Extract

Coleridge’s active involvement with the sonnet in the 1790s culminates in his contribution to the theory and practice of Romantic sonnets in the Preface of Poems on Various Subjects, as well as in the Introduction to the publication of the pamphlet Sonnets from Various Authors in 1796. Extensive literary scholarship, represented by the studies of M. H. Abrams, Stuart Curran, and Daniel Robinson, confirms the early influence of Bowles on Coleridge’s sonnets. Through his association with Bowles, Donald Reiman argues, Coleridge is able retrospectively to claim his independence from Wordsworthian influence. To contextualise Coleridge’s participation within the broader development of the native river sonnet tradition, my essay refers specifically to Bowles’s ‘To the River Itchin’, Coleridge’s ‘To the River Otter’, and Wordsworth’s The River Duddon: A Series of Sonnets. The revival of sonnets in the late eighteenth century not only restores the sonnet form, but also ushers in a specific kind of sonnet devoted to the poets’ native streams.

In a famous article W. K. Wimsatt re-establishes a symbolic understanding of the natural world and poetic structure in relation to the Romantic theory of imagination. By placing the river – a common literary figure in Romantic lyric poetry signifying progression and continuity – within the framework of a sonnet, the poets reshape an imaginative affinity between the natural topography and poetic form. My essay analyses how the meditative lyric voice and consciousness are communicated through the sonnet form. I will examine the poets’ emphases on modes of thought and their efforts to unite the possibilities of colloquialism and elevation in these native river sonnets. […]