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A Modern ColeridgeCraving for Novelties — Craving for Novels

A Modern Coleridge: Craving for Novelties — Craving for Novels [It is Biographia Literaria that comes closest to the genre of the Bildugsroman in offering a (scattered) narrative of individual development with an explicitly educative purpose. In the motto, Coleridge quotes Goethe1 saying that he ‘wishes to spare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himself has lost his way’ (BL I., 3). Indeed, the autobiographical activity of Biographia Literaria, crowned by the institution of the imagination, is often linked to Coleridge’s ambitious project of English subject-making: as Pyle puts it, the book aims to ‘effectively govern both nation and individual’ (15). At the same time, overloaded with implicit quotations, allusions, and plagiarisms, the book, this (non-)narrative of literary influences, is born precisely out of the technological shock of printing. Though the attempt to overcome the multiplication of books often fails, and the integration of Coleridge’s wide-ranging reading experiences into the linear narrative proper to any (literary) autobiography remains a mere promise, his efforts to ‘collate’ and ‘assimilate’ (LS, 9), or, as he says, to use narration ‘in order to give a continuity to the work’ (BL, 5) must be taken seriously: he ‘struggles to idealise and to unify’ (italics added).] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Modern ColeridgeCraving for Novelties — Craving for Novels

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2015
ISBN
978-1-349-70884-0
Pages
79 –88
DOI
10.1057/9781137531469_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[It is Biographia Literaria that comes closest to the genre of the Bildugsroman in offering a (scattered) narrative of individual development with an explicitly educative purpose. In the motto, Coleridge quotes Goethe1 saying that he ‘wishes to spare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himself has lost his way’ (BL I., 3). Indeed, the autobiographical activity of Biographia Literaria, crowned by the institution of the imagination, is often linked to Coleridge’s ambitious project of English subject-making: as Pyle puts it, the book aims to ‘effectively govern both nation and individual’ (15). At the same time, overloaded with implicit quotations, allusions, and plagiarisms, the book, this (non-)narrative of literary influences, is born precisely out of the technological shock of printing. Though the attempt to overcome the multiplication of books often fails, and the integration of Coleridge’s wide-ranging reading experiences into the linear narrative proper to any (literary) autobiography remains a mere promise, his efforts to ‘collate’ and ‘assimilate’ (LS, 9), or, as he says, to use narration ‘in order to give a continuity to the work’ (BL, 5) must be taken seriously: he ‘struggles to idealise and to unify’ (italics added).]

Published: Dec 21, 2015

Keywords: Technological Shock; Protestant Work Ethic; Definite Purpose; Camera Obscura; Literary Influence

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