Synopses & Reviews
Bringing together an exciting variety of approaches, the fifteen authors here direct attention to Coleridge's relation to the "sciences of life"--a term which embraces a much broader field than modern "science." Accordingly there are essays on Coleridge and the vitalist debate, political and social ideas, race theories, dissent, literary relations, and language, as well as on his relation to contemporary optics, chemistry, geology, anatomy, and medicine. Taken all together, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life marks a vital and exciting development in Coleridge criticism.
Review
"The essays are refreshingly well written and free of jargon, and the bibliography and index are excellent."--Choice
Table of Contents
Preface
Illustrations
Abbreviations
1. Introduction, Nicholas Roe
2. Myths of Community in the Lyrical Ballads 1798-1998: The Commonwealth and the Constitution, Elinor Shaffer
3. The Political Sciences of Life: From American Pantisocracy to British Romanticism, Kenneth R. Johnston
4. Jews, Jubilee, and Harringtonianism in Coleridge and Maria Edgeworth: Republican Conversions, Susan Manly
5. Coleridge and 'the Oran utan hypothesis': Romantic Theories of Race, Peter J. Kitson
6. Theorizing Golgotha: Coleridge, Race Theory, and the Skull Beneath the Skin, Tim Fulford
7. Kubla Khan and the Theory of the Earth, James C. McKusick
8. Coleridge's Abstruse Researches, Neil Vickers
9. Space for Speculation: Coleridge, Barbauld, and the Poetics of Priestley, Jane Stabler
10. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Frankenstein, Beth Lau
11. Coleridge's 'Hymn before Sun-rise' and the Voice Not Heard, Angela Esterhammer
12. Coleridge and the End of Autonomy, Seamus Perry
13. Historicist Readings of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Raimondo Modiano
14. Coleridge's Secret Ministry: Historical Reading and Editorial Theory, Kelvin Everest
15. How Shall We Write the Life of Coleridge?, John Beer
Contributors
Index