|
COPYRIGHT 2002 Boston University
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Pp. xii+221. $65.00.
In Coleridge and the Psychology of Romanticism, David Vallins seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of Coleridge's conception of the human mind. The term "psychology" is used here in the sense that Coleridge understood it: to designate the full range of intellectual and emotional activity that transpires in human awareness. Indeed, the real gist of this ambitious monograph is conveyed in its subtitle, Feeling and Thought, since Vallins is mainly concerned with the complex interaction between rational thought and the more subtle and elusive dynamics of feeling, including those affective processes that remain at least partly unconscious. The "unconscious" is not meant here in a Freudian sense, but rather (more appropriately) in the sense that Coleridge (and Schelling before him) used the term, to reference the uncanny influx of sublime, inexpressible ideas. More specifically, Vallins examines Coleridge's lifelong interest in the cognitive processes of philosophical inquiry and imaginative creation, and the way that these processes both influence and are themselves determined by the mysterious powers of intuition and emotion. Vallins' central thesis is "that feeling and thought are not easily separable or distinguishable, that what claim to be rational arguments are often dependent on sensation, emotion, and intuition, and that the process of articulating concepts or arguments itself influences these non-rational elements in the thinker, resulting in a continuum of feelings and ideas which...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
