Double Spiritual Dimension Of Coleridge’s Poetic Views

In British literary history, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an important influence poet, critic, and he wasalso a thinker and romantic theologian that had distinct character in modern European history of Christianthought.British literature,critic George Edward Bateman Saintsbur once said that he and Aristotle, Longinuswere all the greatest critics. Philosopher John Henry Hyde Muirhead also claimed that Coleridge was anidealistic philosophy of voluntarism of form theory founder. From Coleridge excellent poetries, we can seehis fantasy imagination and complex and mysterious image everywhere; from his unique literary theory, wecan feel his penetrating analysis and full of philosophical speculation. His talent was full and hisenthusiasm was bold and unrestrained.His full emotion could naturally reveal from his mind; He wasknowledgeable, thoughtful, gushed to talk and thought beyond words; He loved nature,yearned for rurallife and gained the "lake poets" reputation; He was deeply religious and made theology poetic, so each ofhis poems flashed divine beauty. For such a poet, literary critic and philosopher and theologian, people can’trefuse on his research.In the eighteenth Century of Europe, Coleridge’s born age is the period of enlightenment and theintersection of the Romantic Movement. At that time, on behalf of the enlightenment’s rational spirit andthe divine spirit representative of romantic encountered and produced violent collision. Communicationopportunity was offered to many contemporary philosophers and theologians in this situation, and writersand poets got into poetry as theoretical foundation of literature. At the end of eighteenth Century, theEnglish poet Coleridge was one of the typical representatives. Coleridge’s poetry was full of imagination,rich of religious sentiment and flashed divine beauty; these characteristics of poems were formed forsticking to two spiritual dimensions of his poetic views.This article is just on his poetics’ study about the two dimensions of spirit. In the introduction, thearticle discusses the theories simply of Christian theology and the west rational spirit firstly, and finds thatColeridge has theoretical thinking deeply on both of them. Then in the first chapter, the spirit backgroundof Coleridge’s poetic views was investigated separately from the period of enlightenment, after the periodof enlightenment and religious; the result is that the rational spirit and the divine spirit was developed to ahigh peak and produced collision in the eighteenth Century of Coleridge’s born age. In this process, Coleridge had a deep experience and formed the two spiritual dimensions that were rational dimension anddivine dimension on his poetic view. In the second chapter and the third chapter, the article analyzes twodimensions mainly from two aspects that are Coleridge’s rational knowledge and divine investigation. Theconclusion part summarizes the two spiritual dimensions of Coleridge’s poetics, and points out the twospiritual dimensions of Coleridge’s Poetics in his poetries to expect whose Poetics can be fully understood.