In addition to being the leading philosopher of English Romanticism and one of its greatest poets, Coleridge explores the dynamics of consciousness and mental functioning more extensively than any of his contemporaries. This book compares his psychological theories with his diverse exemplifications of Romanticism's self-reflexive quest for transcendence, showing how he continually highlights the circular and mutual influence of ideas and emotions underlying Romantic idealism and the cult of the sublime.

While postcolonial studies of Romantic-period literature have flourished in recent years, scholars have long neglected the extent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's engagement with the Orient in both his literary and philsophical writings. Bringing together leading international writers, Coleridge, Romanticism and the Orient is the first substantial exploration of Coleridge's literary and scholarly representations of the east and the ways in which these were influenced by and went on to influence his own work and the orientalism of the Romanticists more broadly. Bringing together postcolonial, philsophical, historicist and literary-critical perspectives, this groundbreaking book develops a new understanding of 'Orientalism' that recognises the importance of colonial ideologies in Romantic representations of the East as well as appreciating the unique forms of meaning and value which authors such as Coleridge asscoiated with the Orient.

Despite their hopeful aspirations to wholeness in life and spirit, Thomas McFarland contends, the Romantics were ruins amidst ruins," fragments of human existence in a disintegrating world. Focusing on Wordsworth and Coleridge, Professor McFarland shows how this was true not only for each of these Romantics in particular but also for Romanticism in general. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Sally West's timely study is the first book-length exploration of Coleridge's influence on Shelley's poetic development. Beginning with a discussion of Shelley's views on Coleridge as a man and as a poet, West argues that there is a direct correlation between Shelley's desire for political and social transformation and the way in which he appropriates the language, imagery, and forms of Coleridge, often transforming their original meaning through subtle readjustments of context and emphasis. While she situates her work in relation to recent concepts of literary influence, West is focused less on the psychology of the poets than on the poetry itself. She explores how elements such as the development of imagery and the choice of poetic form, often learnt from earlier poets, are intimately related to poetic purpose. Thus on one level, her book explores how the second-generation Romantic poets reacted to the beliefs and ideals of the first, while on another it addresses the larger question of how poets become poets, by returning the work of one writer to the literary context from which it developed. Her book is essential reading for specialists in the Romantic period and for scholars interested in theories of poetic influence.

In this text nine scholars discuss the aesthetics, culture, and science of pleasure in the Romantic period. Richard Sha, Denise Gigante, and Anya Taylor, among others, make a timely contribution to recent debates about issues of pleasure, taste, and appetite by looking anew at the work of figures such as Byron, Coleridge, and Austen.

In this provocative work, Joel Faflak argues that Romanticism, particularly British Romantic poetry, invents psychoanalysis in advance of Freud. The Romantic period has long been treated as a time of incipient psychological exploration anticipating more sophisticated discoveries in the science of the mind. Romantic Psychoanalysis challenges this assumption by treating psychoanalysis in the Romantic period as a discovery unto itself, a way of taking Freud back to his future. Reading Romantic literature against eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy, Faflak contends that Romantic poetry and prose—including works by Coleridge, De Quincey, Keats, and Wordsworth—remind a later psychoanalysis of its fundamental matrix in phantasy and thus of its profoundly literary nature.