Occasional musings, Geistesblitze, photos, drawings etc. by a "resident alien", who has landed on American soil from a far-away planet called "Germany".

Friday, May 30, 2008

Schlegel vs. Coleridge

We have a topic--scary, actually.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

For a while now, I've been looking for a blog, where I might occasionally check German references. Like did Coleridge really steal a lot of his critical theory from August Wilhelm Schlegel? I just picked up a second hand book that makes that claim and I'm interested in knowing if anyone has heard that before.

Ulrich said...

Wow! The last thing I expected was a response from someone who clearly knows way more than I do about the German and English Romantics. So, let's keep this topic alive for the experts--I'm not one of them!

Anonymous: Do you have a name?

Anonymous said...

Well yes I do have a name but I didn't have a clue how to register with Google so anonymous seemed easier. And I'm not an expert on the Romantics in either language, but the book I found, called something like The Damaged Archangel, quotes both critics and sometimes the passages are word for word (even in translation) with Schlegel coming first in expressing the ideas. Since my background is in American and British literature, I was surprised that I had never heard of this alleged plagiarism and wondered if anyone else did. But if you as a German never did, I'm not hopeful that anyone else has. You can call me Heike and maybe I'll figure out how to get a Google identity.

Anonymous said...

Heike: You do not have to register with google to post under a real name. For instance, I posted this answer not with the Google/Blogger option, but with the Name/URL option (you do not need to give URL!) under "Choose an identity".

Unknown said...

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1769333

offers a paper on the subject. I have heard this claim, but I am no longer in academia (left in 1984) and recall very little of the proof, but I happen to take it as a fact and not a theory that Coleridge built on Schlegel.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, I'll check this out, although I think I have been to this site before and it's not open to the public. In any case, I'll take a look. I wonder if most people take it--that Coleridge stole from Schlegel-- as a given, and I somehow missed the boat. Heika