SOURCE: Corrigan, Timothy. “Accommodating Aeschylus: Coleridge, Theology, and Literary Criticism.” In Coleridge, Language, and Criticism, pp. 157-91. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1982.

In the following excerpt, Corrigan discusses Coleridge's use of theological discourse in the interpretation of literature.

This I believe by my own dear experience,—that the more tranquilly an inquirer takes up the Bible as he would any other body of writings, the livelier and steadier will be his impressions of its superiority to all other books, till at length all other books and all other knowledge will be valuable in his eyes in proportion as they help him to better understand his Bible.

coleridge, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit

Delivered in May 1825 to the Royal Society of Literature, Coleridge's lecture “On the Prometheus of Aeschylus” must certainly have puzzled its first audience as much as it has confused its few readers since then.¹ Indeed Coleridge...