Coleridge's Metacriticism

Abstract

I borrow metacriticism from J. H. Muirhead, who has described Coleridge as combining “a genius for criticism” with “the metacritical craving for a theory of aesthetic.” And I am aware that the framework of critical “modes” into which Coleridge is fitted in the essay that follows is quite an arbitrary one; how arbitrary is readily shown by a glance at a recent anthology of critical writing edited by Mark Schorer, Josephine Miles, and Gordon McKenzie. Coleridge appears there alongside Aristotle as a critic who emphasizes the “form” of poetry rather than its “source” or “end.” I have used the same kind of triple relationship to define “poetry,” although I have called the relationship that of Poet, Poem, and Reader rather than Source, Form, and End. But I have preferred to treat Coleridge as a “romantic” critic who attempts a synthesis of Aristotelian form and Platonic end by placing his critical emphasis on the source of poetry in the poet's creative imagination.