Coleridge and Textual Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems

by Jack Stillinger

Overview

Jack Stillinger establishes and documents the existence of numerous different authoritative versions of Coleridge's best-known poems: sixteen or more of The Eolian Harp, for example, eighteen of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and comparable numbers for This Lime-Tree Bower, Frost at Midnight, Kubla Khan, Christabel, and Dejection: An Ode. Such multiplicity of versions raises interesting theoretical and practical questions about the constitution of the Coleridge canon, the ontological identity of any specific work in the canon, the editorial treatment of Coleridge's works, and the ways in which multiple versions complicate interpretation of the poems as a unified (or, as the case may be, disunified) body of work. Providing much new information about the texts and production of Coleridge's major poems, Stillinger's study offers intriguing new theories about the nature of authorship and the constitution of literary works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195085839
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/12/1994
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	9.24(w) x 6.40(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Table of Contents

	Abbreviations	xi
1.	Introduction: The Current State of Coleridge's Poetic Texts	3
2.	The Multiple Versions	26
	The Eolian Harp	27
	This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison	43
	Frost at Midnight	52
	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	60
	Kubla Khan	73
	Christabel	79
	Dejection: An Ode	91
3.	Coleridge as Reviser	100
4.	A Practical Theory of Versions	118
Appendix	Texts and Apparatuses	141
	The Eolian Harp	142
	This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison	148
	Frost at Midnight	154
	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	158
	Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream	185
	Christabel	189
	Dejection: An Ode	216
	A Letter to	226
	Notes	237
	Index	251

Editorial Reviews

"Stillinger's proposal, elucidated with such candour and sceptical good sense is surely to be welcomed..."—The Wordsworth Circle

From the Publisher