BOOK REVIEWS 599

Coleridge's Writings: Volume 5: On the Sublime. Edited by David Vallins.

Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-97250-3. Pp.
xvi + 197. $89.95.

'I he fifth volume in the Coleridge's Writings series, On the Sublime, capably
edited by David Vallins, is an intriguing anthology for many wrong reasons. The
series itself, begun in 199 [ by Princeton and continued through the last fifteen years
by a bewildering set of Macmillan and St. Martin's imprints and subsidiaries, could
serve as an interesting case study in the vagaries of academic publishing, and of the
publishing business in general. My own questions in reading Volume 5 ran less to
the book's quality or fidelity to Coleridge's thought-under the general editorship
of John Beer, whose On Religion and Psychology (2002) is the strongest of the four
previous volumes, its credibility is unimpeachable-than to its very existence: what
purpose does yet another anthology of Coleridge's writings, particularly one with
such a narrow focus, serve? On the Sublime, while effective in its limited goals,
suffers both from comparison to the other volumes in the series, and from the
general superfluity of the series itself
Considering the book on its own merits, one cannot necessarily apply the
previous criticisms directly to the work done by editor Vallins; in his introductions
to the work as a whole and to each individual chapter, Vallins demonstrates a
learned and sensitive comprehension of Coleridge's thought and of the ways in
which his conception of the "sublime;' and of transcendence in general, permeates
his writing on virtually every subject. "No other British Romantic;' Vallins asserts
in his introduction, "focuses so consistently as Coleridge on the importance of
transcending the material, the everyday, or the mundanely comprehensible in
favour of a confrontation with the infinite forces which [... ] he sees as underlying
both human consciousness and the natural world" (l ).
Vallins's perception of this consistency acts as a through-line connecting
the chapters of the anthology; despite changes in political identification,
denominational adherence, and philosophical methods, Coleridge maintained
a concern with transcendence that drove all of his intellectual pursuits. The
introduction succinctly places Coleridge in his rightful place as the primary author
of British Romanticism and explains why his theories on the sublime have been less
widely understood than those of Wordsworth, influenced by Coleridge: Coleridge's
sublime, "associated not only with philosophy and religion, but also with political
concerns;' and touching "science, psychology, morality, metaphysics, and politics"
aside from aesthetics, is simply too broad and complex for general recognition.
As it gives an overview to his selection, Vallins's introduction takes welcome
potshots at Jerome McGann's reductive historicist readings of Coleridge's idealism
and demonstrates that Coleridge's early radicalism and mature conservatism were,
in fact, of a piece with his desire lor "the liberation of human beings in general

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from practical tyranny, as well as from the limitations of conventional opinion"

(3). In the same way, the writings on landscape that Yallins gathers demonstrate
that contemporary "emphasis on [Coleridge's] suppression or exclusion of material
reality" is largely misdirected (6). Overall, Vallinss selections are designed to argue
that Coleridge's writings "are shaped by a vision of progress towards a confrontation
with the incomprehensible essence of being" (12), an argument admirably made.
Vallinss volume, therefore, seeks to place illustrative nuggets of Coleridge's
writing into categories both chronological and subjective, demonstrating both the
progress of his interests and the underlying unity of his concept of the sublime.
Chapter I focuses on Coleridge's early political writings, showing that his "youthful
enthusiasm for political and social change" is motivated by his "vision of humanity's
sublime ascent to ever-greater degrees of freedom, knowledge, and happiness"
rather than by any political chauvinism; seen in this light, his later conservatism
can be understood rather as a change in method than in motivation. As his early
sonnets on France and revolutionary heroes demonstrate, Coleridge's fundamental
concern was with transcendence, whether through political revolution, learning
and knowledge, or religious faith. Chapter 2 focuses on Coleridge's short -Iived
fascination with landscape, a period Yallins argues was largely a function of
youth and novelty, eventually coming to an abrupt and absolute end because of
the limitations involved. Landscape's power to evoke the sublime depends largely
on unfamiliarity; "ultimately [landscape had to] be replaced by an exploration of
the psychological and metaphysical truths underlying these experiences" (37).
Probably because he believes this period has been inadequately considered as a
stage in Coleridge's development, Yallins gives the chapter on landscape a length out
of proportion to its prominence in Coleridge's career; as a topic of study, Coleridge's
writings on landscape certainly deserve further study, but they are likely to be of
limited interest to the readers of Christianity and Literature.
'I he following chapter, on literature and the visual arts, is well-selected but
gives little new insight into Coleridge's aesthetics; presumably a later volume will
consider Coleridge's theories of art in the same way Volume 3 (1998) considered
his theories oflanguage. The main virtue of this chapter is its selection of passages
that demonstrate Coleridge's habit of using the same language across years and
subjects, pointing out the textual unity that represents the underlying conceptual
unity-Coleridge's writings on Shakespeare and Milton, on the Bible, and on his
contemporaries, in lectures, essays, and letters, seem to be chapters of the same
work separated by mere accidents of time and genre. Chapter 4, on Romantic
psychology, gives a well-constructed view of Coleridge's "preoccupation with a
process of 'ascent" (i II), showing patterns of thought from his earliest to his latest
writings that combine an "evolutionary" worldview with "a Christian and even
puritanical emphasis on the importance of transcending the physical or material
realm" (112). Again, Yallins demonstrates how Coleridge's early democratic vision
progresses to his later elitism not through a fundamental change hut by a gradual
working out of the same fundamental ideal through changing times.

