What is it about?
To Coleridge, tragedy was 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.
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This page is a summary of: Tragic Coleridge, June 2013, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9781315550343.
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interview about Tragic Coleridge
An interview about Tragic Coleridge for BARS, with Matthew Sangster asking pertinent questions
about the Tragic Coleridge cover image
Some info on Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1862) by Adolphe-William Bouguereau, which the Chrysler Museum allowed me to use for the book cover.
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