The Major Works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Published 2000 · 752 pages · Poetry, Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Major Works to read?
The Major Works scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 72 out of 100
- A collection of Romantic-era poetry and prose from a writer steeped in philosophy, theology and classical learning suggests elevated, archaic diction. Expect a register nearer The Golden Bowl's formality than to accessible contemporary prose.
- Sentence structure: 72 out of 100
- The prose section of a Romantic philosophical writer implies long, qualified sentences, while the verse adds inverted syntax. This sits below the Jamesian extreme but well above plain declarative prose.
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- The volume pairs poems with prose that supports them, and Coleridge's prose is known for philosophical and critical argument. Abstraction runs high, though the poems ground ideas in images.
- Information density: 68 out of 100
- A 752-page volume covering all the major poems plus background and shorter prose works packs a wide range of material. Editorial apparatus adds further layers to attend to.
How The Major Works is regarded
The Major Works holds a literary regard score of 80 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.