Coleridge, collaboration, and the higher criticism

grantor: University of TorontoColeridge constructed his later prose works through an unusual "cut-and-paste" method that has generated criticism and controversy ever since these texts were published. Criticism of Coleridge's texts, both verse and prose, has puzzled over his largely unacknowledged borrowings from other authors. Coleridge's direct use of sources is so widespread that Thomas McFarland and Jerome Christensen have suggested persuasively that the technique can be considered a full-blown mode of composition. Explanations as to why he might have composed in this manner are less convincing, however, as most critics tend to use the evidence of Coleridge's dependence on other writers as the basis for a moral judgement or for an analysis of his neuroses. Leaving Coleridge's psychological health aside, I argue that Coleridge adapted an historical model for his controversial use of texts. The Higher Criticism suggested that the Bible was not a simple collection of books by known, inspired authors, but a collaborative, composite document containing layers of authorship and redaction within a single biblical book. This radical biblical criticism described in detail the manuscript culture in which the Bible was formed, and in the process, put forth theories of authorship and textual authenticity to justify their findings and preserve the integrity of the text. A natural collaborator, Coleridge was also immersed in both the Bible and this criticism, and adapted the practices of the biblical writers as described by the Higher Critics to his own compositional methods. The dissertation focuses on 'Aids to Reflection', the prose work of Coleridge's which was so admired throughout the nineteenth century. Starting its life as an edition, 'Aids to Reflection' was based on the work of the "inspired" Archbishop Leighton, and grew to include substantial amounts of Coleridge's and many seventeenth-century theologians' writing, including Coleridge's marginal glosses on Leighton. The work and its biblical model provides us with a fresh way to examine Coleridge's ideas of inspiration and authorship, outside of the rather tired issue of plagiarism.Ph.D