Summary
Summary of Biographia Literaria
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Criticism begins with principles
Samuel Taylor Coleridge began Biographia Literaria as a short preface to his poems, but it grew into a book joining autobiography, philosophy and literary criticism. He recalls his education, considers how the mind works, and judges the poetry of his friend William Wordsworth.
His purpose is to trace the history of his opinions, not simply announce them. Behind the changes of subject lies a connected argument: to judge poetry well, a critic needs principles, and those principles must rest on an understanding of the mind.
Key idea 2
Taste grows through attention to words
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Key idea 3
Fair criticism explains its judgments
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Key idea 4
The mind participates in knowing
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Key idea 5
Imagination creates while fancy rearranges
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Key idea 6
Poetic faith is freely given
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Key idea 7
Poetry does more than reproduce speech
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Key idea 8
Admiration leaves room for precise criticism
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Key idea 9
Read words and wholes together
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love poetry and want to know how a poet thinks about it, and anyone curious about Romantic ideas of mind and art.
What this book is
Biographia Literaria is a book Samuel Taylor Coleridge published in 1817, near the end of his most productive years. It began as a short preface to a collection of his poems and grew into two volumes. In it he tells parts of his own life, argues about philosophy, and sets out a theory of poetry. He also judges the poems of his friend William Wordsworth with unusual honesty.
The book does not move in a straight line. Coleridge wanders from his school days to German philosophy, from angry reviewers to the meaning of the word imagination. He says himself that he is giving the history of his opinions, so that readers can see how he came to hold them. Beneath the detours there is a plan. He wants to show that good criticism needs principles, and that principles come from thinking hard about how the mind works.
What do you get from it? You get a working vocabulary for talking about poetry, including the famous split between imagination and fancy, and the phrase about poetic faith. You also get a close look at how a poet reads another poet. Let us begin where Coleridge does, with a schoolboy and a stern teacher.
In this summary
- 1Good taste in poetry is trained earlyFree
- 2Critics owe writers fairness and reasons
- 3Association alone cannot explain the mind
- 4All knowing begins with the knowing self
- 5Imagination creates and fancy only rearranges
- 6Poetry asks us to believe by choice
- 7Poetic language is not simply country speech
- 8Judge a poet by faults and by gifts
- 9A book of flaws that still shaped criticism
Key point 1 of 9
Good taste in poetry is trained early
Coleridge opens with his own education. He was a pupil at Christ's Hospital in London, and he gives special thanks to the headmaster of the upper school, James Bowyer. Bowyer was strict, and he scorned loose, showy verse. He taught his boys that poetry has a logic of its own, as firm as that of science, and that every word in a good poem must have a reason to be there.
Bowyer made his pupils translate and examine the great Greek and Latin poets, and he made them ask why a poet chose one word over another. He mocked the stock phrases of the day, such as invoking the Muses or Pegasus, the winged horse of poetry. He preferred the plain strength of Shakespeare and Milton to the polished manner of the eighteenth century. Coleridge says this training gave him a habit he never lost, which was to test a line by asking whether it would still make sense if you changed its words.
The next influence he names is a small book of sonnets by William Lisle Bowles. Coleridge was a young man when he found them, and he was moved by how naturally they joined feeling to the scenes of nature. He copied them out and gave them to friends. He says they taught him that a poet could write from the heart in a language close to thought, without ornament that got in the way.
The chapter also shows how Coleridge wants to be read. He is not boasting about his schooling. He is making a claim that runs through the whole book, that taste is not a mere matter of liking. It can be built through discipline, and it can be defended with reasons.
For a reader today the lesson is practical. If you want to judge a poem, do not stop at whether it pleases you. Ask what each word does, whether the feeling is earned, and whether the language is real or only decorative. Coleridge learned to ask those questions as a boy, and he spends the rest of the book asking them of others and of himself.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
What does Coleridge expect a critic to explain?
Right. “A critic should know the principles on which he judges, and should be ready to state them.”Not quite. “A critic should know the principles on which he judges, and should be ready to state them.”
How does fancy differ from imagination?
Right. “It takes images that memory has stored and shuffles them, as someone might rearrange the pieces of a puzzle.”Not quite. “It takes images that memory has stored and shuffles them, as someone might rearrange the pieces of a puzzle.”
What makes poetic faith possible in a supernatural poem?
Right. “He grants it a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, and that is what constitutes poetic faith.”Not quite. “He grants it a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, and that is what constitutes poetic faith.”
Questions about Biographia Literaria
What is Biographia Literaria about?
It is Coleridge's mix of memoir, philosophy and criticism. He tells how his tastes and opinions formed, argues for a theory of imagination, and examines Wordsworth's ideas about poetic language and his poems.
What is the difference between imagination and fancy in Coleridge?
Coleridge says imagination is a creative power that dissolves and reshapes material into a living whole, while fancy only rearranges fixed images taken from memory, without changing them.
What does willing suspension of disbelief mean?
It is Coleridge's phrase for the reader's choice to accept an unreal or supernatural story for a time. The poet gives it human truth, and the reader grants poetic faith in return.
Is Biographia Literaria hard to read?
No. Coleridge tells you his plan up front: he is giving the history of his opinions, starting with a schoolboy and a stern teacher. Each part then takes one clear idea, such as fair criticism or imagination, and ends with a practical lesson.
When was Biographia Literaria written and why?
It appeared in 1817. Coleridge first planned a short preface to a collection of his poems, but it grew into a two volume work on his life, his ideas and the nature of poetry.
