Note
Struttura
Biographia Literaria
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Razza Andrea – 5thC
Biographia Literaria
It is a text of literary criticism. It looks like a biography, because it deals also with Coleridge’s life.
The extract is divided in four points:
What is poetry
What are the contents of Lyrical Ballads
What language should be used
Who is the poet
What is poetry?
Poetry is a literature with two cardinal points:
It has the power of exciting the reader following the “truth of nature”
It has “the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifyng colours of imagination”
The contents of Lyrical Ballads
In Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth and Coleridge had two roles:
 Wordsworth’s poems dealt with ordinary things presented as if they were unusual
Coleridge’s poems dealt with  supernatural things presented as if they were natural
The language
The language in Coleridge’s poems had to give the reader sufficient truth “to procure a willing suspension of disbelief, which constitutes poetic faith”
Wordsworth had to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday to awake the mind’s attention to the letargy of custom, consequence of the “film of familiarity”.
Who is the poet
The ideal poet is he who brings the whole soul of man into actvity.
The poet has a “magical power” which blends faculties of man with the soul, that is the Imagination.
It can reveal a balance of oposite things, like sameness and difference, general and concrete, novelty and familiarity.