Professor Thomas A. McFarland (1926-2011) was a literary critic who specialised in the literature of

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...

. He was Murray Professor of Romantic English Literature at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. McFarland established his reputation with ''Coleridge and Pantheist Tradition'' (1969), where he argued that Coleridge was struggling to reconcile two types of philosophy; the philosophy of the 'it is' and the philosophy of the 'I am'. According to reports in the New York Times, McFarland resigned his professorship in 1989 following an accusation of sexual assault on a male student. Prior to his resignation he had been placed on a one-year suspension, but the reports suggest this led to the resignations of the chairman of the department

Emory Elliott Emory Bernard Elliott (October 30, 1942 – March 31, 2009) was an American professor of American literature at UC Riverside. Elliott was known in particular for advocating the expansion of the literary canon to include a more diverse range ...

, along with

Margaret Doody Margaret Anne Doody (born September 21, 1939) is a Canadian author of historical detective fiction and feminist literary critic. She is professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame, helped found the PhD in Literature Program at Notre Da ...

Sandra Gilbert Sandra M. Gilbert (born December 27, 1936) is an American literary critic and poet who has published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She is best known for her collaborative critical wo ...

and Valerie Smith because they thought McFarland was treated too leniently. A

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

, entitled ''The Coleridge Connection: Essays for Thomas McFarland'' (Palgrave), was released in 1990 in his honour, which "explores what McFarland calls the symbiotic nature of Coleridge’s friendship and collaborations". He died in 2011, aged 84.

Books

*''Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition'' (1969) *''Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin'' (1981) *''Originality and Imagination'' (1984 Johns Hopkins University Press) *''Romantic Cruxes: The English Essayists and the Spirit of the Age'' (1987) *''William Wordsworth, Intensity and Achievement'' (1992) *''Romanticism and the Heritage of Rousseau'' (1995) *''Paradoxes of freedom: The Romantic Mystique of Transcendence'' (1996) *''The Mask of Keats'' (2000) *''Shakespeare's Pastoral Comedy'' (2009, UNCP)

Edited

*Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. ''Opus Maximum'', Vol 16 of the ''Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge'' (Princeton University Press, 2002)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McFarland, Thomas 1926 births 2011 deaths English literary critics Princeton University faculty