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Die Dissertation untersucht Samuel Taylor Coleridges Praxis der Selbstredaktion in den Jahren von 1814 bis 1818 und beleuchtet dabei die zentrale Rolle, die William Wordsworths The Excursion, 1814 als Teil von The Recluse erschienen, in der Herausbildung von Coleridges Œuvre einnimmt. Die Arbeit entwickelt ihre zentrale These zu Coleridges Überarbeitungspraxis durch eine detaillierte Analyse der Verfahren, über die Coleridge aufhörte, durch Wordsworth zu sprechen. Ich beziehe mich dabei in erster Linie auf die Überarbeitungen von Biographia Literaria (1817), Sibylline Leaves (1817) und dem 1818 erschienenen rifacciamento zu dem Periodikum The Friend, das ursprünglich 1809–1810 publiziert worden war. Vor dem Hintergrund von Coleridges in den 1790er- und 1800er-Jahren neu aufgekommener und sich später weiterentwickelnder Rezeption von Immanuel Kants kritischer Philosophie werde ich argumentieren, dass sich die „radikale Differenz“ zwischen Coleridge und Wordsworth, die seit den Lyrical Ballads (1798) und dem „Preface“ (1800) bestand, weiter verstärkte, nachdem es Wordsworth nicht gelungen war, das groß angelegte Konzept eines „first genuine philosophical poem“ – The Recluse – zu vollenden. Insbesondere nachdem Coleridge 1807 The Prelude gehört hatte, enttäuschte The Excursion nach den Maßstäben seiner „vergleichenden Kritik“ seine lang gehegten Erwartungen. Während sein organisches Weltbild einen aktiven Geist kannte, der nach universaler „Wahrheit“ sowohl durch innere synthetisierende Kräfte als auch empirische Naturgesetze strebt, gründete sich Wordsworths Gedicht auf ein obskur-labiles Fundament zwischen Außenwelt und Selbst. Coleridges aus seinen eigenen Theorien zu Sprache und Einbildungskraft erwachsene Enttäuschung über The Excursion und die nachfolgende Loslösung von Wordsworth und ihrem gemeinsamen Werk verschafften ihm letztendlich die notwendige Autonomie, die einerseits einen nüchternen Blick auf die eigene Vergangenheit und andererseits eine dialogische Freundschaft zu Wordsworth ermöglichten, innerhalb derer Coleridge die Bedeutsamkeit erkannte, zu einem Freund zu sprechen. / This thesis is an examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s revisionary activity from 1814 to 1818, considering the integral role of William Wordsworth’s The Excursion, published as part of The Recluse in 1814, on Coleridge’s conception of his discrete oeuvre. It is via a detailed analysis of the way Coleridge ceased to speak “through” Wordsworth that this thesis unfolds its principal argument on Coleridge’s revisionary activity. I principally consider the revisions at work in the Biographia Literaria (1817), Sibylline Leaves (1817) and the 1818 rifacciamento to The Friend (the periodical originally issued in 1809-1810). Taking into account Coleridge’s newly-emerging and subsequently evolving responses to Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy in the 1790s and 1800s, I will argue that the already-existing “radical Difference” between Coleridge and Wordsworth ever since the Lyrical Ballads (1798) and the “Preface” (1800) further intensified following Wordsworth’s failure to bring their grand scheme for a “first genuine philosophical poem”, The Recluse, into completion. Especially after The Prelude Coleridge heard in 1807, The Excursion by means of his “comparative censure” fell short of meeting the long-cherished expectations. Whereas Coleridge’s organic view of the world involved the recognition of an active mind seeking universal “Truth” through the inner synthetic faculties as well as the empirical laws in nature, Wordsworth’s poem was founded upon an obscurely precarious ground between the phenomenal world and the inner self. Ultimately, Coleridge’s disappointment with The Excursion on the basis of his theories on language and imagination, and the ensuing detachment from Wordsworth and their joint oeuvre gave him the autonomy to revise his past works in a way that ensured formation of a more sober relationship with his own past and a dialogic friendship with Wordsworth in which Coleridge came to realise the importance of speaking to a friend.

