Final essay proposal (400 words and selected bibliography)

The Heterotopic Space of Identity in Coleridge’s Osorio

Abstract:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Osorio, despite its initial rejection and later rewriting as Remorse, offers through its dramatic structure grounds for exploration of theatrical and psychological devices used to create identities. One of the play’s central mechanisms is the development of the plot through characters who play characters by performing identities and manipulating perceptions. At the same time, the Gothic elements, imaginative spaces, and blending of truth with illusion build a spatial background where real and imagined coexist. Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia offers a framework for understanding the contradictory spaces in Osorio. 

Within this heterotopic and metadramatic structure, the play develops a layered understanding of identity. Rather than presenting identity as fixed, Osorio demonstrates how identities are performed, manipulated, and constructed through narrative and perception. Identity starts to behave according to the heterotopic logic of the imagined events and performances that occur – it becomes relational, layered, and it depends on interactions between performed selves. Characters do not only perform identities for others, but also react and reshape themselves because of the performed identities around them. Identity emerges as a layering of imagined events, performative roles, and deceived perceptions. 

This essay will examine this process by close reading three central “performances” that influence the development of the plot. The first is Osorio’s deception of Maria, more particularly represented by an orchestrated magic ritual, which introduces imaginative and Gothic elements into the dramatic reality, and functions as performative mediation of events that never happened. Second, and most explicit example of performative identity is Albert’s Moorish disguise, through which the play explores not only the performance of identity itself, but also the cultural perception of the identity of the Other. Finally, this essay will analyse Ferdinand’s role in producing an imagined version of reality that affects how identities operate in the play. His false claim that he killed Albert creates the imagined event of Albert’s death, an event that never occurred but nevertheless determines the actions and perceptions of the characters. This layering becomes even more ironically complex with Ferdinand’s murder by Osorio, who suspects him of conspiring with the wizard, himself the disguised Albert. In this way, Coleridge achieves a metadramatic effect that exposes mechanisms through which performances, deceptions, and imagined narratives can reshape reality and reconfigure identity as a heterotopic space of layered perceptions and performed selves. 

Bibliography:

Fogle, Richard Harter. “Coleridge on Dramatic Illusion.” The Tulane Drama Review, vol. 4, no. 4, 1960, pp. 33–44. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1124877. Accessed 24 May 2026.

Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring 1986, pp. 22-27.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Osorio. A Tragedy. The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, vol. 2, Clarendon Press, 1912, pp. 518 – 598. Project Gutenberg.

Parker, Reeve. “‘Osorio’s’ Dark Employments: Tricking out Coleridgean Tragedy.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 33, no. 1, 1994, pp. 119–60. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/25601048. Accessed 23 May 2026.

Procházka, Martin. “Imaginative Geographies Disrupted? Representing the Other in English Romantic Drama.” European Journal of English Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2002, pp. 207-220. DOI: 10.1076/ejes.6.2.207.8831.

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Wanderings of Cain and Lord Byron’s Cain: A Mystery, both poets reimagine the biblical figure of Cain, transforming him from an archetypal sinful and disobedient figure into a complex Romantic character who questions his relationship with God, humanity, sin and guilt. Although the two works draw on the same biblical narrative, they offer significantly different interpretations of Cain’s responsibility and punishment. This essay argues that these differences reflect two distinct tendencies within British Romanticism: Coleridge’s emphasis on psychological, spiritual and existential experience, and Byron’s more radical interest in skepticism, individualism and rebellion against religious authority.

In The Wanderings of Cain, Coleridge focuses on Cain’s story after Abel’s murder. Cain is presented as a solitary wanderer whose separation from humanity and God becomes an expression of psychological and spiritual alienation. His guilt is primarily an internal conflict, as he struggles with the consequences of his actions, his isolation and his inability to reconcile himself with his new existence. The supernatural elements, particularly the appearance of Abel’s ghost, blur the lines between the external reality of the text and Cain’s troubled consciousness. This allows Coleridge to explore the psychological consequences of sin, while presenting Cain as a three-dimensional character rather than simply an evil and irredeemable biblical villain. The essay will therefore consider how wandering, isolation, the barren landscape and the supernatural contribute to Coleridge’s representation of guilt and Cain’s alienation from God, humanity and ultimately his own perception of reality.

By contrast, Byron’s Cain: A Mystery presents Cain as an openly questioning and rebellious character. He does not simply accept his punishment or regard his condition as fundamentally sinful; instead, he challenges the justice of God and the idea of inherited or original sin itself. His conversations with Lucifer transform the traditional biblical narrative into a meditation on free will, mortality, divine authority, and responsibility. Lucifer plays a central role in this process, offering Cain an alternative perspective through which he can question the religious explanations of human suffering, death, sin and guilt. Byron’s central concern is therefore whether Cain can be held responsible for conditions he did not create and for a form of sin inherited from his parents. Cain’s guilt becomes a theological and philosophical problem. The essay will examine how his resistance to God reflects Romantic individualism and rebellion, while considering how Byron uses Cain’s defiance to develop the figure of the isolated and questioning Romantic outsider.

Placed within the broader context of British Romanticism, their contrasting “Cains” reveal different responses to religion, sin, guilt and identity. Coleridge’s inward and spiritually troubled Cain reflects the Romantic interest in psychological experience, imagination, and the complexity of the individual mind, while Byron’s Cain embodies a more skeptical, rebellious, and anti-authoritarian individualism. Byron’s treatment of rebellion can also be connected to contemporary concerns with revolution, political authority, religious skepticism, atheism and anarchy. Through their different reinterpretations of Cain, both poets use a biblical narrative to question established religious and moral authority and to engage with the changing intellectual climate of the early nineteenth century.

Bibliography:

Bauer, N. Stephen. “Byron’s Doubting Cain.” South Atlantic Bulletin 39, no. 2 (1974): 80–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/3198597.

Beyer, Werner W. “Coleridge, Wieland’s Oberon and The Wanderings of Cain.” The Review of English Studies 16, no. 63 (1940): 274–89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/509424.

Kahn, Sholom J. “Psychology in Coleridge’s Poetry.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 9, no. 3 (1951): 208–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/425883.

 Lau, Beth. “Coleridge’s Reflective Moonlight.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 23, no. 4 (1983): 533–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/450261.

Lyon, Judson S. “Romantic Psychology and the Inner Senses: Coleridge.” PMLA 81, no. 3 (1966): 246–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/460810.

  Ryan, Robert. “Byron’s ‘Cain’: The Ironies of Belief.” The Wordsworth Circle 21, no. 1 (1990): 41–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24042883.

Schock, Peter A. “The ‘Satanism’ of Cain in Context: Byron’s Lucifer and the War against Blasphemy.” Keats-Shelley Journal 44 (1995): 182–215. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30212999.