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The ambivalent curiosity of the young Samuel Taylor LEGENDA is a joint imprint
Coleridge (1772–1834) towards Plato — ‘but I love Plato — of the Modern Humanities
his dear gorgeous nonsense!’ — soon developed into a Research Association and
philosophical project, and the mature Coleridge proclaimed Routledge. The series
himself a reviver of Plato’s unwritten or esoteric ‘system’. STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE P
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James Vigus’s study traces Coleridge’s discovery of a Plato LITERATURE is chosen and A
marginalised in the universities, and examines his use of edited by the British T
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German sources on the ‘divine philosopher’, and his Platonic Comparative Literature
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interpretation of Kant’s epistemology. It compares Coleridge’s Association. It ranges widely I
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figurations of poetic inspiration with models in the Platonic across comparative and
dialogues, and investigates to what extent Coleridge’s esoteric theoretical topics in literary C
‘system’ of philosophy reflected the Republic’s notorious and translation studies, O STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 15
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banishment of poetry. accommodating research at E
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the interface between
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James Vigus teaches at the Institute for Philosophy, Friedrich- different artistic media and D Platonic Coleridge
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Schiller-University, Jena (Germany). His other publications between the humanities and
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include Coleridge’s Afterlives, ed. by James Vigus and Jane the sciences.
Wright (Palgrave, 2008); he is Reviews Editor of the Coleridge
Bulletin.
James Vigus
cover illustration: Coleridge’s annotated copy of
Thomas Taylor’s translation of Plato, open to the Timaeus;
by kind permission of the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
Platonic Coleridge
legenda
legenda, founded in 1995 by the european Humanities Research Centre of
the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities
Research association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to
contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modern
humanities, including works on arabic, Catalan, english, French, german, greek,
Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. an editorial Board of
distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly
bodies such as the Society for French Studies and the British Comparative literature
association.
The Modern Humanities Research association (ra) encourages and promotes
advanced study and research in the field of the modern humanities, especially
modern european languages and literature, including english, and also cinema.
It also aims to break down the barriers between scholars working in different
disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of
increasing specialization. The association fulfils this purpose primarily through the
publication of journals, bibliographies, monographs and other aids to research.
Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the
humanities and social sciences. Founded in 1836, it has published many of the greatest
thinkers and scholars of the last hundred years, including adorno, einstein, Russell,
Popper, Wittgenstein, Jung, Bohm, Hayek, Mcluhan, Marcuse and Sartre. Today
Routledge is one of the world’s leading academic publishers in the Humanities and Social
Sciences. It publishes thousands of books and journals each year, serving scholars,
instructors, and professional communities worldwide.
www.routledge.com
edITORIal BOaRd
Chairman
Professor Martin Mclaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford
Professor John Batchelor, University of newcastle (english)
Professor Malcolm Cook, University of exeter (French)
Professor Colin davis, Royal Holloway University of london
(Modern literature, Film and Theory)
Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor Paul garner, University of leeds (Spanish)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret,
Queen Mary University of london (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, new College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John’s College, Cambridge (linguistics)
dr Stephen Parkinson, linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Ritchie Robertson, St John’s College, Oxford (german)
Professor lesley Sharpe, University of exeter (german)
Professor david Shepherd, University of Sheffield (Russian)
Professor alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish)
Professor david Treece, King’s College london (Portuguese)
Professor diego Zancani, Balliol College, Oxford (Italian)
Managing Editor
dr graham nelson
41 Wellington Square, Oxford ox1 2jf, UK
[email protected]
www.legenda.mhra.org.uk
Studies in Comparative Literature
Editorial Committee
Professor Peter France, University of Edinburgh (Chairman)
Professor Stephen Bann, University of Bristol
Dr Elinor Shaffer, School of Advanced Study, London
Studies in Comparative Literature are produced in close collaboration with the British
Comparative Literature Association, and range widely across comparative and theo
retical topics in literary and translation studies, accommodating research at the
interface between different artistic media and between the humanities and the
sciences.
