Now available from Ashgate Publishing

Tragic Coleridge

Chris Murray

To Samuel Taylor Coleridge tragedy was not solely a literary mode, but a philosophy to interpret the history that unfolded around him. Tragic Coleridge explores the tragic vision of existence that Coleridge derived from Classical drama, Shakespeare, Milton and contemporary German thought. Coleridge viewed the hardships of the Romantic period, like the catastrophes of Greek tragedy, as stages in a process of humanity’s overall purification. Offering new readings of canonical poems, as well as neglected plays and critical works, Chris Murray elaborates Coleridge’s tragic vision in relation to a range of thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle to George Steiner and Raymond Williams. He draws comparisons with the works of Blake, the Shelleys, and Keats to explore the factors that shaped Coleridge’s conception of tragedy, including the origins of sacrifice, developments in Classical scholarship, theories of inspiration and the author’s quest for civic status. With cycles of catastrophe and catharsis everywhere in his works, Coleridge depicted the world as a site of tragic purgation, and wrote himself into it as an embattled sage qualified to mediate the vicissitudes of his age.

Contents: 
Introduction: Romantic tragedy and tragic Romanticism 
Coleridge’s tragic influences 
Hamartia and suffering in the poetical works 
The catastrophes of real life 
The tragic ‘impulse’: fragments and Coleridge’s forms of incompletion 
The Lear vocation: Coleridge and Romantic theatre 
The tragic sage 
Failed sacrifices and the un-tragic Coleridge 
Conclusion: ‘The sage, the poet, lives for all mankind’
Bibliography, Index

View this title online at: www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409447542


‘...a significant contribution to the study of Coleridge and to the concept of Romantic Tragedy more widely’ 
– Sally West, University of Chester, author of Coleridge and Shelley: Textual Engagement



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