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53-400: It is not entirely clear what form the book would have taken if Coleridge had published it. He died before he could assemble the various manuscripts and other notes into a publishable form, and the published volume contains four 'fragments' along with two appendixes and evidence of missing chapters. It should be read in conjunction with the separately published Logic , since that volume completes

106-666: A Trinitarian God who is the origin of all things. Reid and Perkins argue that in September 1818 Coleridge solved the technical problems he had earlier faced in the Biographia , and that he provides a firmer foundation for the Schelling's two forces in the Opus Maximum , where he offered a critique of the form of logic underlying Schelling's system. In the Opus Maximum the two forces are

159-510: A crisis he solved by inventing a "letter from a friend" advising him to skip the deduction and move straight to the conclusion. It was a brilliant rhetorical solution, but also a decision which laid him open to charges of philosophical dilettantism and plagiarism, subjects of much controversy. The underlying problem is that Schelling's dialectic does not ever supply a final synthesis in which the two forces find equilibrium (a moment of true self-instantiation), which means that they cannot account for

212-502: A ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell , admit to not having read their "autobiographies". Some sensationalist autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed as having embellished or fictionalized significant details of the authors' lives. Autobiography has become an increasingly popular and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey (1979) has become an Australian literary classic. With

265-414: A head with the following claim: DESCARTES , speaking as a naturalist, and in imitation of Archimedes , said, give me matter and motion and I will construct you the universe.... In the same sense the transcendental philosopher says; grant me a nature having two contrary forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely, while the other strives to apprehend or find itself in this infinity, and I will cause

318-524: A literary autobiography , covering his education and studies, and his early literary adventures, an extended criticism of William Wordsworth 's theory of poetry as given in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (a work on which Coleridge collaborated), and a statement of his philosophical views. The first volume is mainly concerned with the evolution of Coleridge's philosophical views. At first an adherent of

371-446: A number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby . French examples from the same period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (1614–1679) and the Duc de Saint-Simon . The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own autobiography, meaning that the character is

424-884: Is William Hazlitt 's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life. With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye should write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope , but also politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams ), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill ), churchmen such as Cardinal Newman , and entertainers such as P. T. Barnum . Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from

477-560: Is a self-written biography of one's own life. The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical The Monthly Review , when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from

530-462: Is both a unity and something characterised by division (into two forces which foreshadow the subject/object distinction). The division supplies the two forces Coleridge mentioned. Coleridge had clearly hoped to modify Schelling's argument (the transcendental deduction) so as to put it in a conservative, Trinitarian context. However, with half of the Biographia already printed, Coleridge realised that his proposed modifications were not going to work,

583-473: Is considered one of the great masterpieces of western literature. Peter Abelard 's 12th-century Historia Calamitatum is in the spirit of Augustine's Confessions , an outstanding autobiographical document of its period. In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba , a Spanish noblewoman, wrote her Memorias , which may be the first autobiography in Castillian . Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur , who founded

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636-429: Is followed by a justification of his actions as a Jewish rebel commander of Galilee. The rhetor Libanius ( c.  314 –394) framed his life memoir Oration I (begun in 374) as one of his orations , not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that would not be read aloud in privacy. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used

689-438: Is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward or linear autobiography. Its subtitle, 'Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions', alludes to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne , suggesting that the formal qualities of the Biographia are intentional. The form is also meditative . As Kathleen Wheeler shows,

742-518: The Biographia ' s philosophical pretensions were illusory, and those who take the philosophy seriously. While contemporary critics recognize the degree to which Coleridge borrowed from his sources (with passages lifted straight from Schelling), they also see in the work far more structure and planning than is apparent on first glance. The work was originally intended as a preface to a collected volume of Coleridge's poems, explaining and justifying his own style and practice in poetry. The work grew to

795-500: The Biographia , with the deduction of the primary imagination appearing in the Logic . Perkins and Reid argue that the Opus Maximum could not have been written until Coleridge made the conceptual breakthrough contained in a note presumably intended for Green in September 1818: It is ever awful to me to reflect on the morning of our first systematic Conversation, when we opened Schelling's Introduction to his Naturphilosophie and looking thro'

848-531: The Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma ( Chagatai / Persian : بابر نامہ ; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur" ) which was written between 1493 and 1529. One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply Vita ( Italian : Life ). He declares at

901-413: The associationist psychology of the philosopher David Hartley, he came to discard this mechanical system for the belief that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality. The author believed in the "self-sufficing power of absolute Genius" and distinguished between genius and talent as between "an egg and an egg-shell". The first volume culminates in his gnomic definition of

954-478: The "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on the author's memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. One early example is that of Julius Caesar 's Commentarii de Bello Gallico , also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars . In the work, Caesar describes

