Abstract

This study treats Coleridge's thinking as an integral whole and follows in detail the chronological development of Coleridge's quest. It begins by placing modern subjectivity within the history of the mirror metaphor, that here represents mysticism in the west, from antiquity to modernity. It then analyzes Coleridge's encounter with the metaphor and traces his lifelong engagement with it that culminates in the formation of the Pentad. It discusses his early poems and poetics, his reading and rewriting of Kant and his own transcendentalism seen in Biographia Literaria and Aids to Reflection. It then compares Coleridge's mirror metaphor with two contemporary mirror metaphors by Lacan and Rorty.