An Exploration Of Coleridge's German Transcendental Thoughts In His Poems

Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834)is a famous romantic poet and critic,and one of the "Lake Poets” in Britain as well.His poetry is famous for its magnificent,fantastic and bold imagination.Many scholars pay much attention to his poems both in China and abroad.The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,Christabel and Kubla Khan are three of Coleridge's most notable poems.This paper mainly analyzes the German transcendental tendency in Coleridge's poems with these three poems.This paper bases on the angle of German transcendental philosophy,takes Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism as the theoretical basis,and also refers to the research of Kant and other philosophers on related propositions to analyze those poems.This paper tries to prove that Coleridge's poem has the transcendental tendency,and thus infer Coleridge's thought with a priori.This dissertation has five chapters.The first chapter mainly combs Coleridge's life experience and his ideological transformation.His growing experience laid an important foundation for the subsequent change of his literary thoughts.This chapter focuses on Coleridge's schooling and the impact his friends have had on him.These experiences unconsciously influenced his later writing career.At the same time,this chapter introduces the main research directions of Coleridge's works and thoughts at home and abroad.The second chapter mainly introduces the development of German transcendentalism and its main characteristics.By analyzing the works of Schelling and Kant,this dissertation argues that the transcendentalism has two basic characteristics:the spirit of skepticism and the principle of identity.Because the transcendental philosopher fully affirms their own feelings,they remain skeptical of the outside world.Only in this way can one become closer to the inner feelings.The principle of identity is philosophically the proof that "I exist" and "things exist outside me" are identical.Chapter three introduces the spirit of skepticism embodied in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel.As for the Ancient Mariner,this chapter discusses twomain aspects,namely,the doubt of the "self" and the "non-self".In the part of "self",this paper analyzes the ancient mariner's doubts about himself and the other sailors' doubts about themselves.In the "non-self" part,this paper mainly focuses on the effects of the change of environment.The excellent environment description in this poem plays an important role in the development of the plot.The analysis of Christabel is also divided into two aspects: the doubt of the natural environment and the change of the attitude of the protagonist Christabel to the other key character Geraldine from trust to doubt.Through the analysis,we can tell the positive effect of the right spirit of skepticism on the growth of people.Chapter four introduces the principle of identity embodied in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.In order to prove the identity characteristic of the Ancient Mariner,this chapter is divided into three parts: firstly,the harmony between man and nature,which also corresponds to the identity between subjective and objective mentioned by Schelling.Secondly,it analyzes the unity of reality and belief.Finally,the integration of imagination is analyzed.The analysis of Kubla Khan is divided into two aspects: the identity of reality and dream and the harmonious unity of whole and part in nature.Influenced by German philosophy,Coleridge believed that the world was a preset whole,and through the organic imagination of literature,all the chaos of the real world could be fused together,thus achieving the identity advocated by transcendentalism.Especially in the poem Kubla Khan,the imagination directly connects the reality with his dream.Through the analysis,it can be seen that Coleridge has made perfect use of the organic imagination in literature.Chapter five is about the conclusion.This part summarizes the main contents of the previous chapters and points out the transcendental characteristics in Coleridge's thoughts,which embodied in these three poems.Such ideas can be fully embodied in one whole poem,such as the Rime of the Ancient Mariner,or they can be scattered among different poems.At the same time,this part also points out some suggestions and methods for further study about this paper.