Coleridge's Early Empiricism

By Side, Jeffrey

Book Id: WPLBN0100000424
Format Type: PDF (eBook)
File Size: 151.35 KB.
Reproduction Date: 5/14/2013

Title:	Coleridge's Early Empiricism
Author:	Side, Jeffrey
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Drama and Literature, Coleridge
Collections:	Literature, Authors Community
Historic Publication Date:	2013
Publisher:	Argotist Ebooks

Member Page:	Jeff Side
Citation APA MLA Chicago Side, J. (2013). Coleridge's Early Empiricism. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
This study examines the influence of empiricism on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry up until 1800, at which time he deserted it for transcendentalism. This is not to suggest that he was completely an empiricist before 1800, but that his empiricism was somewhat tempered by transcendentalist influences. Therefore, the relationship between “empiricism” and “transcendentalism” in his thinking with regard to poetic composition is problematical. Coleridge became a transcendentalist poet and thinker, whose Biographia Literaria was partly intended to demonstrate the malign effect of the Locke tradition on poetry. Even so, that book is partly a work of self-correction. There is ample evidence of Coleridge’s immersion in empiricist philosophy in the 1790s, as well as in the kind of scientific enquiry that was thought to be congenial to that philosophy. The sway of David Hartley, in particular, over his thoughts is prominently demonstrated by the choice of a name for his son.

Summary