Presented as part of the SLLL 2016 Literary Studies Seminar Series

In my thesis I investigate the Coleridgean concept of friendship as ‘multeity’. The first chapter opens with a treatment of two of Coleridge’s finest ‘Friendly’ poems, ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ and ‘Frost at Midnight’. Identifying the mechanism of transition in the conversation poems opens the way for a treatment of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ that is continuous with Coleridge’s principles of method in the 1818 edition of The Friend. I have drawn on the ‘Essays on the Principles of Method’ to distill a working methodology of Romantic poetics from this neglected treatise. The Friend is cast as an illuminating guide to Coleridge’s distinctive poetic method. My objective is to recover a more enduring Coleridge for the literary and educative networks now growing in fulfillment of the aspirations of The Friend.

Alison Cardinale is a doctoral candidate in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at the Australian National University. She is expecting to submit her thesis on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s concept of friendship in March, 2016.

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