Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 343-364). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This paper evaluates the critical response to Samuel Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." In the Introduction I outline my critical approach, which attempts to see the relationships between parts of the poem, sources outside the poem and poet himself. In analyzing Coleridge's esthetics, I have come to the conclusion that the poem was the first of a new type of Romantic poem. The central structural principle of this type of poem is the use of illusion and the fragmented form, or the illusion of the fragmented form. Poems that fall within this esthetic frequently use the "vision within a dream" motif as a metaphor for this illusion.

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The American Transcendentalists are often equated with Romanticism in nineteenth-century America. This dissertation thoroughly complicates that equation, arguing that a group of "Cautious Romantics" emerged as an alternative and conservative Romantic religious tradition. Drawing on history, art history, philosophy, literature, and theology, this dissertation provides a much fuller picture of the way European Romantic texts and authors functioned in American intellectual, cultural, and religious history by highlighting the contribution of these Cautious Romantics. Taken together, the Cautious Romantics represented a distinct religious discourse. They were American Romantics: relentless and introspective questers who emphasized epistemological intuition, artistic inspiration, and spiritual experience. In fact, some of them were the first Americans to promote European Romantic influences. Nevertheless, the Cautious Romantics continued to embrace Trinitarian Christianity, and they celebrated institutions--colleges and churches--in contrast to the often anti-institutional temperament of the Transcendentalists. Moreover, the Cautious Romantics defied religious categorization among standard antebellum groups. They were neither evangelicals, nor traditional Congregationalists, nor Unitarians. Although many became Episcopalians or Catholics, their Romantic intellectual lineage and historical relationships with one another distinguished them from their denominational kindred. Functioning on two levels, this dissertation resituates several well-known American artists and intellectuals such as Washington Allston, Orestes Brownson, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and Harriet Beecher Stowe by connecting them historically and intellectually with a wider discourse. This dissertation also unearths or re-contextualizes numerous lesser-known religious intellectuals such as Richard Henry Dana Sr., James Marsh, Sophia Dana Ripley, George Allen, Henry Hope Reed, Gulian Verplanck, Leonard Woods Jr., and Isaac Hecker. While conservative, these intellectuals were neither committed to the antebellum American South's unique conservative vision nor did they celebrate the free-market conservatism common in twentieth-century America. Thus, in addition to its contribution to intellectual and religious history, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of literature on cultural conservatism in America. Moreover, although the Cautious Romantics were American, this dissertation highlights the important historical relationships between the Cautious Romantics and Coleridge, Wordsworth, the Roman Catholic Church, and, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's case, transatlantic social reform, thereby demonstrating the transatlantic nature of Romanticism in the nineteenth century.

From Introduction: In the Preface to his book The idea of Coleridge's Criticism, Richard Harter Fogle states: There is... I am confident, a need for such a study as I here introduce; a study of Coleridge's criticism in itself, tentatively accepting the metaphysical assumptions on which it is based and focusing upon its central principles and inner relationship; endeavouring without direct regard for its external connections to the past and the present to see it as a whole, yet at the same time anxiously regardful of its permanent significance and its bearing upon practical criticism. These are the principles on which I have based this thesis, applied more particularly to Coleridge's criticism of drama.

