Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination

284 Pages·2011·1.832 MB·English

by  Gregory Leadbetter (auth.)

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