প্রীতম চট্টোপাধ্যায় 's Reviews > Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life & Opinions

The Biographia Literaria, 1817, is a work on literary aesthetics or literary theory. Practical criticism there is, Coleridge does scrutinize particular works now and then, but such examination is meant to exemplify some particular critical perspective of the poet.

The first part of Biographia Literaria, the philosophical part from Chapters I-XIII, was completed in July, 1815. It contained his philosophical and metaphysical theories, and their impact on his life. Then he began writing the Preface to the book, the Preface grew in his hand, and was soon as extensive as the book itself. It now forms the Part II of Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV-XXII, the part which examines decisively Wordsworth's theory of poetry and poetic diction, and which is of sweeping implication as far as literary theory is concerned.

The link between the two parts is the poet's theory of imagination. The manuscript was then handed over to the publisher. Coleridge first intended to call the work Autobiographia Literaria, but later changed it to Biographia Literaria.

Biographia Literaria is a work of immense value, but it too suffers from the customary errors of Coleridge. As its name signifies, it pretends to be a record of the poet's literary rearing, but there is little uninterrupted narrative, there is too much of philosophising and too many side issues and detours.

After sixteen chapters of philosophising, almost completely immaterial, he discusses the poetical theory of his friend Wordsworth and then in the last seven chapters of the book, he gives an extraordinary demonstration of his critical powers. He analyses the Wordsworthian theory in a masterly fashion, and separating the good from the bad, upon the sounder elements bases a critical dogma of great and permanent value.

The last chapters of the book, which are the most permanent elucidation of the Romantic theory as it exists in English, place Coleridge in the first flight of critics.

To conclude, ‘Biographia Literaria’ has serious and obvious faults, as pointed out above and there is much in it that is unrelated and superfluous. There are too many side-issues and detours. Coleridge is often disorderly and chaotic.

There is a strange assortment of philosophy, literary theory and biography.

But, all said and done, the Biographia still remains a great "world-book".

The book is among the few which constitute the very Bible of Criticism. The magnitude and uniqueness of the book arises from the fact that here, for the first time, a blend of philosophy and literature had been achieved. Coleridge based literary criticism on human psychology: he has used psychology to explain the process of artistic creation. Thus the work is a unique milestone in the history of literary criticism.