Thomas McFarland

Professor Thomas McFarland (1927-2011) was a literary critic who specialised in the literature of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was Murray Professor of Romantic English Literature at Princeton University.

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 allegations of sexual misconduct. 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, along with Margaret Doody, Sandra Gilbert and Valerie Smith because they thought McFarland was treated too leniently.

A Festschrift, 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. A eulogy on the website of the Wordsworth Conference Foundation describes him as "one of the greatest Coleridgeans".

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