imagination: a legacy of romantic literature

8/9/2019 Imagination: a Legacy of Romantic Literature

1/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Defining and Using Imagination:

A Legacy of Romanticism to the Modern World

Judyth A. Vary Baker

imagination- Traditionally, the mental capacity for experiencing, constructing

or manipulating mental imagery (quasi-perceptual experience). Imagination

is also regarded as responsible for fantasy, inventiveness, idiosyncrasy, and

creative, original and insightful thought in general, and, sometimes, for a

much wider range of mental activities dealing with the non-actual, such as

supposing, pretending, seeing as, thinking of possibilities, and even being

mistaken. See representation.

Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

The definition of Imagination, as seen above, seems to represent elements of concept, as

well as existing as a term. The word is commonly encountered in the literature, descriptions or

studies of Romanticism, or the Romantic Literary Movements, that developed and bloomed in

the early-to-mid nineteenth century. The student who is the product of the newer millennia,

however, may have a different understanding of imagination than that envisioned by the

Romantics, just as the word Romantic itself may not adequately prepare todays naive student

for the nature of the content of the poetry and literature of the nineteenth century that they might

explore, hoping to appropriate Shakespearean or Drydenesque expressions with which to

entrance their lovers. It is important that imagination and Romanticism be understood as it

was by the Romantics. For that reason, I have added the term satire, (which I havent seen used

a great deal in the literature in connection with imagination and Romanticism).in order to


2/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

better orient and connect the modern students thoughts to what was a driving force behind the

literary productions of the Romantics.

Although it is seems reasonable to assume that the Romantic definition of imagination

seems to have evolved as a result of long thought based on then-modern ideas and ideals of the

nineteenth century, and the influence of prior great lights who had pondered and labored to

formulate their own definition, it seems that the great eighteenth century ideals that were

expressed at that time were based upon the same philosophical definitions for imagination that

--later were looked upon by our young Romantics as fodder to foment literary rebellion, even

though:

(While) The common thesis of eighteenth-century optimists was...

The proposition that this is the best of possible worlds;....(which) gave rise

to the belief that the adherents of this doctrine....(were) insensible to all the

pain and frustration and conflict which are manifest through the entire range

of sentient life... far from asserting the unreality of evils, the philosophical

optimist in the eighteenth century was chiefly occupied in demonstrating their

necessity (Lovejoy 319).

Lovejoy adds that the logical exigencies of the optimistic argument involved...ideas pregnant

with important consequences for both ethics and aesthetics, since they were to be among the

most distinctive elements in what perhaps best deserves to be named Romanticism (319).

The definition of Imagination, in fact, as it was slowly formulated, explored, and finally used

by many Romantics, probably needs to be studied along with the contextual consideration of

satire, and of the ideals behind the rebellious writings of the Romantics, in order to see how the

ideas of the eighteenth century concerning Imagination were refined, and then redefined, perhaps

to help buttress those philosophical arguments which they created to substantiate and legitimize

their rebellion, which was, broadly speaking, arrayed against eighteenth century sentimentalism

and superficiality. The general result of this rebellion was a Romantic idealism which


3/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

fascinated not only their generation, but those to come. I think we have inherited from the

Romantics our present notions of Imagination, which continue to have an impact upon the

definition of imagination with which the layman and the psychologist must deal today.

I have been reading a little of Coleridge and Hazlitt, and was struck by some of Hazlitts

love letters, which for me epitomize the romantic in Romanticism while alerting me to the

elements of both imagination and satire which he employed so well inLiber Amoris. Marilyn

Butler, who analyzes the way the Romantics often presented thinly-masked, biting and satiric

autobiographic self-images in her essay Satire and the Images of Self in the Romantic Period:

the Long Tradition of HazlittsLiber Amoris, commented that

..an ages self-image may not be as distinct as posteritys view of it. The so-

called Romanticists did not know at the time that they were supposed to do

without satire...it is easy to exaggerate the break with the recent literary past, or

with that portion of it we now designate Augustinian. Byrons well-known tribute

to Pope may have been controversial; Scotts even better-advertised tribute to

Dryden was less so...(210).

