Approaches to Teaching Coleridge's Poetry and Prose

Richard Matlak, the editor of this Approaches volume, depicts Coleridge as both a model student and an accomplished teacher. “Stimulate the heart to love, and the mind to be early accurate,” Coleridge advised during a lecture on education, “and all other virtues will rise of their own accord.” The essays in this collection will help teachers apply Coleridge’s precept to the teaching of his poetry and prose.One of seven books on Romantic poetry in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this volume is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” evaluates texts, the teacher’s library, student reading, and audiovisual materials. In the second part, “Approaches,” seventeen established scholars describe the methods they have found most effective in presenting Coleridge in the classroom. The first two essays examine the many different sides of the poet’s personality and explore his relation to British society. In the essays that follow, contributors discuss Coleridge’s prose, the Conversation poems, and the Mystery poems—individually and in combination—from linguistic, psychological, sociological, historical, New Critical, feminist, intertextual, and other perspectives.