ABSTRACT
Coleridge wrote from a social position that was at once within the threatened old landed order and apart from it, in a nascent intellectual class still groping for a consciousness of its place in the world. Through aesthetic thinking Coleridge imagines a solution to the very real problem of his own conflicted class loyalties. In the end, it is through the idea of aesthetic autonomy—especially as it pertains to the literary symbol—that Coleridge comes to imagine a new class of intellectuals. This will be a class devoted to symbolic production and interpretation, whose skills will underwrite the old landed class, in large part through allowing for the reinterpretation of old, authoritative texts for a new moment.