In the matter of Coleridge, his well-known revisions chart the changes and fluidity in

Romantic evolution of ideas, ideals, imagination. Says Stillinger, who gives us a whole book of

Coleridges revisions:

If Coleridge had written each of his poems once and once only, there would be

no problem. As it is, we think that he did, and hence arise many

oversimplifications and errors in our approach to his poetry. Chiefly these are the

idea that for each of the poems there is but a single definitive text; the idea that

the single definitive text of each poem must necessarily be a late one (in practical


4/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

terms because there is none other in sight, in theoretical terms because such has

been the tendency of generalizations about textual authority for most of the

present century); and then the conclusion from these that Coleridge produced his

late texts early in his poetic career. (9-10).

I have chosen these two quotations to illustrate two tendencies which we have, as human

beings who happen to read: one, to identify a movement in literature as well-defined by its

proponents and adherents during its existence, particularly at the hey-day or height of the

manifestation of its existence, to those who follow (and who always have such remarkable

hindsight), and secondly, that we tend to believe that the products of such a movement were

created, for the most part, as if sculpted from stone. But, as Stillinger makes clear, In the

theoretical framework of my study, (Coleridge) produced a new definitive version, the final

text that he intended to stand at the moment, every time he revised a text (10).

And why did Coleridge revise his work?

Many poets do so: I revise my own work because I change, and what Ive written no longer

weighs or feels or says quite what I meant, or I no longer wish it to say what I once wished it to

say, or, perhaps, I have gained a greater sensitivity or ability to communicate what could not be

said well at the prior instance (sometimes revisions weaken original work, though!).

Of perhaps all our Romantics, Coleridge has left for us the most sophisticated analysis of

what he was about in the matter of writing, editing, criticism and the composition of poetry.

And, happily for us, he submerges himself into a long discussion one might call it almost a

tirade, in its exhaustive energy and vehemence about imagination.

Coleridge does not hesitate to take us on a philosophical and theological journey of great

complexity in his attempt to fully explore the topic of imagination.

From a letter dated June 23, 1834:

You may conceive the difference in kind between the Fancy and the Imagination

in this way, that if the check of the senses and the reason were withdrawn, the first


5/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

would become delirium, and the last mania. The Fancy brings together images

which have no connexion natural or moral, but are yoked together by the poet by

means of some accidental coincidence....(while) (t)he Imagination modifies

images, and gives unity to variety; it sees all things in one, il peu nell uno. There

is the epic imagination, the perfection of which is in Milton; and the dramatic, of

which Shakespeare is the absolute master (http: Imagination in Coleridge 3).

Coleridges theorizing may be clear to some: to my mind, hes abstruse and convoluted in

his thinking, and a variety of interpretations of what he meant about Imagination exists. What

seems to be clear is that for Coleridge there are two sorts of Imagination, a primary and a

secondary kind. Even so, this distinction between pure imagination and secondary

imagination is apparently not clear enough to allow all other critics to agree with the analysis

offered by Robert Penn Warren, according to notes from the source quoted directly above, as

displayed in Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where PennWarren

argues that The Ancient Marineris a poem of pure imagination in the sense

that its subject is the poetic, or Secondary, Imagination itself. Whalley (1946-7)

believes that: whether consciously or unconsciously the albatross is the symbol

of Coleridges creative imagination. House (1953) opposes the rigidity of Penn

Warrens symbolic analysis and argues that the poem is part of the

exploration...part of the experience which led Coleridge into his later theoretic

statements (as of the theory of Imagination) rather than a symbolic adumbration

of the theoretic statements themselves (84, 113).

It might be useful, then, to take a glance at Imaginations root definitions, as those distant but

great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, thought of it. After all, the Romantics seemed to have

looked at the classic definitions, too. Basically, theDictionary of Philosophy of Mindgives us a


6/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

handy distillation of the definition of imagination as proposed by that philosopher of

philosophers,

Aristotle...(who) tells us that imagination [phantasia] is (apart from any

metaphorical sense of the word) the process by which we say an image

[phantasma] is presented to us (De Anima. 428a 1-4). It has been questioned in

recent times whether the Greek wordsphantasia and phantasm are really

equivalent to imagination and(mental) image as heard in contemporary usage.

