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A Benjaminian Interpretation of Drama and the Dramatic in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’S Writings

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A Benjaminian Interpretation of Drama and the Dramatic in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’S Writings Rehearsing Modern Tragedy: A Benjaminian Interpretation of Drama and the Dramatic in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Writings. Clare Louise Almond A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English Literature at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne May, 2014 i Abstract This thesis offers a reappraisal of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s dramatic theory and writing. Although critical interest in Coleridge’s dramatic work is relatively small in comparison to other areas, it is increasing. A central aim of the thesis is to add to this field of criticism by suggesting a greater significance of the dramatic in Coleridge’s oeuvre . This is an area of Coleridge’s work that can be illuminated by way of its interpretation using Walter Benjamin’s reassessment of dramatic genres in The Origin of German Tragic Drama . A key assumption of the thesis is that Coleridge’s dramatic work extends beyond the parameters of his activity as a playwright. It therefore positions key moments of his critical theory and poetic writing as dramatic. In viewing selected works in this way, a greater coincidence between Coleridge and Benjamin’s work emerges most significantly through their shared themes of truthful representation and correct interpretation. A short introduction highlights common themes between Coleridge and Benjamin and proposes a view of the two writers that follows Benjamin’s concept of the ‘constellation’. Chapter One draws together key critical interest in Romantic drama. It also aims to connect Coleridge’s dramatic theory and works with key themes in On German Tragic Drama . Chapter Two explores Coleridge’s dramatic theory in his Lectures before 1812 and offers a reading of the ‘Critique of Bertram’ that seeks to reassert the ii importance of this piece. Chapter Three aims to reveal a dramatic current running through ‘The Eolian Harp’ and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . The thesis culminates, in Chapter Four, with a reading of Remorse informed by Benjamin’s critical model of the Trauerspiel in The Origin of German Tragic Drama . In conclusion, the thesis offers up aspects of Coleridge’s works that can be termed as dramatic so as to reveal their anticipation of a Benjaminian modernity. In this sense, it proposes that drama should be accorded more significance within Coleridge’s oeuvre as it reveals a better understanding of some of his lesser known material and highlights some of his most original thinking . For mum and dad iv Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………vi Introduction. Towards A Literary Constellation: The Relevance of Walter Benjamin to Samuel Taylor Coleridge…………………………………………………………..........1 1. Chapter 1. Drama and the Dramatic in Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Walter Benjamin 1.1 The Debateable Romantics of Coleridge’s Drama………………………...…...17 1.2 The Visual In Romantic Drama……………………………………………...…26 1.3 The Generic In Romantic Drama…………………………………………….…39 1.4 The Benjaminian turn: Coleridge’s Drama and its Connection to Modernity…49 1.5 Genre and the Constellation in The Origin of German Tragic Drama ………...56 1.6 Trauerspiel and Tragedy in The Origin of German Tragic Drama ……………65 1.7 Allegory and Trauerspiel ………………………………………………………74 2. Chapter 2. Towards Modernity in Coleridge’s Dramatic Theory 2.1 Introduction: The ‘True Theory of Stage Illusion’…………………………….80 2.2 The Significance of the Middle Ages in Coleridge and Benjamin’s Understanding of the Dramatic…………………………………………………89 2.3 Coleridge’s Theory of Dramatic Illusion……………………………………….96 2.4 The Commanding Genius and the Intriguer………………………………..…108 2.5 The Dramatic Motif of Remorse……………………………………………...123 2.6 The ‘Critique of Bertram ’: Literary Anti-Jacobinism……………………...…128 v 3. Chapter 3. The Dramatic Turn In Coleridge’s Poetry 3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………...………150 3.2 Symbol and Sociability in ‘The Eolian Harp’………………..……………….153 3.3 The Sociability of ‘The Eolian Harp’: Sound, Symbolism and Sara………….159 3.4 Sound and Vision in ‘Effusion XXXV’: Coleridge’s Dramatic Theory in Waiting……………………………………………………………..169 3.5 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner : Imagination and Interpretation……...…....174 3.6 Robert Penn Warren: ‘A Poem of Pure Imagination’…………………………180 3.7 Jerome McGann: Coleridge’s Literary Ballad……………………………..….184 3.8 The Ancient Mariner as Storyteller: Historical Materialism and Drama in The Rime ……………...……………………………………………………….188 4. Chapter 4. ‘To the Avenger I leave Vengeance and depart!’ The Competing Discourses of Tragedy and Trauerspiel in Remorse 4.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………...……204 4.2 Coleridge and the Gothic Vision of the Georgian Theatre……………...…….207 4.3 Albert/Alvar…………………………………………………………………...221 4.4 Teresa: The Heroine of Poetic Faith……………………………...………….. 229 4.5 The Competing Dialogues of Remorse and Revenge……………………...….237 Conclusion………………………………………………………...…………...……...246 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………...