Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Literary Criticism: Diagnosing and Solving Problems in the Literary Landscape

Many literary critics have paid tribute to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) as a literary critic. In his seminal work, Biographia Literaria (1817), he not only presents his philosophical views on various topics, including imagination, poetic diction and literary criticism, but also criticizes William Wordsworth’s (1770-1850) arguments in defence of Lyrical Ballads. These central themes and Coleridge’s criticisms of Wordsworth have received considerable scholarly attention, but little attention has been given in comparison to his comments on literary criticism. This essay concentrates on Coleridge’s discussion of literary criticism, examining his diagnosis of his contemporary literary landscape and investigating the attributes he requires in an exemplary critic. Coleridge’s digressive style of writing and his use of figurative expressions, however, makes it difficult for readers to understand his discourse. It is therefore worth threading together Coleridge’s discussion of literary criticism, revisiting the different passages throughout the Biographia and explaining the figurative language that he uses. This essay begins by examining Coleridge’s analysis of the contemporary literary landscape, concentrating on the dynamics between authors, critics and readers. It then investigates the problematic practices he identifies, exploring the reasons behind these and their impact on readers, critics, and the critical community. It concludes by discussing the traits of an ideal critic, as defined by Coleridge, the systematic process for criticism that he lays out, his proposal for a collective critical community established by educated people, and his argument for the necessity of a standardized literary criticism.