Coleridge and the Uses of Division [Hardcover]

Coleridge was a visionary drawn to the numinous, but he was also a spontaneous connoisseur of the sensory life. Such double-mindedness has often been criticized as a sort of incapacity; but the capability of entertaining equally necessary kinds of perception might be thought a kind of virtue. The study examines Coleridge's formative double-vision as it manifests itself in his profound self-analysis, his philosophy of mind, and his literary criticism.

Introduction
1. Coleridge and Division
2. Coleridge's Visions
3. Atoning Plurality: The Mind and the World
4. The Ethics of Imagining
5. Radical Differences: Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth
Coda. The Incomprehensible Mariner
Index

[A] fine study of Coleridge's thinking.... Excellent...it cannot but open our eyes to the substantial 'zigzaggery' of Coleridge's thinking in a new way. It also makes it, rightly, harder to look down on one of the 'dark horse' geniuses of the last two hundred years. --European Romantic Review

In Perry's adept hands, we see division everywhere in Coleridge's oeuvre, and we indeed come to see it less as debilitaing inconsistency than as a shifting pattern of engagement....Perry makes his case with an impressive marshaling of evidence. One of the strongest elements in this strong book is Perry's remarkable possession of Coleridge's writings. His fluency with Coleridge's notebooks is positively breath-taking, and his handling of Coleridge's contemporaries as well as his recent critics reveals much erudition....This is a book that deserves a central place among the best critical literature on the poet; it should have a wide-ranging appeal to those who care deeply about Coleridge and his works and follow the debates that have defined his place in literary history. --The Wordsworth Circle