Coleridge’s Sublime Later Prose and Recent Theory : Kristeva, Adorno, Rancière

This book explores the sublime in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s later major prose in relation to more recent theories of the sublime. Building on the author’s previous monograph Sublime Coleridge: The Opus Maximum , this study focuses on sublime theory and discourse in Coleridge’s other major prose texts of the 1820s: Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (wr. 1824), Aids to Reflection (1825), and On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829). This book thus ponders the constellations of aesthetics, literature, religion, and politics in the sublime theory and practice of this central Romantic author and three of his important successors: Julia Kristeva, Theodor Adorno, and Jacques Rancière. Acknowledgments Contents Abbreviations Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Touchstones for Sublimity: Coleridge’s Lay Sermons (1816–17) and the 1818 Lectures on Literature Political Prognostication and Remedies in the Lay Sermons Symbol in Transit in the Lectures on Literature (1818) Chapter 3: Sublime Boundaries of Belief and Unbelief: Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (wr. 1824) and Julia Kristeva’s This Incredible Need to Believe (2006) Moving Readers’ Boundaries in Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit Christianity, Psychoanalysis, and the Sublime in Julia Kristeva’s This Incredible Need to Believe Kristeva’s “Amorous Discourse” and Coleridge’s Symbol Chapter 4: Sublime Disintegration: Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection (1825) and Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (1970) Arranging Aphorisms in Aids to Reflection Common Sense Versus Reason Unity of Tone: The Crux on Redemption, Idea, and Indifference Adorno’s Genealogy of the Sublime in Aesthetic Theory: Towards Modern Art Modern Art in Adorno’s Genealogy: Semblance and Sublime, Theology and Truth Content Symbol in Adorno and Coleridge Sublime Discourse in Coleridge and Adorno Coleridge’s Sublime Discourse Chapter 5: Sublime Politics: Coleridge’s On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and Jacques Rancière’s Aisthesis (2011) Sublime Discourse in Coleridge’s Church and State Illustrations and the Genealogy of the “Nationalty” Rancière’s Aisthesis and His Genealogy of the Sublime Spiritual, Material, and Religious in Aisthesis Sublime Discourse and Symbol: Rancière on James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Chapter 6: Conclusion: The Sublime in Coleridge, Kristeva, Adorno, and Rancière Politics and the Sublime Religion and the Sublime Philosophy and the Sublime Conclusion Index