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284 Pages·2011·1.832 MB·English
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Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters Series Editor: Marilyn Gaull This series presents original biographical, critical, and scholarly studies of literary works and public figures in Great Britain, North America, and continental Europe during the nineteenth century. The volumes in Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters evoke the energies, achievements, contributions, cultural traditions, and individuals who reflected and generated them during the Romantic and Victorian period. The topics: critical, textual, and historical scholarship, literary and book history, biography, cultural and comparative studies, critical theory, art, architecture, science, politics, reli- gion, music, language, philosophy, aesthetics, law, publication, translation, domestic and public life, popular culture, and anything that influenced, impinges upon, expresses or contributes to an understanding of the authors, works, and events of the nineteenth century. The authors consist of political figures, artists, scientists, and cultural icons including William Blake, Thomas Hardy, Charles Darwin, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and their contemporaries. The series editor is Marilyn Gaull, PhD (Indiana University), FEA. She has taught at William and Mary, Temple University, New York University, and is Research Professor at the Editorial Institute at Boston University. She is the founder and edi- tor of The Wordsworth Circle and the author of English Romanticism: The Human Context, and editions, essays, and reviews in journals. She lectures internationally on British Romanticism, folklore, and narrative theory, intellectual history, publishing procedures, and history of science. PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Shelley’s German Afterlives, by Susanne Schmid Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion, by Jeffrey W. Barbeau Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter, by Peter J. Kitson Byron, edited by Cheryl A. Wilson Romantic Migrations, by Michael Wiley The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, by Matthew Schneider British Periodicals and Romantic Identity, by Mark Schoenfield Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism, by Clare Broome Saunders British Victorian Women’s Periodicals, by Kathryn Ledbetter Romantic Diasporas, by Toby R. Benis Romantic Literary Families, by Scott Krawczyk Victorian Christmas in Print, by Tara Moore Culinary Aesthetics and Practices in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Edited by Monika Elbert and Marie Drews Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print, by Alberto Gabriele Romanticism and the Object, Edited by Larry H. Peer Poetics en passant, by Anne Jamison From Song to Print, by Terence Hoagwood Gothic Romanticism, by Tom Duggett Victorian Medicine and Social Reform, by Louise Penner Populism, Gender, and Sympathy in the Romantic Novel, by James P. Carson Byron and the Rhetoric of Italian Nationalism, by Arnold A. Schmidt Poetry and Public Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America, by Shira Wolosky The Discourses of Food in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, by Annette Cozzi Romanticism and Pleasure, Edited by Thomas H. Schmid and Michelle Faubert Royal Romances, by Kristin Flieger Samuelian Trauma, Transcendence, and Trust, by Thomas J. Brennan, S.J. The Business of Literary Circles in Nineteenth-Century America, by David Dowling Popular Medievalism in Romantic-Era Britain, by Clare A. Simmons Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism, by Ashton Nichols The Poetry of Mary Robinson, by Daniel Robinson Romanticism and the City, by Larry H. Peer Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination, by Gregory Leadbetter FORTHCOMING TITLES: Romantic Dharma, by Mark Lussier Regions of Sara Coleridge’s Thought, by Peter Swaab Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination Gregory Leadbetter COLERIDGE AND THE DAEMONIC IMAGINATION Copyright © Gregory Leadbetter, 2011. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-10321-4 All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28775-8 ISBN 978-0-230-11852-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230118522 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2011 For Karen, Freya and Eloise Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. Hamlet I think it was Heraclitus who said: the Daimon is our destiny. W. B. Yeats The way up and the way down are the same. Heraclitus Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix Note on Texts and Short Titles xi Introduction 1 1 The Willing Daemon: Coleridge and the Transnatural 7 2 “Pagan Philosophy” and the “Pride of Speculation”: Spiritual Politics and the Metaphysical Imagination, 1795–1797 17 3 “Not a Man, But a Monster”: Organicism, Becoming, and the Daemonic Imago 35 4 Transnatural Language: The “Library-Cormorant” in the “Vernal Wood” 69 5 “The Dark Green Adder’s Tongue”: Osorio and the “Poetry of Nature” 99 6 “A Distinct Current of My Own”: Poetry and the Uses of the Supernatural 135 7 “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” 163 8 “Kubla Khan” 183 9 “Christabel” 201 Notes 221 Bibliography 243 Index 255 Preface and Acknowledgments T his book has its origin in a doctoral thesis entitled “Coleridge’s Transnatural Poetics,” produced with the support of a research stu- dentship at Oxford Brookes University, and beyond that, in a long- standing desire to articulate what it is that so excited me—and excites me still—in reading Coleridge. Some of the ideas I develop here were first presented to the International Coleridge Conference at Cannington (2006–10), the Friends of Coleridge at Kilve (2008), and the Romantic Realignments Seminar at Oxford University (2006, 2010). I gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint mate- rial first published in the article “Liberty and Occult Ambition in Coleridge’s Early Poetry,” The Coleridge Bulletin 32 (NS) (Winter 2008). Although I do not reproduce any passages from the article itself, my piece for The Wordsworth Circle 38:3 (Summer 2007), “ ‘There Worketh a Spell’: Coleridge and the Languages of Paganism,” anticipates certain aspects of my approach here—and I thank Marilyn Gaull for her support and enthusiasm at every stage of this project. I should like to thank my PhD supervisors, Simon Kövesi and Steven Matthews, for their friendly and clear-headed guidance throughout my doctoral research, and I am very grateful to my exam- iners, Seamus Perry and Lis Jay, for generosity and encouragement that has extended far beyond the viva. The Friends of Coleridge have provided a welcoming and nurturing environment in which to think, write, and converse since my first contact with them. I want to thank Paul Cheshire, Graham Davidson, David Fairer, Tim Fulford, Felicity James, Peter Larkin, Jim Mays, and Nicholas Roe for their kindness, counsel, and genial support. I am grateful to Oxford Brookes University for awarding me the research studentship that enabled me to pursue my thesis, together with various other postgraduate grants; and to the Friends of Coleridge and the Charles Lamb Society for bursaries to attend con- ferences at Cannington and study weekends at Kilve. The academic and administrative staff at Oxford Brookes University were unfail- ingly supportive during my time there, and I should like to thank x Preface and Acknowledgments Caroline Jackson-Houlston, Gail Marshall, and Rob Pope for help of various kinds. I am also grateful to the organizers and participants of the Romantic Realignments Seminar and the Romantic Graduate Forum at Oxford University, where I was made to feel at home from my first arrival in Oxford. My thanks are due to the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Birmingham University Library, and Oxford Brookes University Library. I am grateful to Brigitte Shull and to all at Palgrave Macmillan who have made this book possible. Studying law as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge gave me insights into the life of words that I would not otherwise have, and I am par- ticularly grateful to Philip Allott, Emeritus Professor of International Public Law, for the example of his daring and humane intelligence. To my wife, Karen, for her joy, patience, and sheer presence, I owe too much for anything but the simplest of gestures to convey my thanks: this book is dedicated to her, and to our children, with love. Birmingham, United Kingdom September 2010

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