ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes the thesis that the plagiarism of A Short Residence can be read as an attempt by the male Romantic subject, Coleridge, to fill in the lack which Lacan argues is the condition of subjectivity, and which other critics have suggested is what causes the Romantic desire for absolute selfhood. It adds that desire always operates at the level of specific interests, including those of gender. A letter to John Thelwall on the subject of sublimity, which was written at the same time as 'Kubla Khan', demonstrates something of the characteristic movement of jubilation and loss in Romanticism. Nevertheless, despite the anxieties and hesitations surrounding it, the desire to experience the sublime oneness of a magisterial subjectivity remains within Coleridge's writing. One of the questions raised by this plethora of intertextual allusions and possible plagiarisms is how to read them. Lowes the significance of the re-inscription of Wollstonecraft's text in Coleridge's poem lies with the poet himself.
