Samuel Coleridge - Biographia Literaria chapter 15

Samuel Coleridge - Biographia Literaria chapter 15

1. S. T. COLERIDGE Presented By: Shahzad AltafKhan

2. Introduction . Samuel Taylor Coleridge was Philosopher, poet, and religious and political theorist. . He was born in Devonshire, England. . In 1795 Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth, with whom he was to work closely. . Coleridge and Wordsworth collaboratively published  Lyrical Ballads  in 1798, marking the rise of the British Romantic movement. . In 1817 Biographia Literaria, a fusion of autobiography, literary criticism, and religious and philosophical theory, was published.

3. Biographia Literaria Biographia Literaria is an autobiography in discourse. Published in 1817. It is not a straightforward or linear autobiography. Instead, it is meditative. It quickly expanded into a two-volume autobiography, mixing memoir, philosophy, religion and literary theory, and was heavily influenced by German criticism, the evaluation and interpretation of literature.

4. Biographia Literaria Chapter. XV The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a critical analysis of Shakespeare's VENUS AND ADONIS, and RAPE of LUCRECE.

5. Chapter. XV . Application of these principles to practical criticism. . Coleridge endeavoured to discover the qualities in a poem. . Deemed promises and specific symptoms of poetic power. . VENUS AND ADONIS and the LUCRECE by Shakespeare.

6. Characteristics of original poetic genius in general

7. 1. . In the VENUS AND ADONIS, the first and most obvious excellence is the perfect sweetness of the versification. . The adaptation to the subject and the poetic power was demanded by the thought. . The delight in richness and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty excess, if it be evidently original, and not the result of an easily imitable mechanism, Coleridge regard it as a highly favourable promise in the compositions of a young man. . The man, without music in his soul can never be a genuine poet.

8. 1 . The sense of musical delight is a gift of imagination. . Together with the power of reducing multitude into unity of effect and modifying a series of thoughts by someone predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can never be learned.

9. 2. . A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects. . Where the subject is taken immediately from the author's personal sensations and experiences, the excellence of a particular poem is but an ambiguous mark and often a fallacious pledge of genuine poetic power. 

10. 3. . It has been before observed that images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. . They become proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant passion. . The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed but little, except as taken conjointly with the former is depth, and energy of thought.

11. 4. . The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed but little, except as taken conjointly with the former is depth, and energy of thought. . No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. . For poetry, the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.