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Coleridge and the Wheels of Intellect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2021

Margaret L. Wiley*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College Brooklyn 10, N.Y.

Extract

The student of Coleridge's thought is likely to turn with a sense of relief from the apparent confusion of his metaphysical and epistemological speculations to the relative calm of his semantics. Here, at least, one can operate within a well-defined area, presenting in an orderly fashion Coleridge's great respect for words, his insistence that they be used carefully, his concern with paradox and contradiction, his famous distinctions such as that between reason and understanding, and the background of such coinages as esemplastic. This area provides the clue to Coleridge's whole system and is full of implications which stretch far out beyond the realm of words.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , March 1952 , pp. 101 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952

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References

Notes

1 Aids to Reflection, ed. Thos. Fenby (Edinburgh, 1905), p. 21.

2 Notes on English Divines, ed. Derwent Coleridge (London, 1853), i, 21.

3 Biographia Literaria (London, 1894), p. 70.

4 Julian Lindsay, “Coleridge Marginalia in a Volume of Descartes,” PMLA, xlix (1934), 188.

5 “Lay Sermon to the Higher and Middle Classes,” Biographia Literaria, p. 406.

6 Aids to Reflection, p. 240 n.

7 “Lay Sermon,” Biog. Lit., p. 408.

8 “Lay Sermon,” p. 358.

9 Cf. Aids to Reflection, p. 222.

10 Aids to Reflection, p. 190.

11 Ibid., p. 222.

12 “The Statesman's Manual,” Biog. Lit., p. 367.

13 Aids to Reflection, p. 191.

14 “Statesman's Manual,” Biog. Lit., p. 353.

15 Notes on English Divines, i, 15.

16 The Complete Works of S. T. Coleridge, ed. W. G. T. Shedd (New York, 1853), ii (The Friend), 469.

17 Notes on English Divines, i, 18.

18 Aids to Reflection, p. 5. Verse from Samuel Daniel, “To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland.”

19 Specimens of the Table Talk of S. T. Coleridge (New York, 1884), p. 59.

20 “Statesman's Manual,” Biog. Lit., p. 321.

21 Ibid., p. 343.

22 Biog. Lit., p. 150.

23 “Statesman's Manual,” Biog. Lit., p. 320.