1007-582: The "understanding" has been obliged to fling out'. Coleridge argued that the Kantian strictures on metaphysical argument only applied within the realm of the Understanding and did not restrict neo-platonic argument founded in the Reason. His argument can be rendered schematically: The existing Opus Maximum does not contain the details of Schelling's deduction, with Schelling's three epoch's and Schelling's deduction of

1060-572: The Teaching of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge . Green's work began by claiming that the distinction between the Reason and the Understanding was merely one of degree—a claim which showed that Green had not understood Coleridge's most fundamental distinction. Green's failure to publish the Opus Maximum caused some controversy in the 1850s. Green argued that the manuscripts were incomplete and 'scarcely adapted for scientific readers, ... or

1113-456: The anti-sex and anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts to seek sexual morality; and his subsequent return to Christianity due to his embracement of Skepticism and the New Academy movement (developing the view that sex is good, and that virginity is better, comparing the former to silver and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology ). Confessions

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1166-515: The attention from the mother Toad'. Evans argues that the volume's apparently unsystematic form reflects Coleridge's belief that arguments for God cannot be demonstrated using the resources of the Understanding, but must draw their substance from within their readers through the power of the Reason, and that the work is designed rhetorically to achieve this. The argument is broadly neo-platonic. As Carlyle commented sardonically, Coleridge had discovered 'the sublime secret of believing by "the reason" what

1219-466: The author the ability to recreate history. Spiritual autobiography is an account of an author's struggle or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious conversion, often interrupted by moments of regression. The author re-frames their life as a demonstration of divine intention through encounters with the Divine. The earliest example of a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though

1272-676: The battles that took place during the nine years that he spent fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars . His second memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War ) is an account of the events that took place between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate . Leonor López de Córdoba (1362–1420) wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish. The English Civil War (1642–1651) provoked

1325-496: The book than Coleridge had spent not writing it. The long delay in the publication led to the myth that Coleridge's philosophical system was a will-o-the-wisp, yet another of Coleridge's projects announced but never put to paper. As might be expected of a work by Coleridge, the Opus Maximum contains a miscellany of contents. As he wrote in a letter in 1818, 'my Thought are like Surinam toads—as they crawl on, little Toads vegetate out from back & side, grow quickly, & draw off

1378-526: The categories of the Kantian Understanding. But Schelling's third epoch, in which both finite selves and nature come into existence in an infinite series of moments of perception (this is an idealist argument) does appear in Coleridge's Logic . In that sense, the argument is complete, though some of the details are missing. The argument above supplies the transcendental deduction that was missing from

1431-499: The critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water , more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre. Maggie Nelson 's book The Argonauts is one of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it autotheory —a combination of autobiography and critical theory. A genre where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements though

1484-481: The earlier tradition of a life story told as an act of Christian witness, the book describes Margery Kempe 's pilgrimages to the Holy Land and Rome , her attempts to negotiate a celibate marriage with her husband, and most of all her religious experiences as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were published in the early sixteenth century but the whole text was published for the first time only in 1936. Possibly

1537-493: The eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The famous definition of the imagination emerges from a discussion of Immanuel Kant , Johann Gottlieb Fichte , and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling , amongst others. (Being fluent in German, Coleridge was one of the first major English literary figures to discuss Schelling's ideas, in particular.) The primary imagination is that which we use in our everyday perception of things in

1590-404: The first 20 pages obtained a clear conviction, that he had imprisoned his System within a Circle that could never open .... The argument in the Opus Maximum still formed the basis of Coleridge's thinking until his death in 1834. In April 1830, he said of the distinction between the actual and the potential: This, this Principle must be studied and studied, till it is completely mastered—… before

1643-572: The first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630 which was regarded by many as not much more than a collection of tall tales told by someone of doubtful veracity. This changed with the publication of Philip Barbour's definitive biography in 1964 which, amongst other things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been known by Smith at

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1696-485: The first-person narrator and that the novel addresses both internal and external experiences of the character. Daniel Defoe 's Moll Flanders is an early example. Charles Dickens ' David Copperfield is another such classic, and J.D. Salinger 's The Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre is yet another example of fictional autobiography, as noted on

1749-560: The front page of the original version. The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Robert Nye 's Memoirs of Lord Byron . In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia , purporting to be self-justification rather than self-documentation. The title of John Henry Newman 's 1864 Christian confessional work Apologia Pro Vita Sua refers to this tradition. The historian Flavius Josephus introduces his autobiography Josephi Vita ( c.  99 ) with self-praise, which

1802-464: The ground of the finite or human realm, but the true origin of all things lies in the Trinity. For Coleridge, the Trinity is the form in which the divine will instantiates itself, in a way which avoids the infinite deferral of a final synthesis in Schelling argument, and which does not derive from Schelling's two forces. Autobiography An autobiography , sometimes informally called an autobio ,

1855-401: The imagination or "esemplastic power", the faculty by which the soul perceives the spiritual unity of the universe, as distinguished from the fancy or merely associative function. Coleridge writes: The IMAGINATION ... I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of

