Concetti Chiave
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a first-generation Romantic poet, initially influenced by the French Revolution, later shifted from liberal to conservative views.
- Coleridge's friendship with Wordsworth was pivotal, leading to the publication of 'Lyrical Ballads' featuring his renowned work 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.
- Unlike Wordsworth's focus on ordinary life, Coleridge emphasized the supernatural, viewing nature as a projection of ideas rather than a divine entity.
- In 'Biographia Literaria', Coleridge differentiates between primary imagination, fancy, and secondary imagination, each representing distinct levels of perception and creativity.
- Coleridge's concept of imagination includes the primary power to perceive, the child's ability to associate through fancy, and the artist's capacity to recreate images as art.
English Romanticism: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge is a romantic poet of first generation. He was born in Devonshire and when he was ten,he was sent to Christ's Hospital School in London.Later he went to Cambridge but he never graduated. He was a liberal because he was influenced by the French Revolution but after the disillusion he became a conservative. So he planned to found an Utopian society in Pennsylvania called 'Pantisocracy',based on the abolition of private ownership and where every economic activity would be done communally in order to create the best environment for everyone,but this project was never realized.
The friendship with Wordsworth was very important because they published the collection 'LYRICAL BALLADS',which contains his masterpiece called 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. In the following years he went to the Lake District to start his career of journalism and to criticize Shakespeare. Then he wrote another critical famous essay called 'Biographia Literaria' where he states his position in the collaboration with Wordsworth. He said that Wordsworth's object in the Lyrical Ballads was to speak about ordinary life,humble and rustic people but his task was to underline the supernatural.His concept of nature was very different from Wordsworth. He didn't have a pantheist vision because he was a catholicc and he couldn't identify nature with the divine power. He just talked about the supernatural,something that goes beyond God. He saw nature as the projection of the real world of ideas on the flux of time.
In his Biographia Literaria he explains his concept of imagination,in fact he distinguished between primary imagination,fancy and secondary imagination.The 'primary imagination' is the power that everybody has to perceive the world and the images around us and this is the first level of imagination. The second level is the fancy,the faculty that only children have to associate images and things. The secondary imagination is a third level of perception and it is the power,typical of artists,to recreate the images perceived under a work of art.
Domande da interrogazione
- Qual era il progetto utopico di Coleridge e perché non fu realizzato?
- Qual è la differenza tra la visione della natura di Coleridge e quella di Wordsworth?
- Come Coleridge distingue i diversi livelli di immaginazione nella sua 'Biographia Literaria'?
Coleridge pianificò di fondare una società utopica in Pennsylvania chiamata 'Pantisocracy', basata sull'abolizione della proprietà privata e su attività economiche comuni per creare un ambiente ideale per tutti, ma il progetto non fu mai realizzato.
Coleridge non aveva una visione panteista della natura come Wordsworth, poiché era cattolico e non poteva identificare la natura con il potere divino; vedeva la natura come una proiezione del mondo reale delle idee sul flusso del tempo.
Coleridge distingue tra 'immaginazione primaria', che è la capacità di percepire il mondo, 'fancy', la facoltà dei bambini di associare immagini, e 'immaginazione secondaria', il potere degli artisti di ricreare immagini in un'opera d'arte.
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