Coleridge's Biographia literaria: text and meaning

(print) xix, 338 p. : 24 cmThe dominant purpose of this volume is to address the conflicts, and explain problematic relationships, between text and meaning; the particular difficulties in understanding the Biographia are set forth, chapter by chapter, in terms of differing strategies and methods. The chapters survey several major concerns: the writing, editing, and reading of the text; the critical topoi and privileged discourse of Coleridge's language; the ideological pretensions which shape and direct his meaning.Introduction. p.vii -- 1. Editing and annotating the Biographia Literaria. p.1 -- 2. Coleridge's Book of Moonlight. p.20 -- 3. The Besetting sins of Coleridge's prose. p.47 -- 4. Coleridge and the language of Adam. p.62 -- Anti-materialism, autobiography, and the abyss of unmeaning in the Biographia Literaria. p.75 -- 6. Coleridge, habit, and the politics of vision. p.88 -- 7. Coleridge and energy. p.105 -- 8. Perception and "the heaven-descended KNOW-THYSELF". p.127 -- 9. Annotating the annotations: a philosophical reading of the primary and secondary imagination. p.138 -- 10. Coleridge and Milton: the case against Wordsworth in the Biographia Literaria. p.150 -- 11. "Like a guilty thing surprised": Coleridge, deconstruction,and the apostasy of criticism. p.171 -- 12. Coleridge and the charge of political apostasy. p.191 -- 13. The Biographia Literaria and the contentions of English romanticism. p.233 -- 14. Poetry and barrel-organs: The text in the Book of the Biographia Literaria. p.255 -- Notes. p.269 -- Bibliography. p.311 -- List of contributors. p.329 -- Index. p.33