Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Coleridge and neurosis in general

Camille Esparza

Described in his introduction in the Norton as "dreamy, enthusiastic, and extraordinarily precocious", anyone’s initial conjured view of Samuel Taylor Coleridge might be relatively pleasant. And then, "prone to loneliness, despairing, a completely inept cavalry man, addicted to drugs, dejected, broken, and remorseful" sort of complicate things a bit.
They hint at complex and extremely unstable character whoes neurosis is directly apparent in his writing. If you look closely enough, Coleridge's anxiety completely fuels his syntactical, grammatical, and compositional choices.
Manily, reading the bios of all the authors, and finding out random facts like they were completely crazy helps so much when explicating their work. Behind every word is a conscious choice and therefore, a look inside into the thought process of the author. :)

No comments: