Coleridge and the Materiality of Translucence

Paul de Man’s thoroughgoing critique of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s symbol, which has had a lasting impact on Romantic scholarship, is based upon the supposed incompatibility of materiality and “translucence.” This article sets out to deconstruct de Man’s argument on the basis of a specific appeal to materiality. But it also takes his critique as a virtuous provocation to clarify the relationship between materiality and the metaphysics and phenomenology of translucence. Towards this end, the article develops a material history of translucence, focusing on Coleridge’s early notebook descriptions of weather phenomena, light, and water, and his representations of light in his poem, “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.