Coleridge and Schelling on Mimesis

Abstract

Along with his more celebrated discrimination between fancy and imagination, the distinction between copy and imitation is essential to Coleridge’s critical theory: he repeats it, again and again, whenever he explains the creative process. The earliest formulation occurs in the Notebook entries of October–December 1804. Developing and refining his analysis of imitation in the context of his lectures, essays and Biographia Literaria, Coleridge turned to Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854).¹ Several critics of the eighteenth-century had explained mimesis as an artistic metamorphosis rather than as a reduplication. Schelling gave this metamorphosis a new significance by claiming that the artist accomplished what the philosopher could only deliberate: art reveals the essential coincidence of mind and nature. Coleridge drew from Schelling’s ‘Naturphilosophie’ and ‘Identitätsphilosophie’ altering Schelling to suit the development of his own critical theory. The fullest exposition, and the most extensively indebted to Schelling, is ‘On Poesy and the Arts’ from his 1818 lecture series (LL, ii, 217–25).²