© 2000 by Oxford University Press
Coleridge the revisionary surrogacy and structure in the conversation poems
University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Coleridge's conversation poems belong to what can be called the inner canonical core of English literature, and writing about such texts presents special problems, for critics can find themselves most intensely engaged not with the work itself but with the dense body of critical material surrounding it. Some form of radical 'defamiliarization' device is needed to disengage the text from the critical corpus, yet without lapsing back into a naive textual formalism. Eclectic use of critical theory can perform this vital defamiliarizing function. This article therefore uses elements of prose narratology as a way of re-engaging with these poems. It asserts that the poems in the group all have a four-part structure, the four parts here being labelled the 'locatory prelude', the 'transposition', the 'self-reproof', and the 'resolution'. Further, it is claimed that all these poems centre on the notion of surrogacy, whereby a silent figure, at first contrasted with the speaker, becomes, as the poem unfolds, part of a composite self, sharing a common subjectivity with him. These matters are first demonstrated with reference to The Eolian Harp', followed by a briefer consideration of the remaining poems, primarily aimed at showing the various forms of surrogacy seen in the group as a whole.