1908-443: The language of prose and of metrical composition. A critique on the qualities of Wordsworth's poetry concludes the volume. The book contains Coleridge's celebrated and vexed distinction between "imagination" and "fancy". Chapter XIV is the origin of the famous critical concept of the "willing suspension of disbelief " when reading poetic works. At the beginning of chapter 13, Coleridge attempts to bring his philosophical argument to

1961-480: The next three hundred years conformed to them. Another autobiography of the period is De vita propria , by the Italian mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574). One of the first autobiographies written in an Indian language was Ardhakathānaka , written by Banarasidas , who was a Shrimal Jain businessman and poet of Mughal India . The poetic autobiography Ardhakathānaka (The Half Story),

2014-515: The other parts of the System can be received with a clear light. His failure to publish thus did not arise from a change of mind, though there is evidence that he continued to refine the argument in the late 1820s, so as to account for the survival of the soul after the death of the body. Biographia Literaria The Biographia Literaria is a critical autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge , published in 1817 in two volumes. Its working title

2067-452: The periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on

2120-438: The principles of "Cellinian" autobiography. From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines , serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typically pseudonymous , they were (and are) largely works of fiction written by ghostwriters . So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians—generally written by

2173-495: The requirements of modern science', though Green's decision also prevented Coleridge's followers, immediate and future, from understanding his philosophical system—and the advances Coleridge had made following the failure of the Biographia Literaria to provide a systematic argument. The volume's eventual publication was also protracted, something explained in part by Thomas McFarland's claim to have taken longer not editing

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2226-604: The same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical autobiographies of the Romantic era and beyond. Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography ever written, and became an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages . It tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived for a time within his youth, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving of

2279-400: The start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty." These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of

2332-451: The time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted. Other notable English autobiographies of the 17th century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Bunyan ( Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners , 1666). Jarena Lee (1783–1864) was the first African American woman to have a published biography in the United States. Following

2385-426: The tradition has expanded to include other religious traditions in works such as Mohandas Gandhi 's An Autobiography and Black Elk 's Black Elk Speaks . Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali is another example. The spiritual autobiography often serves as an endorsement of the writer's religion. A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on

2438-492: The transcendental deduction which lies at the heart of the enterprise. It was also intended to form part of a larger Magnum Opus or Logosophia , of which parts exist in various manuscripts. Mary Anne Perkins has set out the dimensions of that larger project in her Coleridge's Philosophy . Coleridge had intended his disciple, Green, to publish the Opus Maximum after Coleridge's death but Green failed to do this, instead publishing his own work, Spiritual Philosophy; Founded on

2491-430: The trend of Romanticism , which greatly emphasized the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's Confessions , a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. Stendhal 's autobiographical writings of the 1830s, The Life of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist , are both avowedly influenced by Rousseau. An English example

2544-676: The work is playful and acutely aware of the active role of the reader in reading. Critics have reacted strongly to the Biographia Literaria . Some early readers thought it demonstrated Coleridge's opiate-driven decline into ill health, and soon after Coleridge's death he was accused of plagiarising Schelling . By the early twentieth century, however, it had emerged as a major if puzzling work in criticism and theory, with George Saintsbury placing Coleridge next to Aristotle and Longinus in his influential History of 1902-04. Recent criticism has been divided between those who think that

2597-568: The world of intelligences with the whole system of their representations to rise up before you. The two forces were derived from Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism of 1800. In that work, Schelling offers the first systematic use of dialectic (thesis, antithesis and synthesis), though it is not a term he uses. Dialectic only works if the original term (the thesis) already contains its opposite within itself. Schelling derived this original duality by arguing that: We thus have an origin for all things known in this world, an origin which

2650-412: The world. The later chapters of the book deal with the nature of poetry and with the question of poetic diction raised by Wordsworth. While maintaining a general agreement with Wordsworth's point of view, Coleridge elaborately refutes his principle that the language of poetry should be one taken with due exceptions from the mouths of men in real life, and that there can be no essential difference between

2703-480: The writer's memory. The memoir form is closely associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others during the autobiographer's review of their own life. Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers

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2756-533: Was 'Autobiographia Literaria'. The formative influences on the work were William Wordsworth 's theory of poetry, the Kantian view of imagination as a shaping power (for which Coleridge later coined the neologism " esemplastic "), various post-Kantian writers including F. W. J. von Schelling , and the earlier influences of the empiricist school, including David Hartley and the Associationist psychology. The work

2809-565: Was composed in Braj Bhasa , an early dialect of Hindi linked with the region around Mathura .In his autobiography, he describes his transition from an unruly youth, to a religious realization by the time the work was composed. The work also is notable for many details of life in Mughal times. The earliest known autobiography written in English is the Book of Margery Kempe , written in 1438. Following in

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