Biographia Literaria

Biographia Literaria

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Biographia Literaria, by Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (#3 in our series by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
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Title: Biographia Literaria
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6081] [Yes, we are more than one
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Edition: 10

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BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of contemporary
writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets- Comparison between the
poets before and since
II Supposed irritability of genius brought to the test of facts--Causes
and occasions of the charge--Its injustice
III The Author's obligations to Critics, and the probable
occasion--Principles of modern criticism--Mr. Southey's works and
character
IV The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface--Mr. Wordsworth's earlier
poems--On Fancy and Imagination--The investigation of the distinction
important to the Fine Arts
V On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotle to
Hartley

VI That Hartley's system, as far as it differs from that of Aristotle, is
neither tenable in theory, nor founded in facts
VII Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian Theory--Of the
original mistake or equivocation which procured its
admission--Memoria technica
VIII The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined first by
Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Harmonia
praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism --None of these systems, or any
possible theory of Association, supplies or supersedes a theory of
Perception, or explains the formation of the Associable
XI Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its
conditions?--Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or the existence of
a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order--The Author's
obligations to the Mystics- To Immanuel Kant--The difference between
the letter and The spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of
Prudence in the teaching of Philosophy--Fichte's attempt to complete
the Critical system-Its partial success and ultimate failure--Obligations
to Schelling; and among English writers to Saumarez
X A
Chapter of
digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the nature
and genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power--On Pedantry and
pedantic expressions-- Advice to young authors respecting
publication--Various anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the
progress of his opinions in Religion and Politics
XI An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel
themselves disposed to become authors
XII A
Chapter of
requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or omission of the

chapter that follows
XIII On the Imagination, or Esemplastic power
XIV Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally
proposed--Preface to the second edition--The ensuing controversy, its
causes and acrimony--Philosophic definitions of a Poem and Poetry
with scholia
XV The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a Critical
analysis of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and Rape of Lucrece
XVI Striking points of difference between the Poets of the present age
and those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--Wish expressed for
the union of the characteristic merits of both
XVII Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth-- Rustic
life (above all, low and rustic life) especially unfavourable to the
formation of a human diction-The best parts of language the product of
philosophers, not of clowns or shepherds--Poetry essentially ideal and
generic-- The language of Milton as much the language of real life, yea,
incomparably more so than that of the cottager
XVIII Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially
different from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre --Its
necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby imposed on the
metrical writer in the choice of his diction
XIX Continuation--Concerning the real object, which, it is probable,
Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his critical preface--Elucidation and
application of this
XX The