Coleridge and the Psychology of Romanticism : Feeling and Thought

As every faculty, with every the minutest organ of our nature, owes its whole reality and comprehensibility to an existence incomprehensible and groundless, because the ground of all comprehension: not without the union of all that is essential in all the functions of our spirit, not without an emotion tranquil from its very intensity, shall we worthily contemplate in the magnitude and integrity of the world that life-ebullient stream which breaks through every momentary embankment, again, indeed, and evermore to embank itself, but within no banks to stagnate or be imprisoned. In addition to being the leading philosopher of English Romanticism and one of its greatest poets, Coleridge explores the dynamics of consciousness and mental functioning more extensively than any of his contemporaries. Here his psychological theories are compared with his diverse exemplifications of Romanticism's self-reflexive quest for transcendence, showing how he continually highlights the circular and mutual influence of thought and emotion underlying Romantic idealism and the cult of the sublime. Coleridge's view of consciousness as an irreducible continuum of feelings and ideas, it is argued, is closely paralleled by his own pursuit of emotions which themselves inform his metaphysical theories. His view of mind thus resists the determinism espoused by eighteenth- as by twentieth-century thinkers, yet also reflects precisely the patterns of consciousness involved in his and other Romantics' flight from quotidian experience into ideals of unity, transcendence, and freedom In addition to being the leading philosopher of English Romanticism and one of its greatest poets, Coleridge explores the dynamics of consciousness and mental functioning more extensively than any of his contemporaries. This book compares his psychological theories with his diverse exemplifications of Romanticism's self-reflexive quest for transcendence, showing how he continually highlights the circular and mutual influence of ideas and emotions underlying Romantic idealism and the cult of the sublime. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-10 On Poetry and Philosophy: Romantic Feeling and Theory in Coleridge and Schelling....Pages 11-24 Feeling into Thought....Pages 25-48 The Feeling of Knowledge: Insight and Delusion in Coleridge....Pages 49-65 Thought into Feeling....Pages 66-101 Power and Progress: Coleridge’s Metaphors of Thought....Pages 102-140 The Limits of Expression: Language, Consciousness, and the Sublime....Pages 141-166 Back Matter....Pages 167-221