Abstract
This is a comparative essay that tends to combine a theoretical approach and textual criticism in its investigation of the cosmic sensibilities of three “common-wealth” poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a pre-eminent English Romantic poet; Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Nobel Laureate for literature and Renaissance poet; and Ezenwa-Ohaeto, a prominent Nigerian poet of the present generation. Their metaphysical, mythological and philosophical concerns are examined in a manner that reveals how their respective cosmic vision(s) of the poetical art elucidates the different layers of thematic thrusts in their poetry. The essay’s conclusion is that the three poets, in their respective poetical renderings, try to give value to human existence through the art, the poetry, of moral order.
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Notes
- 1.
See J.A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literature Terms and Literary Theory, revised by C.E. Preston (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1998), p. 767.
- 2.
Ezenwa-Ohaeto is the only name of this Nigerian poet.
- 3.
Some publications which dwell interestingly on Coleridge’s poetical, metaphysical, mythological, philosophical ideas and biographical/ historical attitudes include the following: J. Shawcross, “Introduction” and “Supplementary Note,” in S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (Edited by J. Shawcross), (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1907), pp. XI–LXXXIX and pp. XC–XCVII; Harold Bloom, The Best Poems of the English Language from Chaucer Through Frost (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), pp. 353–380 particularly; Antonella Riem Natale, The One Life: Coleridge and Hinduism (Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2005).
- 4.
Natale’s submission in this wise is intriguing. Any scholar who is interested in Coleridge’s Hindu quest needs to digest Natale’s study cited above.
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Afejuku, T.E. (2016). Three Cosmic Poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rabindranath Tagore and Ezenwa-Ohaeto, and Cosmic Nature of Imagination. In: Tymieniecka, AT., Trutty-Coohill, P. (eds) The Cosmos and the Creative Imagination. Analecta Husserliana, vol 119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21792-5_22
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