Coleridge's Play of Mind

✍ Scribed by John Beer

• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 286
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Eminent Coleridgean scholar John Beer presents a series of biographical investigations exploring Coleridge's life, stage by stage, and reconsidering the intellectual quality of his thinking and poetry through an emphasis on the notion of 'play'. Beginning and ending with brief accounts of the poet's childhood and last years, the book's twelve chapters each take a passage of Coleridge's life and characterise the nature and function of an abiding playful element in his consciousness. In combination they form a detailed, full, and humane treatment of Coleridge's life, focusing on topics such as his interest in psychology, his poetry, his literary collaboration with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, his hopeless love for William's sister-in-law, his literary criticism, including a new approach to Shakespeare, and his work towards a refreshing of contemporary religious beliefs and practices.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Frontispiece......Page 3
Abbreviations......Page 8
Introduction......Page 12
1. The Missing Playground......Page 14
2. Fantastic Sportiveness......Page 21
3. Dances of the Intellect and Emotions......Page 34
4. Coleridge and Mackintosh: Revisionary Poet and Simpering ‘Dungfly’......Page 52
5. Nature, Poetry, and the Vicissitudes of Love......Page 66
6. Coleridge, Tom Wedgwood, and Conceptions of the Mind......Page 81
7. Wordsworthian Naturalism and the Coleridgean Sublime......Page 95
8. Public Journalism, Private Affections......Page 115
9. Politics, Principle, and The Friend......Page 126
10. Fascinations of the Esoteric......Page 140
11. The Poet as Critic, Critic as Poet......Page 158
12. Shakespeare’s Plays of Passion......Page 172
13. Mental Energies, Ancient and Modern......Page 185
14. Interinvolving Guilt and Innocence......Page 200
15. Lucency and Florescences......Page 216
16. Questioning Closure......Page 236
17. ‘Obstinate in Resurrection’......Page 251
Bibliography......Page 270
B......Page 274
C......Page 275
E......Page 277
H......Page 278
J......Page 279
M......Page 280
O......Page 281
Q......Page 282
S......Page 283
T......Page 284
W......Page 285
Z......Page 286