ABSTRACT
Coleridge’s theory of the imagination is given its fullest exposition in his Biographia Literaria, which was written in 1815 and published in 1817. The sub-title of this work, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, is an indication that the book is not a straightforward theoretical exposition. In fact, a good deal of the work is an account of Coleridge’s intellectual development, of the doctrines he had once held and then discarded, as well as those he is now convinced are true. Many readers are bewildered by it and find its argument difficult to follow; a good many skip some of the chapters because they find them obscure or irrelevant. One can agree that as a straightforward account of Coleridge’s literary theory it is not entirely satisfactory, for in places it is unnecessarily prolix and in others it is tantalizingly brief. In particular, he does not provide the sustained discussion of the nature of the poetic imagination we would have liked.