However, there can be little doubt that, until very recent times, theoretical

discussion ofphantasia, its Latin translation imaginatio, and their etymological

descendants, continued to be rooted in the concepts introduced by Aristotle and

the problems arising from his rather elliptical explanation of them (http:1).

And for a long time, it might be argued, people really didnt stray very far from this earliest

known standardized definition for Imagination:

Very arguably this is true of all Western philosophical schools: Stoics, Epicureans

and Neoplatonists quite as much as avowed Aristoteleans; Muslims as much as

Christians; and, come to that, Empiricists quite as much as Rationalists (http:1).

While the connection between imagination and perception is the more fundamental, it

should also be pointed out that it is also postulated that a difference exists between common

sense [sensus communis] andphantasia, either of which can generatephantasmata,

but when their immediate cause is an object directly before us the tendency is to

refer to them as percepts, and to the process as perception; when memory of

previously observed things is the source, reference will more likely be to memory

and imagination. Thus imagination came to be particularly associated with


7/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

thinking about things that are not actually currently present to the sense: things

that are not really there (2).

Though this is an oversimplified overview, it does roughly correspond to the situation as I

have investigated it, and it only took a few lines of reading time to tell it to you.

Today, the ideas behind the words fantasy and imagination are likely to evoke these sorts

of thoughts:

...we sometimes find modern writers making a distinction between memory

imagery and imagination imagery, or even restricting the use of imagination

(and, a fortiori, imaginary) to thoughts about things that have never (or never

yet) been actually experienced....(f)or some reason, words...such as fantasy,

fancy, or phantasm, seem to...connote unreality even more strongly than

imagination and its cognates... (2).

And then we have Descartes, who links everything scientifically to flesh, brain and

matter, the rational mind connected, it seems, to the body via the Cartesian imagination/sensus

communis at the pineal surface, the lynchpin that holds together the two metaphysical worlds

of Cartesianism. As it had done for Aristotle, the imagination/sensus communis mediated

between the bodily senses, and the {now incorporeal) rational mind (3).

When the Romantics came along, the ideas of Philostratus (among others) were given

fresh life as

discussion concerning imagination shifted away from cognitive theory and

epistemology, and towards its role in original, creative thinking, especially in the

arts (3). In other words, imagination was given value, along with passion, and

even Coleridge [despite all his attempts to formalize his definitions along

philosophic lines] relied heavily on Kant and post-Kantian German idealism (and


8/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Plotinus....)...(with) results (from a philosophical perspective) fragmentary and l

argely incoherent (4).

This brings us to the twentieth century, and Sartre (who seems to have respected the idea

of imagination), stands against an array of

analytical philosophers (who)....seem to doubt whether the imagination even

exists. Gilbert Ryle declared, in The Concept of Mind, that There is no special

Faculty of Imagination, occupying itself single-mindedly in fancied viewings and

hearings 91949), and this soon became the widely accepted viewpoint (4).

The fundamental concept of internal imagery and functioning imagination as a real process

of mind has received some support from cognitive psychologists such as....Paivio...Shepard,

and....Kosslyn as it has become once more respectable as a topic for experimental

psychological investigation (4). But that doesnt mean that imagination has regained status as

anything more than a representationally dependent auxiliary to other, more fundamental forms

of mental representation, and current theories of image formation hardly aspire to the central

place in cognitive theory once occupied by the imagination (5). This is actually quite a fall from

an almost pre-eminent position of consideration in the cognitive/creative processes as envisioned

by Coleridge and others in the Romantic movement, even when the difficulties that Hume

brought to its definition divided opinions: According to Hume Tis an established maxim in

metaphysics, That...nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible (Treatise, I,ii,2) (5). Without

wading through examples that can prove to us how we can imagine some impossible things, and

that the converse of Humes observation can lead to prickly non sequiturs, there is some

physiological evidence available now that visual imagery and imagination are neurologically

generated and can, in the future, no doubt be controlled:

Neurological patients who have lost the retinotopically mapped regions in one


9/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

cerebral hemisphere, leaving them blind in the corresponding half of their visual

field, show certain impaired imaginary abilities in the blinded hemifield...

