IntroductionThe aim of this article is to discuss the issue of the transforming creative self as demonstrating a poetics of becoming in Coleridge 's 'Kubla Khan ' and 'Dejection: An Ode, ' [1] against the background of his aesthetic and spiritual idealism and postmodern criticism, especially Deconstruction. This presupposes an innovative intertextual treatment of the poems, intertextuality here not conceived as involving the relation between an author and a precursor expounded by Harold Bloom, but as a subtle elliptical psycho-aesthetic and spiritual mixture between the poems.It will be important, first of all, to define certain key terms like the poetics of becoming and Deconstruction to situate the context in which the concept of the transforming creative self is discussed and analysed. Becoming is defined here as the self-conscious striving towards an aesthetic or transcendental ideal. Taking
Bibliography: Abrams, M. H. "Construing and Deconstructing," Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism. Eds. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. 127 - 182. "The Deconstructive Angel," Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman, 1988.264 - 276. Barthes, Roland, "The Death of the Author," Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman, 1988. 166 - 195 Belsey, Catherine Breuer, Rolf, "Coleridge 's Concept of Imagination with a Interpretation of "Kubla Khan," Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism. Ed. Harry R. Garvin. Lewisburg. Bucknell University Press, 1980. 52 - 66. Burtler, Christopher. Postmodernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. de Man, Paul. The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Colombia University Press, 1984. The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. G. C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Writing and Difference. Trans. A. Bass. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. Dissemination. Trans. B. Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Hewitt, Regina, "False Poets in 'Kubla Khan, '" English Language Notes, 26. 2. 1988. 48 - 55. Huhn, Peter, "Outwitting Self-Consciousness: Self-Reference and Paradox in Three Romantic Poems," English Studies, 72. 3. 1991. 230 - 245. McFarland, Thomas. Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Modalities of Fragmentation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. "Imagination and Its Cognates: Supplementary Considerations," Coleridge 's Theory of the Imagination Today. Ed. Christine Gallanet. New York: AMS Press, 1989. 15 - 30. "Aspects of Coleridge 's Distinction Between Reason and Understanding," Coleridge 's Visionary Languages: Essays in Honour of J: B: Beer. Eds. Tim Fulford and Morton D. Paley. Cambridge: D: S: Bremer. 1993. 165 - 180. Mellor, Anne K. English Romantic Irony. London: Methuen, 1980. Mileur, Jean-Pierre. Vision and Revisions: Coleridge 's Art of Immanence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. "Deconstruction as Imagination and Method," Coleridge 's Theory of Imagination Today. Ed. Gallant Christine. New York: AMS Press, 1989. 65 - 82. Milne, Fred, " 'Kubla Khan: ' A Metaphor for the Creative Process," South Atlantic Review, 54. 4. 1986. 17 - 29. Miller, Christopher R., "Coleridge and the Scene of Lyric Description," Journal of English and Germanic Philology. Vol. 101, No 1. 2002. 520 - 539. Miller, J. Hillis, "On Edge: The Crossways of Contemporary Criticism," Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism. Eds. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. 96 - 126. Rzepka, J. Charles. The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. "Recollecting Spontaneous Overflows: Romantic Passions, the Sublime, and Mesmerism," Romantic Circles Praxis Series, 2001. http://www.rc.umd.educ/praxis/passions/rzepka/rzp.html 2001. Accessed on February 26 2003. Searle, John. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992. Swann, Joseph, 'Shelley, Keats and Coleridge: The Romantics as Deconstructionists ', Romantic Visions and Revisions of a New World. Ed. Michael Gessemeier et al. Essen: Blaue Eule, 1995. 81 - 99. Teke, Charles Ngiewih. Towards a Poetics of Becoming: Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's and John Keats 's Aesthetics Between Idealism and Deconstruction. PhD thesis University of Regensburg, Bavaria Germany, 2004. Tsur, Reuven. The Road to 'Kubla Khan ': A Cognitive Approach. Jerusalem: Israel Science Publishers, 1987. Wheller, Kathleen. Sources, Processes and Methods in Coleridge 's Biographia Literaria. London: Heinemann, 1980. The Creative Mind in Coleridge 's Poetry. London: Heinemann, 1981. "Coleridge and Modern Critical Theory," Coleridge 's Theory of Imagination Today. Ed. Christine Gallant. New York: AMS Press, 1989. 83 - 102. Romanticism, Pragmatism and Deconstruction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Wilkie, Brian, "The Romantic Ideal of Unity," Coleridge 's Theory of the Imagination Today. Ed. Christine Gallant. New York: AMS Press, 1989. 30 - 47. Zima, Peter V. Deconstruction and Critical Theory. Trans. Rainer Emig. London: Continuum, 2002.© Charles Ngiewih TEKE, PhD Senior Lecturer