My thesis studies Hartley Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth to redress the unjust neglect of Hartley’s work, and to reach a more positive understanding of Dorothy’s conflicted literary relationship with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I provide a complete reassessment of the often narrowly read prose and poetry of these two critically marginalized figures, and also investigate the relationships that affected their lives, literary self-constructions, and reception; in this way, I restore a more accurate account of Hartley and Dorothy as independent and original writers, and also highlight both the inhibiting and cathartic affects of writing from within a familial literary context. My analysis of the writings of Hartley and Dorothy and the dialogues in which they engage with the works of STC and William, argues that both Hartley and Dorothy developed a strong relational poetics in their endeavour to demarcate their independent subjectivities. Furthermore, through a survey of the significance of the sibling bond – literal and figurative – in the texts and lives of all these writers, I demonstrate a theory of influence which recognizes lateral, rather than paternal, kinship as the most influential relationship. I thus conclude that authorial identity is not fundamentally predetermined by, and dependent on, gender or literary inheritance, but is more significantly governed by domestic environment, familial readership, and immediate kinship. My thesis challenges the long-standing misconceptions that Hartley was unable to achieve a strong poetic identity in STC’s shadow, and that Dorothy’s independent authorial endeavour was primarily thwarted by gender. To replace these misreadings, I foreground the successful literary independence of both writers: my approach reinstates Hartley Coleridge’s literary standing as a major poet who bridged Romanticism and Victorian literature, and promotes Dorothy Wordsworth as one of the finest descriptive writers of nature and relationship.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner1 is essentially a poem of survival through transformation, one which, according to William Walsh, 'has to do equally with man's capacity for failure and with that which makes available to him resources for recovery."2 It is also. as Richard Haven recognizes, "the record of the evolution of self." 3 Even more specifically, however, The Ancient Mariner is s tale which reveals key elements of Carl Jung's thought: the process of individuation, the nature of shadow and anima forces, the power of dreams and symbolism. Given the myriad and divergent interpretations of the poem--I heartily agree with C.M. Bowra that "there" is no final or single approach" 4 to Coleridge's masterpiece--my purpose must be explorative, suggestive. A Jungian perspective fairly encourages an exploratory approach, as Carl Kepper contends: The very heart of the applicability of Jung to the problem of symbolism is that he requires of us not that we explain (in the sense of explaining away, reducing to something more familiar) the symbol but that we explore it, not that we we remove. the mystery but that we seek to know it in all the mysteriousness it presents.5 In this searching, delving spirit, then, I will discuss the way the Mariner's--and to a lesser extent, the Wedding-Guest's--experiences represent fundamental aspects of the individuation process, which Jung defines as " ' coming to selfhood' or 'self-realization.' " 6 I will concentrate on the roles of the shadow and anima, respectively, vital and necessary constructs of this process. In these sections and throughout the essay, I will emphasize the essential position both Coleridge and Jung attribute to the law of opposites and closely related rebirth motif. Finally, I will explore the ways dreams, color, and bird imagery are symbolic and develop transformation or individuation to reflect the Mariner's degree of awakening. Not only will the complementary of opposites be discussed in this context, but wat Coleridge terms "the principle of unity in multeity"10 --what mythologist Joseph Campbell calls "unity in multiplicity"11 --and its relation to individuation will be considered. The focus throughout this essay will be on that transformational energy which promotes individuation and rebirth: "The study of the symbols of transformation," explains Violet S. de Laszlo, . . . centers upon the basic demand which is imposed upon every individual, that it, the urge as well as the necessity to become self-conscious of himself. . . . For Jung, the path towards this awareness is identical with the process of individuation. Insofar as the transformation results in a new and deeper awareness, it is experienced as a rebirth. . . .12

This dissertation demonstrates how Samuel Taylor Coleridge provides a unique vision of reality in which his evolving self-consciousness mirrors, contributes to, and is subsumed by a single universal consciousness. Utilizing the divine power of imagination, he is able to decipher the images from the material world as characters of God's symbolic language of self-revelation; subsequently, through the divine "attribute" of reason, he is able to transform them into a corresponding symbolic language of poetry. He realizes that his creativity is a finite repetition of God's infinite act of creation in which "spirit," God's consciousness in creation, comes to an awareness of itself through the human mind. This study argues that, according to Coleridge, these processes follow a divine intention, and the human faculties and the mind's structure have been molded precisely to achieve a particular understanding of reality that conforms to God's requirements and for spirit's self-actualization. Furthermore, the process by which Coleridge creates and derives knowledge from his poetic expressions follows an archetypal blueprint according to which all natural processes operate. This project illustrates not only how the theory of organicism lies at the foundation of the complex, reciprocal relationship between Coleridge's artistic expression and developing subjectivity, but also how there is an organic interrelationship between an individual's developing self-consciousness and spirit's growing awareness of its cosmic totality. Ultimately, Coleridge's writings reveal that the macrocosmic and microcosmic processes are organically interrelated, interdependent, and symbiotic and that this "truth" is gradually discovered through his experiences of the divine elements of love and beauty in creation.