Coleridge and Wordsworth: A Lyrical Dialogue

346 Pages·1988·17.207 MB·English

by  Paul Magnuson

Coleridge and Wordsworth

PAUL MAGNUSON
COLERIDGE
A ND
WORDSWORTH
A Lyrical Dialogue
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Copyright © 1988 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Guildford, Surrey
AU Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on
the last printed page of this book
ISBN 0-691-06732-5
Publication of this work has been supported in part by a grant from
the Abraham and Rebecca Stein Faculty Publications Fund of New
York University, Department of English.
This book has been composed in Linotron Baskerville
Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed
on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and
durability. Paperbacks, although satisfactory for personal collections,
are not usually suitable for library rebinding
Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press,
Princeton, New Jersey
IV
IN MEMORY OF
Harold Einar Magnuson

CONTENTS
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
i. "Our Fears about Amalgamation": An Introduction 3
2. First Readings: 1793—1797 33
3. "My Own Voice": "The Ancient Mariner" and
"The Discharged Soldier" 68
4. "The Colours of our Style": "The Ruined
Cottage" and "Christabel" 96
5. "My Genial Spirits": The Conversation Poems and
"Tintern Abbey" 139
6. The Search for "Perfect Form": The Goslar
Poetry and The Prelude (1979) 177
7. A Farewell to Coleridge: Grasmere, 1800 228
8. 1802: The Dejection Dialogue 273
9. "An Ode in Passion Uttered": Conclusion 318
Index 325
VIl

PREFACE
A reading of the lyrical dialogue formed by Coleridge's and Words
worth's poetry is made possible by two recent developments in
scholarship and criticism. First, the new editions of Coleridge's writ
ing from Princeton University Press and of Wordsworth's poetry
from Cornell University Press require more than a reassessment of
their individual achievements. They offer the opportunity of devel
oping a new methodology of reading their poetry as an intricately
connected whole, of reading their works as a joint canon, and of un
derstanding the generation of their greatest poetry. The prolifera
tion of drafts, early versions, and associated fragments for each
work and the shifting contexts for these fragments make it difficult
to trace the growth of a single work isolated from the writing that
preceded it and the works that were written at the same time. It is
also difficult to explain the development of a single work by refer
ence to authorial intention or the metaphor of organic growth
Poems take time to develop, in many instances decades, and in the
process other voices and texts intrude. What can be made of these
various drafts and early versions? How do they fit into the canon,
and how do they shape the poetry that follows? What method of
reading does justice to their complexity, their fragmentary nature,
and their power to generate further texts?
The second development is the proliferation of critical perspec
tives on a literary work, literary history, and textual relationships.
Harold Bloom has offered a view of literature in which poems dis
play the struggle of their own generation. They misread their pre
cursors by various strategies and thus revise what has already been
written or envisioned; they turn upon previous poetry. With
Bloom's theory of the anxiety of influence, the younger poet must
engage in a tormented conflict with a precursor. In lyrical dialogue,
however, two poets are speaking simultaneously. Each alludes to the
other's poetry as well as to his own, and each poem turns upon a pre
vious one. After listening to the other poet, each has the opportu
nity of responding. A mutual interchange is formed that resembles
the processes of dialogue described by Mikhail Bakhtin, except that
the turns of lyrical dialogue do not parody another's text to chal-
IX