47 pages • 1 hour read
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeBiographia Literaria
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1817A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Satyrane’s LettersChapter Summaries & Analyses
Satyrane’s Letters Summary
Letter 1
Coleridge recounts his journey from Yarmouth to Hamburg on September 16, 1798. Onboard, two Danish brothers invite Coleridge to drink with them. Coleridge reproduces their conversation about language phonetically. They are joined by a Swede, a “Prussian,” and another Englishman (182). The Dane is attended by a slave boy. Coleridge falls asleep on deck and is awoken by a rain shower on Monday morning. The Swede tells Coleridge he is financially dependent on the Dane, who is of questionable character. Coleridge spots a lone duck, and on Tuesday morning they sight land. Entering the mouth of the Elbe, they pass English traders. Coleridge describes the sights along its banks. On Wednesday they arrive in Hamburg.
Letter 2
Coleridge writes to a lady from Ratzeburg about the German language. In Hamburg, Coleridge is amused by the diversity of travelers from various nations. He discusses the differences between the genders and admires the nobility of a Frenchman. Coleridge also appreciates the letters of Pliny and Cicero. Coleridge describes his sense of elation at the foreignness around him, and at women’s fashions in Holland and Hamburg, contrasting them with English ones. Coleridge considers Hamburg a “degraded” Venice (189), amusing himself by looking through the windows at scenes comparable with the works of William Hogarth. Coleridge is awakened at two in the morning by the bells of the church of Saint Nicolas. French revolutionary migrants, Coleridge says, are not well regarded among Germans. Coleridge is introduced to the German literati and told an anecdote about witty wordplay during Bonaparte’s time in Italy. Mr. Klopstock, the brother of a well-known poet, invites Coleridge to his house, where Coleridge sees a “fine” portrait of Lessing (191). Coleridge dislikes German cuisine and is ambivalent about French tragedy, which is “consistent” yet employs “false” language (192). Coleridge dramatizes a comedic conversation about literary masters and concludes that his travels “consist of excursions in my own mind” (196).
Letter 3
Coleridge’s new acquaintance Klopstock introduces him to the Amtmann of Ratzeburg. Before taking a stagecoach there, Coleridge remarks on the scale of the inns and farmhouses. Ratzeburg is built on a lake, and the surrounding landscape possesses “majestic beauty, a feminine grandeur” (197). Coleridge returns to describing the German literati, beginning with Klopstock, who tells Coleridge that Glover is superior to Milton, about whom Klopstock knows little. Coleridge criticizes Klopstock’s toupee and face powder. Leaving Klopstock’s house, Coleridge is impressed by the scenery—“it was a fairy scene!” (200)—but is disappointed by the churches. Coleridge ends his letter with a transcription of the conversations with Klopstock. He and Klopstock discuss Cumberland’s “The Messiah,” as well as Rousseau, Goethe, and Schiller. Klopstock is particularly enamored with Goethe’s poem “Oberon” but criticizes the Fool in Lear. Coleridge recommends Dryden as exemplary of native English, since he considers Klopstock unread in English. Klopstock has also read little Kant. Coleridge concludes that it would be unfair to judge Klopstock on the basis of this informal conversation, but he is amused by his reputation as the “German Milton” (203).
Satyrane’s Letters Analysis
In Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Satyrane is a half Knight, half satyr, who lives between the wildness of nature and civilization. Coleridge playfully goes by this title in his letters from Germany, which he associates with the famous letterists Cicero and Pliny. Just as Satyrane lives partly in the civilized world and partly the wild one, so are Coleridge’s letters part document and part literature. The word “satire” is discernible in “Satyrane,” and Coleridge is clearly attempting a literary pun in the vein of Thomas More. Klopstock is sufficiently obscure to serve as the butt of Coleridge’s satirical sketches of Germany. A little like Horace’s famous Satire 1.9, “The Pest,” the effusions of both Klopstock and the Danes are phonetically recorded, with Coleridge entertaining his readers through his satirical impersonations of them. While Horace wrote for his sponsor Maecenas, Coleridge’s adoption of the satirical mode suggests that he intends to carve a reputation in the literary world as an astute commentator.
Coleridge is also clearly engaging with one the era’s most popular genres, the picturesque. Crucially, Coleridge differentiates himself from this trend by asserting that his travels “consist of excursions in my own mind” (196).
Letter writing and traveling are parallel processes in Wordsworth’s poetry, in which the poet’s ambling down ancient pathways is equated with his use of language and lines of poetry. In “To Johanna,” for instance, the poet comes upon his own inscription:
I, like a Runic Priest, in characters
Of formidable size had chiselled out
Some uncouth name upon the native rock,
Above the Rotha, by the forest-side.
By recording his grand tour in literary form, Coleridge locates himself in the literary world, justifying the title of Biographia Literaria given to a work that is dominated by ideas about transcendental philosophy and literary criticism. Coleridge continues this Swiftian approach to the travel literature genre by engaging with it in satirical mode. This also excuses Coleridge’s avoidance in his literary explorations of serious subjects such as politics or the ethics of slavery. His whistle-stop tour provides light relief after the serious reflections of the previous chapters, before Coleridge concludes the text.
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