of
language (poetry in the emphatic sense, because less
subject to the accidents and limitation of time and space);
poetry of the ear, or music; and poetry of the eye, which is
again divided into plastic poetry of the eye, which is again
divided into plastic poetry or statuary and a graphic poetry.
or painting. The common essence of all consists in the
excitement of emotion for the immediate purpose of
pleasure through the medium of beauty; herein
contradistinguishing poetry from science, the immediate
object and primary purpose of which is truth and possible
utility.
In the poetry of language he would include, to begin with, even unrhymed
imaginative writing. 'The writing of Plato and Bishop Taylor, furnish undeniable
proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without mttre.. . The first chapter of'
Isaiah (indeed a very large portion of the whole book) is poetry in the most emphatic
sense.' How can we distinguish a poem proper from this poetry which too has
language as its medium like the writings of Plato and the Book of Isaiah. Coleridge
says that the poem proper combines the same elements, as are found in imaginative
prose compositions, in a different manner because it aims at a different object.
Sometimes the object may be merely to facilitate recollection as in 'Thirty days hath
September'. Sometimes the purpose may be even communication of truth and such
communication may give us pleasure but this pleasure is not the immediate end, but
is indirectly obtained while pleasure is the immediate end 9f poetry.
But pleasure may be the immediate end of a work not metrically composed. Would
then the superaddition of rhyme entitle these works to the name of poems? The
answer is that nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the
reason why it is so and not otherwise. If metre is superadded all other parts should
be made consonant with it. A poem is thus 'that species of composition, which is
opposed to works of science by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth:
and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated
by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct
gratification from each component'. Such a poem Coleridge calls a legitimate poem,
'the parts of which mutually support and explain each other.' This organicism
originates from a corresponding organic process whose source is the poet:
The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into
activity, with subordination of its faculties to each other, according tc. their
worth or dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends and (as it
were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power to which we
have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination.
 Here it must be stressed that pleasure and truth which Coleridge seems to separate are
given both by. poetry and science. Coleridge's separation of the two seems arbitrary
and can be explained both by the fact that Coleridge, like nineteenth century thinkers
in general was not able to shed the dichotomies of the,current philosophy.

3.4 THE GERMAN ANGLE

A number of Coleridge's key terms and distinctions are derived.from German

thought and he does this in quite an eclectic way. This means that he draws from a
variety of sources and mixes up the borrowings. He borrows from German thought
the conception of the ideas that views all experience as not merely general notions,
but as a form of mental image or impression. Another idea which is largely German
in origin is that the symbol and the mind both participate in a common spiritual life
and that the experience of the beautiful is a consequence of this participation. There
are also borrowings from Shelling.
Kant is the biggest influence as the fundamental philosophical distinctions put
f&ard by Coleridge are essentially Kantian. He accepts the Kantian distinction
between Reason and Understanding and this distinction is the groundwork of his
speculation on the nature of fancy and imagination. Seen from the Kantian angle,
reason is concerned with ultimate values or with the perception of unity in
multiplicity. Understanding operates on a limited sphere.
Kant's reproductive imagination is-close to Coleridge's fancy. His productive
imagination is close to Coleridge's primary imagination and Reason is close to
Coleridge's secondary imagination because it mediates between rationality and
understanding by means of symbols. And yet Coleridge's recourse to the 'Idea' still
assumes something of a Platonic rather than a Kantian meaning.
Kant explained the imagnation in terms of a comprehensive epistemology and
I
Coleridge followed in Kant's footsteps by describing the imagination as operating
under Reason. Where Coleridge went beyond Kant was in his belief that Reason
could give us more than a knowledge of the world of perception. And yet the
symbols of the imagination have to accommodate themselves to the concepts of the
understanding.

3.5 A COMPARISON OF WORDSWORTH AND

COLERIDGE AS CRITICS

Here we shall briefly compare the achievement of Wordsworth and Coleridge as

v critics. Wordsworth's criticism was limited in scope whereas the range of Coleridge
as a critic was vast. In his own way he was a system builder and always thought
within a larger philosophical context. He considered criticism to be an important part
of literary Study. I.A. Richards in his book Coleridge on Imagination tells us that
Coleridge's criticism is of a kind that required us to consider our most fundamental
conceptions. He paved the way for appreciation of great poetry as is evident in his
praise for Wordsworth's poetry. Wordsworth is mostly subjective but Coleridge
gives ample evidence of both subjectivity and objectivity.

In Wordsworth's whole approach to poetry and expression there is an element of

primitivism whereas Coleridge's theory accommodates formal concerns to a
considerable degree. His concern with shape, with form, with embodiment and his
taking metre to be an integral part of the poetic process all point to this. In this
respect he is a precursor of the New Critics.
Romantic Criticism
3.6 LET US SUM UP

Coleridge is the first critic in English to talk at length about the relationship between
knowledge and poetic creation. His distinction between Fancy and Imagination is a
very useful one. Fancy is arbitrary and aggregating. It is an associative process.
Imagination is a creative one. In perception the imagination imposes form and order
upon the material of sensation and half creates what it perceives, so in art it works
upon the raw material of experience. It gives this raw material a new form Bnd shape.
The secondary imagination is essentially vital. To Coleridge the best example of the
operation of the imagination in his times was the poetry of Wordsworth.

Coleridge was influenced by German thought but had enough originality to emerge as
a major thinker in his own right. His influence as a critic has been remarkable, much
greater thah that exercised by Wordsworth's criticism.

3.7 QUESTIONS

1. What, according to Coleridge, is the difference between Fancy and Primary

Imagination?

2. How is Primary Imagination different from Secondary Imagination'?

3. What is Coleridge's ideal of a good poet?. Who, among his contemporaries.

fits the bill best?

4. Of the two - Coleridge and Wordsworth - who has had greater influence on
modem criticism and in what respects?

3.8 SUGGESTED READINGS

M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, New York Oxfcrd University Press, 1953.

David Daiches, Critical Approaches to Literature London, 1956 (Indian Edition,

Orient Longman, 1967).

I.A. Richards, Coleridge on Imagination, London, 1934.

Rene Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism 1750-.I950 Vo1.2, (London: Jonathan

Cope, 1955).

Wimsalt and Brooks, Literary Criticism:A Short Histoy Vo1.3, London, Roubledge
Kegan Paul, 1957.