published in this series
1. Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray’s German Discourse, by S. S. Prawer
2. Hölderlin and the Dynamics of Translation, by Charlie Louth
3. Aeneas Takes the Metro: The Presence of Virgil in Twentieth-Century French Literature,
by Fiona Cox
4. Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 1780–1955,
by Peter D. Smith
5. Marguerite Yourcenar: Reading the Visual, by Nigel Saint
6. Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski,
translated by Adam Czerniawski and with an introduction by Donald Davie
7. Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry,
by Richard Serrano
8. The Anatomy of Laughter, edited by Toby Garfitt, Edith McMorran and Jane Taylor
9. Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de siècle, by Richard Hibbitt
10. The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In Pursuit of Hesitation,
by Claire Whitehead
11. Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece, by Dimitris Papanikolaou
12. Wanderers Across Language: Exile in Irish and Polish Literature of the Twentieth Century,
by Kinga Olszewska
13. Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 1783–1830,
by Alison E. Martin
14. Henry James and the Second Empire, by Angus Wrenn
15. Platonic Coleridge, by James Vigus
Platonic Coleridge
❖
Jaes Vigus
Studies in Comparative Literature 15
Modern HumModern Humanities Research association and Routledge
2009
First published 2009
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
LEGENDA is an imprint of the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2009
ISBN 978-1-906540-06-7(hbk)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying,
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Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Contents
❖
Acknowledgements ix
A Note on Texts x
Introduction 1
1 Plato’s ‘dear gorgeous nonsense’ 13
2 Coleridge’s Kant: Preparer and Opponent of Platonism 35
3 The ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy 63
4 Plato in Coleridge’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy 93
5 Restoring Plato’s ‘System’: the Friend and the Opus Maximum 125
Conclusion 167
Bibliography 171
Index 185
for cecilia
ACknowledgements
❖
This book is a revision of my Phd thesis, completed at Clare College, Cambridge,
in 2006. I wish to thank the arts and Humanities Research Council for funding
my research, including a supplementary grant for a four-month research visit to
the Freie Universität, Berlin, which I undertook as an erasmus student in 2004. I
enjoyed further financial support from the lady Clare Fund (Clare College) and the
Tenth Term Completion award (Faculty of english, Cambridge).
I have been extremely fortunate in the advice I have received throughout the
long process of research and writing. I want to begin by thanking my doctoral
supervisor, Fred Parker, for his meticulous reading and judicious encouragement
ever since the early days of my undergraduate degree at Clare. Thanks too to
douglas Hedley, who has shared his knowledge of Coleridge and Platonism with
great generosity. He also arranged my visit to Berlin, which proved a turning point
in my research. I thank nigel leask for stimulating my interest in Coleridge at an
early stage, and for two useful advisory meetings.
Some of my Romantic education took place at the Wordsworth Trust, grasmere,
where I received helpful feedback from participants in the conferences organized by
the late Jonathan Wordsworth. I would like especially to recall the kindness of the
late director of the Wordsworth Trust, Robert Woof.
The process of turning the thesis into this book was smoothed by the advice of
my examiners, Seamus Perry and Kathleen Wheeler. at legenda, elinor Shaffer
offered invaluable criticism of a first draft, graham nelson guided me painlessly
through the process of revision, and the final text benefited greatly from nigel
Hope’s copy-editing. Some of the material on Milton in Chapter 5 first appeared
in ‘ “With his garland and his singing robes about him”: The Persistence of the
literary in the Opus Maximum’, in Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion: Essays on the
‘Opus Maximum’, ed. by Jeffrey W. Barbeau (leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 97–119.
a few pages of Chapter 1 were first published in the article ‘did Cole ridge read
Plato by anticipation?’, Coleridge Bulletin, n.s. 29 (Summer 2007), pp. 65–73. I grate-
fully acknowledge permission to use this material, and thank the Wordsworth Trust
for providing the cover image.
Several other friends and colleagues have contributed more than they know to
this book. Conversations with Jane Wright, as we collaborated on an essay collection
entitled Coleridge’s Afterlives, have been a source of many Coleridgean thoughts. Jeff
einboden, graham davidson, and Jeff Barbeau have each commented insightfully on
sections of my work. The support of loreta gandolfi, James levine, and Josie von
Zitzewitz deserves an acknowledgements page to itself. I am grateful for the for-
bearance of my family, and above all my mother’s unflagging encouragement.
Finally, I now find it hard to imagine how I could ever have completed this work
with out the sustaining presence of Cecilia Muratori — and the book is dedicated
to her.
