Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This lecture engages with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1817). It looks at Coleridge's own definition of the imagination, which opposes the tenets of Wordsworth's poetic theory articulated in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
It also engages with the reception of Coleridge as the foremost Romantic literary theorist, and disputes the contention that Coleridge presents a Romantic 'expressive' theory, arguing instead that Coleridge presents a Christian theory of the imagination more in keeping with the traditional view of mimesis going back to the Classical era.
It concludes with the suggestion that the Romantic theory nonetheless proceeds as the standard view of the humanities, at war with the human sciences, which nonetheless share a similarly impersonal view of human nature.
❤️ If you find my channel helpful, become a channel member: youtube.com/c/DrScottMasson
❤️ Subscribe to my Substack: drscottmasson.substack.com
❤️ Support my channel and assist me in providing better content:
paypal.com/ncp/payment/R9TQWES2G67XS
This lecture engages with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1817). It looks at Coleridge's own definition of the imagination, which opposes the tenets of Wordsworth's poetic theory articulated in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
It also engages with the reception of Coleridge as the foremost Romantic literary theorist, and disputes the contention that Coleridge presents a Romantic 'expressive' theory, arguing instead that Coleridge presents a Christian theory of the imagination more in keeping with the traditional view of mimesis going back to the Classical era.
It concludes with the suggestion that the Romantic theory nonetheless proceeds as the standard view of the humanities, at war with the human sciences, which nonetheless share a similarly impersonal view of human nature.
❤️ If you find my channel helpful, become a channel member: youtube.com/c/DrScottMasson
❤️ Subscribe to my Substack: drscottmasson.substack.com
❤️ Support my channel and assist me in providing better content:
paypal.com/ncp/payment/R9TQWES2G67XS
