Angel in the Sun: Turner's Vision of History by Gerald Finley (review)

252 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 thoughtful commentary on Southey=s Life of Wesley (1820), which he describes as >the book more often in my hands than any other in my ragged book-regiment.= These remarkable marginalia on Southey=s Life of Wesley express (by turns) enthusiasm, bewilderment, stern critique, and amiable rejoinder; they exemplify the rich complexity and emotional depth of Coleridge=s response to his former friend and collaborator. Theological controversy is the single most prevalent topic in Coleridge=s Marginalia. Volume 5 contains over two hundred pages of marginalia on the works of Jeremy Taylor, a seventeenth-century English divine with whom Coleridge felt an especially close affinity. Coleridge=s running commentary on Taylor=s Polemicall Discourses (1674) offers sharp rebuttal on various points of disagreement; yet the predominant tone of these marginalia is one of affectionate colloquy with a kindred spirit. Coleridge particularly admires Taylor=s penchant for digressions, reflections, and interjections: >these are the costly gems which glitter, loosely set, on the Chain Armour of his polemic Pegasus.= Coleridge is considerably less sympathetic in his response to the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Although he admires Swedenborg=s >profound insight into the nature of Spirit,= he is nevertheless quite critical of Swedenborg=s intolerance towards other religious creeds. In Coleridge=s view, >mutual intolerance is the pledge of mutual ignorance.= This volume offers substantial additions to our existing knowledge of Coleridge=s development as a philosopher. It contains extensive marginalia (never before published) on Benedict Spinoza, Heinrich Steffens, Karl Solger, and Johann Nicholas Tetens. It also contains marginalia on two histories of philosophy: Thomas Stanley=s History of Philosophy (1701), a plodding, pedantic folio that Coleridge embroidered with characteristic vigour and wit, and Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann=s Geschichte der Philosophie (1798B1817), a massive ten-volume compendium that served as Coleridge=s main source of information for his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1818B19). Coleridge=s marginalia on Tennemann reveal that he did not make uncritical use of this source material; he is extremely critical of Tennemann=s Kantian bias, and his marginalia provide a prolific trove of retorts, rejoinders, rebuttals, and free-associative digressions in classic Coleridgean style. Coleridge is especially eloquent in his defence of philosophical underdogs, such as Duns Scotus and Jakob Böhme, against Tennemann=s more conventional assessment of their work. (JAMES C. MC KUSICK) Gerald Finley. Angel in the Sun: Turner=s Vision of History McGill-Queen=s University Press. 248; 16 colour plates, 119 black and white illustrations. $65.00 In Angel in the Sun: Turner=s Vision of History, Gerald Finley offers a portrait of Turner at once unexpected and, to some perhaps, unwelcome. Tradi- HUMANITIES 253 tionally, we hold Turner to have been one of the liberators of landscape painting. His penchant for stunning atmospherics, for climatic disturbances, and for natural wonders all attest to his determination to establish landscape as a subject truly worthy of the ambitious painter. What is more, the very smallness of the figures Turner actually included in his pictures (not to mention his technical weakness in this domain) further signals the gradual withdrawal of historical content from his painting. These and other attributes, it is further held, combine to make Turner not only a pioneer of landscape but an originator of subjectless painting B of painting liberated from contingencies of local context and literary reference. Indeed to speak of historical landscape for nineteenth-century art is to speak of an oxymoron , a hold-over of academic theory. And yet for all its seductiveness, such an account of Turner is prejudicial to his conception of art. Reuniting in a single text a lifetime=s research and publications on Britain=s most famous artist, Finley brings to the surface the complex and layered meanings essential to an understanding of Turner=s most important pictures. Inevitably perhaps, a text of such scope and ambitiousness can appear confusing or digressive. Divided by topic but organized roughly chronologically , Finlay=s book evinces an additive quality that may run against the reader=s desire to read it from beginning to end. The depth of Finlay=s erudition and the richness of Turner=s allusions may also slow the reader...