This thesis proposes that astronomical ideas and forces structured the poetic, religious and philosophical imaginings of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Despite the widespread scholarly predilection for interdisciplinary enquiry in the field of literature and science, no study has been undertaken to assess the impact and imaginative value of mathematics and astronomy upon Wordsworth and Coleridge. Indeed, it is assumed they had neither the resources available to access this knowledge, nor the capacity to grasp it fully. This is not the case. I update the paradigm that limits their familiarity with the physical sciences to the education they received at school and at Cambridge, centred principally on Euclid and Newton, by revealing their attentiveness to the new world views promulgated by William Herschel, William Rowan Hamilton, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and the mathematicians of Trinity College, Cambridge, including John Herschel, George Peacock, and George Biddell Airy, amongst others. The language of astronomy wielded a vital, analogical power for Wordsworth and Coleridge; it conditioned the diurnal rhythms of their thought as its governing dynamic. Critical processes were activated, at the level of form and content, with a mixture of cosmic metaphors and nineteenth-century discoveries (such as infra-red). Central models of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s literary and metaphysical inventions were indissociable from scientific counterparts upon which they mutually relied. These serve as touchstones for creative endeavour through which the mechanisms of their minds can be traced at work. Exploring the cosmological charge contained in the composition of their poems, and intricately patterned and pressed into their philosophical and spiritual creeds, stakes a return to the evidence of the Romantic imagination. The incorporation of astrophysical concepts into the moulds of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s constructions manifests an intelligent plurality and generosity which reveals the scientific valency of their convictions about, variously, the circumvolutions of memory and the idea of psychic return; textual revision, specifically the ways in which language risks becoming outmoded; prosody, balance, and the minute strictures modifying metrical weight; volubility as an axis of conversation and cognition; polarity as the reconciling tool of the imagination; and the perichoretic doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The ultimate purpose is to show that astronomy provided Wordsworth and Coleridge with a scaffold for thinking, an intellectual orrery which ordered artistic consciousness and which they never abandoned.

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This thesis explores three of Ralph Waldo Emerson's seminal texts, Nature (1836), the "Woodnotes" poems (1840, 1841), and Representative Men (1850), in a transatlantic Romantic context. Augmenting typical transatlantic explorations of Emerson's literature which often use these three works in demonstration of the various European Romantic assimilations n Emerson's writing, the texts considered in this study are understood to engage with one British work predominately. Emerson engages antagonistically in the pages of Nature with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Aids to Reflection (1825), in the "Woodnotes" poems with William Wordsworth's The Excursion (1814), and in Representative Men with Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841). In each instance, Emerson engages with a text that he understands to be particularly representative of the intellectual and creative genius that its British author wields and, as such, one that is anxiety-inducing in the influence that it wields. This thesis demonstrates that, in engaging with these works, Emerson performs with increasing sophistication a process of "'creative reading,' that is, an act of reading (influx) through which creation (efflux, expression) is made possible through a transcendence of the past. In doing so, Emerson confronts and attempts to gain independence both from the personal influence that these texts and, more significantly, their authors wield. In engaging in Nature, the "Woodnotes" poems, and Representative Men with Aids to Reflection, The Excursion, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History respectively, Emerson assimilates into his works various elements of Coleridge's, Wordsworth's, and Carlyle's thought. Each of the three chapters comprising this thesis explores Emerson's intellectual indebtedness in this regard and, as such, the explorations incorporate a scholastic focus like that found in the majority of Emersonian transatlantic scholarship. In each instance, however, explorations of Emerson's works also reveal the American writer's performance of a liberating act of detachment or departure from the ideas with which he engages. These intellectual detachments distinguish Emerson's thought from that of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle, and are often attended by formal departures from the texts with which Emerson engages. Augmenting typical transatlantic explorations of Emerson's works, this thesis focuses not only Emerson's Romantic assimilations, but also on his detachments. Finally, in each instance, Emerson's