Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life

Bringing together an exciting variety of approaches, these fifteen chapters illuminate Coleridge's relation to the 'sciences of life' - a term much broader than modern 'science'. Along with optics, chemistry, geology, anatomy, and medicine the studies embrace politics, racial theories, literary relations, and much more. This is a vital and exciting development in Coleridge criticism. Over the last two decades Romantic studies have been invigorated by a variety of historical methods, approaches, interests; yet work on Samuel Taylor Coleridge has remained dominated by traditional views of Romantic transcendence. Bringing together an exciting variety of approaches, the fifteen authors here redirect attention to Coleridge's relation to the 'sciences of life' - a term which embraces a much broader field than modern 'science'. Accordingly there are chapters on Coleridge and the vitalist debate, political and social ideas, race theories, dissent, literary relations, and language, as well as on his relation to contemporary optics, chemistry, geology, anatomy, and medicine. Taken all together, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life marks a vital and exciting development in Coleridge criticism.