The Symbolic Imagination by Robert J. Barth - 9780823221127

The Symbolic ImaginationColeridge and the Romantic Tradition\nAuthor(s): Robert J. Barth\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Fordham University Press, United States\nImprint: Fordham University Press\nISBN-13: 9780823221127, 978-0823221127\nSynopsis\nThe original edition of this book studied the nature of symbol in Coleridge's work, showing that it is central to Coleridge's intellectual endeavor in poetry and criticism as well as in philosophy and theology. Symbol was for Coleridge essentially a religious reality, that participates in the nature of a sacrament as an encounter between material and spiritual reality. The author shows how Wordsworth and Coleridge developed a poetry, unlike that of the eighteenth century, based on symbolic imagination. He then related this symbolic poetry to the tradition of romanticism itself \n Richard Harter Fogle wrote of the original edition: \""This is a just, graceful, and penetrating book. Considering the complexity of the material, it is lucid and ofte.