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The final chapter, on "Aspects of the Sublime in Coleridge's Religious Thought;'

is of the most obvious interest to Christianity and Literature's readers. Recognizing
(as thankfully all of the editors of this series have) that "Coleridge was always a
religious writer of one kind or another" (155), Vallins relates Coleridge's lifelong
concern with understanding and divine Reason to the equally lifelong concern with
the sublime, specifically in his "fascination with paradoxes or antinomies which he
uses to evoke the inability of the understanding to form any conception of the ideas
of Reason" (156). '1110ugh his selection is, understandably, far too small to fully
represent Coleridge's writings on this subject (even with the narrow transcendence
theme), they are, like all of the chapters, well-chosen from the whole scope of
Coleridge's career to adequately demonstrate the centrality of the sublime to all of
Coleridge's thought.
Well-constructed on its own, Vallins's volume still falls short in comparison to
the other volumes. One such area is the degree of context provided; each earlier
volume threads its selections together with brief commentaries that provide a
sense of continuity between time periods and works, but aside from his chapter
introductions Vallins Simply presents passages chronologically, giving their sources
but no commentary on that source or where the passage fits in its original context.
111is lack of continuity adversely affects Vallins's central claim to unity. In the same
way, the narrow focus of Vallins's volume means that most of his selections (if not
the precise text, at least texts having the same essential significance) have already
appeared in earlier volumes, and most of the ideas in them already covered, albeit
with a slightly different perspective. Chapter 4, on Romantic psychology, says
little not already covered in Anya Taylor's volume On Humanity (1994), and the
last chapter on the sublime in Coleridge's religious writing seems understandably
slight next to Beer's volume On Religion and Psychology. But such objections seem
cantankerous. When considered as one part ofa larger series, On the Sublime seems
like a thoughtful appendix to the previous volumes, filtering their larger concerns
through the intensifying lens of the sublime.
Despite my praise (however qualified) for Vallins's anthology, I can muster
little enthusiasm for the series as a whole. 'The trouble with a survey of Coleridge's
thought divided by subject is Coleridge's own circular fixation on unity. Coleridge's
writings on politics are impossible to consider without understanding his religious
assertions, or indeed the concept of the sublime treated in this volume; his writings
on the sublime are impossible to separate from his theories on language, or on
religion. The editors themselves recognize and discuss these problems at length;
each volume in the series includes chapters on politics, psychology, and religion,
all of which have their own separate volumes as well. Beer's foreword to Volume
5 explains that, because the volume focuses "so firmly on the Sublime itself:' it
"will thus act as a firm and central guide to ideas that permeate much of the rest
of his work" (x). Why then, not begin the series with a volume on the sublime?
Recognizing the editors' awareness of the limitations of their endeavor further

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602 BOOK REVIEWS

begs the question of "Why?"~for what purpose and audience are these volumes
designed? Beer's foreword identifies the reader as a "specialist or more general
student who wishes to know what Coleridge had to say on a particular subject" and
who may find the "sheer mass of materials bewildering" (ix), but this explanation
seems inadequate. With too much depth and an intimidating list price, it is not a
general- reader anthology of the Norton variety; nor is it of use to serious scholars,
who are directed by the foreword to Princeton's definitive Collected Works (x). The
most logical audience, then, would seem to be the graduate student, who may use
it as a reference book, pointing the way to relevant passages in the Collected Works.
'The graduate student may appreciate such a reference, but surely there is a more
systematic way of doing it than a never-ending series of overlapping volumes.
Though it may sound cynical, the only purpose for Coleridge's Writings seems to be
the economic and professional imperative: publishers must publish, editors must
edit-s-and of course, reviewers must review.

G. S. Morris
North Carolina State University

Wisdom in Love, Kierkegaard and the Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity. By
Rick Anthony Furtak. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. ISBN
0-268-02874-5. Pp. xii +236.

Seren Kierkegaard, A Biography. By Ioakim Carll'. Translated by Bruce H.

Kirmmse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-69 I -09165-X. Pp.
xxv + 867.

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard is frequently thought a prolific, unmarried writer bent

on riddling his audience with a strenuous and frightening view of human existence.
From those with a passing familiarity, you might hear: Isn't he the one who cut
himself off, from his father, his fiance, the Danish church, and finally his entire
readership, only to die prematurely, melancholy and aloof? Indeed, his standards
for spiritual health appear so high and paradoxical, one wonders whether the final
heavenly banquet will have any guests at all, or if any, whether they will have lost
their appetite along the way. It might come as a bit ofa surprise, then, to pick up Rick
Anthony Furtak's Wisdom in Love, Kierkegaardand the Ancient Quest[or Emotional
Integrity and find that the Dane's authorship actually advocates vulnerably engaged
emotional attachments over against Stoic other-worldly flights.
Furtak locates his analysis within the contemporary return to ancient Greek
ways of addressing the role ofemotions in the moral life. For some time philosophers

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