Coleridge's Metaphors of Being

In an original and provocative demonstration that Coleridge’s later poetry took on a powerful metaphysical conception, Edward Kessler emphasizes Coleridge’s struggle with language as a means of both expressing and creating Being. While many of Coleridge’s late poems are generally viewed as fragments that constitute an aesthetic failure, Professor Kessler contends that what at first may appear to reflect Coleridge’s inability to finish a poem can otherwise be seen as a deliberate rejection of what the poet came to see as a confining form.

Originally published in 1979.

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