Coleridge and textual instability
Subtitle: the multiple versions of the major poems
By: Jack Stillinger.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
Subjects: Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Criticism, Textual
Description: Textual pluralism holds that there can exist more than one authoritative version of a literary work, and that only by viewing the collective versions can the constitution of a work be seen.

In Coleridge and Textual Instability, Jack Stillinger establishes and documents the existence of numerous different authoritative versions of Coleridge's best-known poems: sixteen or more of The Eolian Harp, for example, eighteen of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and comparable numbers for This Lime-Tree Bower, Frost at Midnight, Kubla Khan, Christabel, and Dejection: An Ode.

Such multiplicity of versions raises interesting theoretical and practical questions about the make-up of the Coleridge canon, the ontological identity of any specific work in the canon, the editorial treatment of Coleridge's works, and the ways in which multiple versions complicate interpretation of the poems as a unified (or, as the case may be, disunified) body of work.

Providing much new information about the texts and production of Coleridge's major poems, Stillinger's study offers intriguing new theories about the nature of authorship and the composition of literary works.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-250) ) and index.