Durham E-Theses `To Keep Alive the Heart in the Head': Versions of Transcendence in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Poetry 1796-1817 TAI, SHUET,YIN,SHARON How to cite: TAI, SHUET,YIN,SHARON (2019) `To Keep Alive the Heart in the Head': Versions of Transcendence in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Poetry 1796-1817 , Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13236/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 ‘To Keep Alive the Heart in the Head’: Versions of Transcendence in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poetry 1796-1817 Shuet Yin Sharon Tai PhD in English Literature Department of English Studies Durham University 2019 Abstract My thesis explores the concept and manifestations of Transcendence in selected poems and prose written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge between 1796 and 1817. Amid the dissenting atmosphere in Britain, in the wake of the French Revolution, religious Truth is rigorously contested by Romantic writers and thinkers. For Kant, Transcendence is displaced by Transcendentalism in order to separate speculative reasoning from rational metaphysics. Aspiring to defend religious Truth, Coleridge feels the need to keep the transcendent faith in a living God alive in ways that find congruence with transcendental philosophy. Accordingly, Coleridge explores the meaning of Truth in his writings and seeks to salvage Religion from being sheer dogmatism or superstition. Tracing different versions of Transcendence across the development of the term’s transformation in Coleridge’s thoughts and poetry is central to my reassessment of the religious and spiritual aspects of the Coleridgean Imagination. My Introduction explores the dual meanings of ‘Versions of Transcendence’ in terms of the critical approach adopted in this thesis and its content. Chapter one focuses on ‘Religious Musings’, ‘The Eolian Harp’ and ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ to demonstrate Coleridge’s Theism and his concept of Transcendence in the late 1790s. Chapter two and three explore the ways in which Original Sin can be viewed as the impediment of Transcendence in ‘The Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Kubla Khan’ during the period 1798-1804. Chapter four and five argues for the compatibility between Transcendence and Transcendentalism in ‘A Letter to——’, ‘Dejection: An Ode’ and ‘To W. Wordsworth’ during the 1800s. Chapter six explores Coleridge’s struggles to reconcile the Fall with God’s benevolence in Christabel (1816). Chapter seven offers a coda to the thesis and suggests through a discussion of Biographia Literaria (1817) that, for Coleridge, the highest (sublime) worth of the human mind is to know the invisible God through an intuitive knowledge accessible through the Imagination. Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Declaration No material in this thesis has been previously submitted for a degree at this or any other University. The work is solely that of the author, Shuet Yin Sharon Tai, under the supervision of Professor Michael O‘Neill and Professor Mark Sandy. An excerpt from chapter one, in an earlier form, has been published as ‘“[T]he fear of snapping the flower”: Poetic Obscurity in the Sublime System of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’, The Coleridge Bulletin, 49 (NS), 2017, pp. 103-112. iv Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... v Abbreviations........................................................................................................... vi-vii Note on Citations .................................................................................................... viii Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1-21 Chapter 1 The Sublime of Truth ....................................................................... 22-61 Chapter 2 The Experiential Original Sin .......................................................... 62-89 Chapter 3 The Epistemological Anxiety .......................................................... 90-117 Chapter 4 Transcendentalism in Transcendence .............................................. 118-151 Chapter 5 ‘Ideas in the divine mind anterior to the Creation’ .......................... 152-182 Chapter 6 The Problem of Evil ......................................................................... 183-223 Chapter 7 Coda: The Rebirth of Transcendence .............................................. 224-252 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 253-267 v Acknowledgements I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Professor Michael O’Neill (1953- 2018) for his remarkable guidance and tremendous support up until December 2018. Michael’s inspiring advice spurred me on throughout my thesis and enlightened me to a greater love for poetry. I would also like to thank my secondary supervisor Professor Mark Sandy for his invaluable advice, generous support, and for taking up the full responsibility of supervision after the passing of Professor O’Neill. I would like to thank my progress reviewer and internal examiner Professor Sarah Wootton for her thoughtful advice and encouragements; and my external examiner Professor Seamus Perry, for his insightful feedback on, and generous advice on publication plans for, my thesis. I am very grateful to Professor Nicholas Roe, Dr Madeleine Callaghan, Dr Jacob Lloyd, and Dr Emma Suret for their stimulating feedback and careful proofreading. I am also grateful to Madeline Line, PhD candidate at Durham University, for advice upon Latin and Greek translations and to my father, Professor Nicholas H. F. Tai, for advice about theology. For access to the fair copy of ‘To W. Wordsworth’, I am grateful to The Wordsworth Trust’s Jerwood Centre and the help of Jeff Cowton. I wish to thank my parents, Nicholas and Candy, for their unstinting care; Evelyn and Dickson, for their uplifting encouragements; as well as Enoch Lau, for his stupendous support and understanding. vi Abbreviations BL Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 7: Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, 2 vols, ed. by James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (London: Routledge & Paul, 1983). CKK Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel 1816, Revolution and Romanticism, 1789- 1834, A series of facsimile reprints chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1991). CL Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Earl Leslie Griggs, vol. I-VI (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1956-1971). CN Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. I-III, each volume with two parts, texts & notes, ed. by Kathleen Coburn (London: Routledge, 1957-1973). Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. IV, with two parts, texts & notes, ed. by Kathleen Coburn and Merton Christensen (London: Routledge, 1990). KJV Herbert Marks (ed.), The English Bible: Kings James Version, A Norton Critical Edition, I: The Old Testament (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2012). Gerald Hammond & Austin Busch (ed.), The English Bible: Kings James Version, A Norton Critical Edition, II: The New Testament and the Apocrypha (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2012). LB 1798 William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads 1798, Revolution and Romanticism, 1789-1834, A series of facsimile reprints chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1990). LB 1800 William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Revolution and Romanticism, 1789-1834, A series of facsimile reprints chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth (Poole: Woodstock Books, 1997). LPR Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1: Lectures, 1795, on Politics and Religion, ed. by L. Patton and P. Manning (London: Routledge & Paul, 1970). Poems Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, Poems 1797, Revolution and Romanticism, 1789-1834, A series of facsimile reprints chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth (Poole: Woodstock Books, 1997). PVS Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems on Various Subjects 1796, Revolution and Romanticism, 1789-1834, A series of facsimile reprints chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1990). PW Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 16: Poetical Works, 6 vols, ed. by J. C. C. Mays (London: Routledge & Paul, 2001). vii SM Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘The Statesman’s Manual’, in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 6: Lay Sermons,