Biographia Literaria

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1817

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-19

Chapters 20-22

Satyrane’s Letters

Chapters 23-24

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 17 Summary

Coleridge returns to debating Wordsworth’s ideas about poetry. His essential difference with Wordsworth is over naturalistic poetic diction. Coleridge argues that Wordsworth’s poems are not “rustic” in their effects (127). Rather, Wordsworth’s poetry is pleasurable due to three factors: the naturalness of the subject matter, its representation, and the transcendence of these. Coleridge queries the “desirable influences of low and rustic life in and for itself,” since country life entails hardship (115). Coleridge praises the balance of Wordsworth poem “Michael” but suggests that “The Thorn” should have been spoken in the poet’s own voice. Coleridge also doubts whether rustic language that is adapted for poetry differs from more refined forms of communication. He doubts whether rustic objects “can justly be said to form the best part of the language” (118). Instead, “the best part of human language is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself” (118). Coleridge also claims that Wordsworth confuses “real” with “common.” Finally, Coleridge takes issue with the Wordsworthian definition of poetry as taking place “in a state of excitement,” because the “excitement” arising from the appreciation of a truth lies in the sophistication of the perceiver (120). Passion brings nothing but “tautologies of intense and turbulent feeling” (120). However, Coleridge praises the stirring beauty of Wordsworth’s poem “Song of Deborah.”

Chapter 18 Summary

Reality consists of essence plus existence, Coleridge claims. In contrast with Wordsworth, Coleridge is interested in the difference between poetry and prose, since the “fitness of each for the place of the other frequently will coexist” (122). Meter is one such place, and it functions as a container and conduit for excitement. Prior to the invention of printing, meter, particularly alliterative meter, functioned as a memory aid. Meter also arrests attention. Coleridge shows how Wordsworth’s poetry differs from the “language of low and rustic life” (127). Prose and poetry also differ in what Wordsworth calls “passion” (128). Coleridge contends that our “spiritual instinct” seeks the harmony of meter. Wordsworth’s theory would apply well to Edmund Spenser, but Coleridge argues that even Spenser’s language is not the “language in ordinary life” (129). However, “could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a mechanical art” (130). John Donne’s apostrophe to the sun is incomparable, for example. Abraham Cowley also claims that to imitate Pindar too literally would be “raving” (131). Finally, the success of many poems is due to “the juxtaposition and apparent reconciliation of widely different or incompatible things” (132).

Chapter 19 Summary

Coleridge continues with his exposition on Wordsworth’s practice. He claims that Wordsworth never intended his remarks about “rustic” diction to be taken without qualification, as this would have “strange and overwhelming” consequences (136). Coleridge then praises English poetry, from Chaucer to the Metaphysical poets, because “our language is, and from the first dawn poetry has ever been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this excellence” (137).

Chapters 17-19 Analysis

Coleridge reviews the poetry of his friend and poetic peer William Wordsworth. In contrast with Wordsworth’s incendiary remarks in the preface about naturalistic diction and “spontaneous […] excitement,” Coleridge reasserts the traditional distinction between poetry and prose (143). He does so by critiquing the logic behind Wordsworth’s claims and by defining poetry as a metrical arrangement. This use of meter to distinguish poetry from prose associates poetry with the Neoplatonic concept of the “music of the spheres,” a harmonic unity of an essentially “spiritual” kind, to use Coleridge’s term (30).

This notion of harmony also informs Coleridge’s ideas about meter as a means of regulating “excitement.” This disparity between Wordsworth and Coleridge’s theories of poetry runs counter to their poetry in practice, however. While Wordsworth’s poems are famously evocative of a “pensive mood,” recalling serene meditations in nature, Coleridge’s are troubled by turbulent affects, curses, and supernatural phenomena. Think of the “tumultuous” river in “Kubla Khan” compared to the River Thames in Wordsworth’s “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,” which “glideth at his own sweet will.” So although Coleridge defines poetry as the “reconciliation of widely different and incompatible things” (132), his own poems often labor to perform this resolution. The speaker in “Love” struggles to rein in his delight or catch his breath as the ballad meter canters along like the horse of a courtly lover. Exclamations also ring out in “Cristabel” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” enunciating an atmosphere akin to that of the biblical Book of Revelation, in which “incompatible things” are brought together like a clash of cymbals. Arguably, Coleridge’s own poetry is more cacophonous than harmonic.