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“Turning and Turning”: Coleridge on Our Knowledge of the External World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

H. J. Jackson*
Affiliation:
Scarborough College, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Ontario

Abstract

As a conceptual framework, the ascending spiral does not originate with Coleridge, but it appears in his work in a prominent and distinctive form. Although he used the figure at first to describe the external world—and modified it for that purpose during the 1820s—Coleridge soon connected it with the human world of the mind as well. Attempts to put it to work as a principle of development in his writings include the revised Friend of 1818 and the Aids to Reflection of 1825.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 101 , Issue 5 , October 1986 , pp. 848 - 856
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1986

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