Self-Examinings

Abstract

Coleridge was a notable heir to that element in the Protestant tradition which called on its followers to subject themselves to minute scrutiny of their own conduct and motives. As the effects of such searchings could be to produce acute insights into the workings of one’s own mind, one result was to encourage the development of psychological enquiry, including psychological novels. Coleridge himself sometimes produced memorable fictions, as in his great poems of the supernatural, but though he once or twice projected a longer work of the kind he never extended his activities so far as to embark on a full-blown novel. Instead, he concentrated on what was to be discovered through direct mental exploration.