Volume 6, Number 9 · May 26, 1966
Taming the Albatross
By L.C. Knights
Coleridge's Philosophy of Literature: The Development of a Concept of Poetry 1791-1819
by J.A. Appleyard S.J.
Harvard, 266 pp., $6.50
The Annotated Ancient Mariner
illustrated by Gustave Doré, with an Introduction and Notes by Martin Gardner
Clarkson N. Potter, 200 pp., $7.50
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
with ten engravings on copper and a Foreword by David Jones
Chilmark, 37 pp., $35.00
The greatness of Coleridge is indisputable, the problem for his admirers is to define what he actually achieved. I don't mean only that his poetry shows enormous variations in kind and quality, or that his criticism and general thought is sometimes repetitious, sometimes confused, with heavy borrowings from 'continental thinkers' whose ideas may or may not be transformed in the process of assimilation. I mean that when we confront the essential Coleridge—the unforgettable poems, the criticism that we know has made a radical difference in our thinking—there is no clear and simple answer to the question: what do you value him for? The books before us inescapably raise this question with regard to the literary criticism and one of the greatest of the poems.
Review, 3172 words
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