Coleridge and the Crisis of Interrupted Discourse: The Tower of Babel, the House of Fame, and the Biographia Literaria

Abstract

Explains the fragmentary nature of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria. Sees Coleridge consciously modeling his work on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel and on Chaucer’s House of Fame; the latter is itself a fragment, and the former highlights the inadequacy of language as a medium for achieving fame.