confrontations reflect Robert Weisbuch's assessment in Atlantic Double-Cross (1986) that nineteenth century Anglo-American literary relations are 'always more than personal and individual' (21). That is to say, in each instance, Emerson confronts not only Coleridge, Wordsworth's, and Carlyle's personal creative and intellectual influence, but their extrapersonal or national influence as British writers. This confrontation of national influence is reflected in the fact that Emerson's detachments incorporate temporal reimaginings, re-visions of time that nullify the potency of the past and of the influence wielded by tradition by emphasising the present and the future, focusing on the subjective power of the mind. As such, Emerson's conceptions of time demonstrate a conflation of two specifically American understandings of temporality as defined by Robert Weisbuch - vertical time and futurism - both developed by nineteenth century American writers in order to nullify the influence of Old World, specifically British, tradition, and to establish an account of time in which the United States' comparative lack of distinct cultural history is excused. In precis, this thesis demonstrates that Nature, the "Woodnotes" poems, and Representative Men issue from Emerson's creative reading of Aids to Reflection, The Excursion, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History respectively. These acts of creative reading demonstrate in each instance the inextricability of Coleridge's, Wordsworth's, and Carlyle's 'personal' creative and intellectual influence, as well as their 'extrapersonal' or national influence.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge used theories of evil and creation from Plato, Plotinus and Proclus to refine his definitions of the Trinity and the Absolute and Apostate Wills, and to move beyond the Germanic Naturphilosophie concept of self-hood as achieved by a self-objectification which emphasised differences between the persons of the Trinity rather than their similarities. His use of specific classical Greek concepts allowed him to propose that the Absolute Will�s self-substantiative act established unity and distinction as simultaneous and interrelated equals. From this, Coleridge investigated how identity and relationship rely upon unity and distinction, as he believed that identity is a unified self distinct from others, and that relationship is the unified common ground of many selves. My first chapter explains my methodology in dealing with Coleridge�s problematic relationship with both Greek and German sources, and describes how Coleridge�s philosophical investigations into evil and creation resulted from personal crises oyer his sense of self and sin. I provide an overview of the system Coleridge devised to address these concerns, concentrating upon the aspects which he believed clarified humanity�s status in relation to evil and the divine. I demonstrate how Coleridge accounts for the origin of the Apostate Will, and I explain his view of identity and relationships between the persons of the Trinity, providing a relevant overview that allows me to point out his use of the fundamental Greek concepts that anchor the subsequent chapters on Plato, Plotinus and Proclus. My second chapter examines Coleridge�s statement that Plato had formulated a triune creative principle, a concept critical to Coleridge�s need to unite God to the created universe. After describing the Platonic structure of reality and its divine creative act, I focus on the Platonic triad of Difference, Unity and Being. Plato�s account of these three principles and how they arise from the divine principle activity influences Coleridge�s view of the Trinity, what it contains in terms of distinction and unity, and how the Trinity arises from the superessential Absolute Will. I explain how Coleridge refined his definition of Christ as pleroma by referencing the way that the Form of the Good simultaneously exhibits plurality and identity. My third chapter shows how the Plotinian theory of the One�s will-based self-substantiation influenced Coleridge�s definition of the Absolute Will. I determine that Plotinus�s concept of heterotes (otherness) informs Coleridge�s view of the origin of evil, and I show how his concept of redemption is influenced by Plotinus�s account of noetic contemplation. My fourth chapter explains how Coleridge used the Proclian concept of Bound to develop the actualising quality of the Logos, in relation to Christ as a successful plurality but also in terms of Christ�s role in the redemption. My conclusion surveys all four philosophers to demonstrate how concepts drawn from Plato, Plotinus and Proclus helped Coleridge to define the Absolute Will and the way that its activity is the unity, distinction, identity and relationship of the Trinity. These three distinct yet related systems influenced Coleridge�s view of evil, as well as his understanding of the Absolute Will�s self-creative act, its relation to the Trinity, and the simultaneously fallen and divine status of humanity.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1995. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2823. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as preliminary leaves [1-2]. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-190).

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