Coleridge as Literary Critic: Biographia Literaria and Essays on the Principles of Genial Criticism

Abstract

This article examines Samuel Taylor Coleridge's career as a literary critic, focusing on his Biographia Literaria and Essays on the Principles of Genial Criticism. It explains that Biographia Literaria is Coleridge's most controversial, most widely read and most provocative work, which he wrote after his battle with opium addiction. The article suggests that Essays on the Principles of Genial Criticism was based on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment and on the aesthetic theory of Richard Payne Knight, whom Coleridge considered as a serious rival in aesthetics.