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1 - Constituting bodies politic and theatric

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2009

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Summary

In a series of remarks preparatory to analysis of Romeo and Juliet, Coleridge makes a surprising assertion, unravelling the logic of which constitutes the project of this chapter. Having already articulated several well-recognized prerequisites to the appreciation of Shakespeare, Coleridge finds it still “necessary” to “say something of the language of our Country” in order to “[aid] himself as well as others in judging of all writers of all countries.” He then specifies the peculiar advantages of several European languages by way of arguing that “various languages arising from various circumstances of the 〈people〉 might fit them more for one species of Poetry than another.” “Take the French,” he says in that offhand manner that bespeaks the intensity of his focus. It is “best fitted for” the “expression of light passion” because it “appear[s] to have no substratum; constantly tampering with the morals without offending the decency. As the language for what was called modern genteel comedy all other nations must yield to them.” But “in the English,” there is that which is “possessed by no other modern language, and which appropriate[s] it to the Drama” (LoLi: 290–1).

Coleridge's habit of conducting warfare between England and France on literary terrain is documented in recent scholarship on him. Contradicting prior assurances that “he never could agree that any language was unfit for Poetry,” Coleridge in this lecture implies what he later comes out and says: the French language is “wholly unfit for Poetry.”

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In the Theatre of Romanticism
Coleridge, Nationalism, Women
, pp. 30 - 62
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1994

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