Coleridge and theory

I know it is common for the literary theorist to look for precursors to literary theory. And I usually am one to hesitate before doing so: I don't like to call Plato a literary theorist, because, quite frankly, I'm still not sure whether we can even call him a philosopher of art. Nevertheless, I think it is important that we recognize how what Coleridge does--particularly in the Biographia Literaria--resembles literary theory. Not because this shows theory as such has been around for a while, but only because it shows that what Coleridge expressly does not do might have some affinity with what theory opposes.

For what Coleridge does not do is what he says Wordsworth does in the "Preface" to the Lyrical Ballads and in his remarks on literature generally.

Recall that the Biographia begins with an account of Coleridge's life, and how his literary opinions are generally shaped, with a view to making some remarks about the proper place of meter in poetry and poetic diction in specific passages of poetry--remarks that indeed challenge, and attempt to correct, Wordsworth's views, through a distinction between fancy and imagination. But in order to do this, Coleridge must take a detour into the history of philosophy, looking particularly at 17th and 18th century theories of associationism, and overthrowing them using the idealism of Kant. Why? Because,

it was Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and from the different effects to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to investigate the seminal principle, and then from the kind to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness.
-Biographia Literaria, IV.

In other words, the general task is to come to similar conclusions to Wordsworth's about the role of art in general, conclusions which rely upon and effectively bring about a distinction between something like fancy and something like imagination. Coleridge will do this, though by searching for principles and making this distinction explicit.

For Wordsworth, it is sufficient to look at poetic effects, and "conclude their diversity in kind:" that is, it is enough to categorize poetic activity based on his immediate perception of poetic effects into two general spheres. The result of this is that he makes a distinction but does not bring it to the fore. In other words, Wordsworth can be talking about something like fancy and something like imagination, but no one would really know: the opinions are grounded in the particular standpoint he has towards the poems and poetry, which is ultimately individual, subjective. Thus the source for what he has to say about the nature of poetry in general does not come from any argument: very much like Shelley in his Defense, statements like "The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure" are not based on any logic which can be reasoned out by another reader--we have to either accept them or reject them.

Coleridge, on the other hand, will talk about these poetic effects as resulting from various principles or reasons. The fancy and the imagination are these reasons, roughly put--this is why the distinction is so crucial. Like Edward Young's "originality," they are concepts that do not merely gather together poetic effects, or express a view upon poetry, but try to reveal poetry's origin in something we can all reason out. To this extent, they are not in any particular poem or prose work--this is why people (especially not schooled in the 18th century, which develops, step by step until German Romanticism, precisely this sort of critical concept) have such a tough time with them. Fancy, then, remains something more like an explanatory hypothesis than even a category of poetic effect (one can see that what Coleridge then is criticizing in Wordworth is precisely what ties him to an increasingly antiquated notion of rhetoric--that is, the notion of figural language as the production of effects).

So here is the first similarity between Coleridge and literary theorists: they both make the manifestation of some critical concept in a particular text unnecessary. Or, to put it the other way around, they do not look at poetry, say, for what is manifested in it--they don't make their points by grouping together certain aspects of the text which manifest themselves.

We just said that fancy and imagination are more explanatory hypotheses than terms used to point to what the text manifests. At the same time, they still more than merely hypotheses: they are derived from general philosophical principles--Coleridge eventually grounds it in metaphysics. Thus we can't say that the principles try to explain an aesthetic object, say. In other words, we might expect that outlining principles about an artistic object (poetry) would confine the principles themselves to the sphere delimited by the scope of their object, which here would be art--this is what it means for Coleridge's principles to be considered as explanatory hypotheses. But we must reject even this: Coleridge is not doing aesthetics, but is bringing metaphysics to bear upon texts.

This is the second similarity: theory resists confining itself to aesthetics, or a philosophical discourse upon art. It might seem like an obvious point, but it frustrates people constantly. For now the theoretical notion, like the Coleridgian notion of fancy or imagination, has no where to go: barred from resting in the realm of notions that group together textual effects or the manifestation of art, it also cannot become a general statement about the nature of art, which would account for the manifestations in another direction.

Thus Coleridge, like theorists, engages in philosophical activity but does not turn this activity into a set of statements about art. The extended passages on associationism and the grounding of the imagination and fancy in metaphysics indeed try to get at the "seminal principle," but the principle is ultimately a metaphysical notion with theological and ethical implications.

It may sound like there is also a problem emerging: by what right do philosophical (or semi-philosophical) statements come to bear directly upon poetry? It seems as if there is a shortcut here from one discourse to another, while the discourse proper to the consideration of literature (looking at what the text manifests) is done away with or at least set aside. Coleridge and theorists would reply--this is exactly the point. For what both oppose is stability we grant to the way poetry manifests itself, and on the other hand the stability we grant to the nature of art: the instability on the one side undoes the stability of the other.