Tragic Coleridge

Murray contends that cycles of catastrophe and catharsis are everywhere in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who viewed the hardships of his lifetime, like the catastrophes of Greek tragedy, as stages in a process of humanity’s purification. Offering new readings of canonical poems, as well as neglected plays and critical works, Murray elaborates Coleridge’s tragic vision in relation to Romantic contemporaries and tragic theorists from Aristotle to Steiner.