…...252 vi Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr. Michael Rossington and Dr. Anne Whitehead for the unlimited support, wealth of knowledge and patience they have offered over the long course of this thesis. They taught me at undergraduate and post-graduate level and I owe them, and the Newcastle University English Department, a debt of gratitude for the richness of my Higher Education. I am grateful to the Killingley Memorial Trust of Newcastle-upon-Tyne for offering me the springboard with which to start the PhD in the form of the Postgraduate fund. The challenges of continuing the research as a self-funded student, although tough, have been rewarding in many ways. Had I not followed this path, I would not have gained the intellectual support and the friendship of Barbara, Angie, Anne, Alison, and especially Pip, my teaching colleagues. I would also like to thank Louise, Jen and Jay for their long-standing friendship. I am very grateful to Katie Harland for proof reading my thesis and to Simon for his I.T. support. My mum and dad have guided, supported and encouraged me in an infinite number of ways in everything I have done, and they continue to do so. The thesis is dedicated to them for giving me the freedom to pursue my interests and to achieve my ambitions. I am extremely lucky to have Helen, my sister, who I know is always there to share the fun and give me a helping hand whenever I need it. Finally, I want to thank my husband, James, who has supported me, reassured me and remained interested in my work from start to end. Both James and our daughter, Annabel, make me happy every day. 1 Introduction. Towards a Literary Constellation: The Relevance of Walter Benjamin to Samuel Taylor Coleridge [Walter Benjamin] was a library-cormorant and devourer of ancient print quite in the manner of a Coleridge […and it was as] a metaphysician of metaphor and translation as was Coleridge, that Benjamin accomplished his best work. 1 Literary criticism and the ‘question of representation’ lie at the heart of this project. 2 Both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Walter Benjamin are known for their studies of philosophy, language and politics but it is the preservation of their focus upon literature—and within this specifically, their interest in ‘the ability to tell a tale’—that highlights a connection between them. 3 Casting Coleridge and Benjamin’s works together within a constellation—Benjamin’s historico-critical term to express a spatial rather than linear understanding of time— allows for the revival of a theory built around drama that remains ostensibly latent in Coleridge’s oeuvre . Benjamin’s conception of the constellation is expressed most fully in Theses on the Philosophy of History , in which he puts forward a method of historical documentation that departs from historicism, which simply (and ineffectively) records information. Instead, Benjamin is interested in methods that allow past events to remain alive and vital in a connection with the present as ‘a constellation which [one] era has 1 George Steiner, ‘Introduction’, in Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama , introd. by George Steiner, trans. by John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 7-24 (p. 9; p. 20). 2 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama , introd. by George Steiner, trans. by John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998), p. 27. Further references to this edition are given after quotations in the text using the abbreviation OGTD . 3 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller’ in Illuminations , ed. and introd. by Hannah Arendt, trans. by Harry Zorn (London: Pimlico, 1999), pp. 83-108. Further references to this edition are given after quotations in the text using the abbreviation S. 2 formed with a definite earlier one’.4 The constellation works, as Hannah Arendt explains, with reference to Benjamin’s mosaic technique of criticism, by ‘tearing fragments out of their context and arranging them afresh in such a way that they illustrate[d] one another and [are] able to prove their raison d’être in a free-floating state’. 5 Theses is, of course, Benjamin’s meridian cultural statement; a critique of the modern condition structured in the manner of a materialist historiographical record offering, in both its form and content, a ‘revolutionary chance to fight for the oppressed past’ ( TPH , p. 254). As one of Benjamin’s final works, it carries within it strong influential lines of revolutionary political thinking and, in its practical urgency, may be considered to ‘articulate a politics, not an aesthetics […] of redemption’. 6 Nonetheless, its theoretical heritage is rooted in Benjamin’s early critical undertaking, not least in the ambitious Habilitation project, which sought to establish a new critical framework that would redeem lost works and revive their interest in a liberated cultural canon. This thesis is concerned with Benjamin’s interest in reasserting the influence of what may be termed an underclass of literature by judging it immanently, through its own artistic references, rather than under the application of an external set of artistic rules inherited from the literature of previous epochs. Therefore, it locates, in Coleridge’s experimentation with Romantic drama, a call to judge his dramatic writing under its own literary, historical and cultural conditions.
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