However, other patients suffering from cortical blindness due to damage in these

areas seem to have relatively normal imagery. Furthermore, some patients with

localized damage in the retinotopically mapped areas experience vivid, well-

formed visual hallucinations (i.e. imagery that is outside of conscious control--

they do not typically mistake it for reality) precisely in the affected (blind or

blindsighted) parts of their visual fields. This suggests that these brain areas

cannot be essential for visual imagery (http: Are Theories of Imagery.....6).

The above quotation may offer the reader a glimpse of the mechanistic and rigid way in

which ideas and definitions of imagination and imagery are currently being approached by

leading investigators of imagery and imaginative phenomena in the late twentieth cenury (the

above quote refers to some of the results of recent investigations of Kosslyn, et al (1992-1997).

There is not much room for any living, breathing corpus of an evolving definition for

imagination here. It has already been decided that everything that emanates from that lump of

complex tissue and fluids known as the brain is limited by its physiological characteristics,

parameters, and functions.

It is rather like analyzingKubla Khan as the mere product of the influence of opium--as if

there will ever be anotherKubla Khan!

So worrying about the definition of imagination/Imagination just might be a waste of time

for the poet, the writer, the artist. I have sometimes wondered if James Joyces outpourings in

Ulysses was a response elicited not only by his knowledge of so many languages ---as if they

struck a freight train crashing against his skull---but also as the result of mercury treatments he is

theorized to have taken in an attempt to cure the syphilis that claimed his eye and the sanity of

his daughter (not, you wont find more than a few papers on that subject its research Ive

done, myself, from medical evidence I discovered in the 1970's about Joyce, his wife and


10/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

children, so far as I am aware).

In fact, if Romanticism indeed appropriated Imagination as a living definition --though

thats surely a simplified viewpoint--a definition that rested on a full understanding of the past,

and which was being stressed and challenged by the skeptical attitudes of those whose reliance

on science alone would render blossoms, imagination, and baby monkeys alike as only topics to

analyze---then it was possibly the last stand attempt of creative human minds to secure a place of

respect for what the mind could produce, for which the world might not have a place, nor

understand, nor be ready.

It is the very liveliness of Imagination as the Romantics attempted to define it-- aware of its

past meanings--of how Milton and Blake and the ancient philosophers gave Imagination a place

of respect in the dynamics of human thought along with vibrant arguments over past and

present agreements about what Imagination really stood for (and which it might no longer, for

similar reasons today, stand for), that tends to attract me. It behooves us to see if we agree that

imagination as we think it is today resembles at all the Romantics notion about it, or not.

To be able to give a name to that factor that affects your creative thought as does the concept

of imagination should not slay it or render it lifeless: imagination remains with the human race,

recognized or not, so long as people dare to think for themselves. I like what Wordsworth calls

the imaginative will because of the empowerment this term gives to the will that is adorned,

amidst its potential for reasonableness, by the focused intellect. Margaret Sherwood says that

Wordsworth, searching for the single intellectual formula that would solve the complex problem

of existence...(was) reduced by....dogmatic fatalism to depression that was well-night despair:

The crisis of that strong disease, the souls last and lowest ebb....was a

questioning as to the reality of the existence of the human will, of the power of

choice, and of the adequacy of the reason to give grounds for choice....the story of

Wordsworths recovery, as recorded in prelude, is one of the great chapters in

human biography. In reaction from temporary submission to (the) doctrine...that


11/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

man (is) the driven victim of external forces...the young poet (became)

...conscious...of creative power within...(and) (h)is faith in the imaginative will,

as a creative power, capable of vivifying the human soul at the pure sources of b

eing, he ever after expressed in his poetry and...life (182-183).

The power of his understanding of the relationship between the creative powers that

Wordsworth felt flowing through him imagination, and his will to turn this creative force into a

creationby choice by the exertion of his own will, has motivational value for the writer and the

poet that transcends any technical, scientific definitions of imagery and imagination that

have been produced from exploring traumatized and bisected monkey (or human) brains.

Imagination was recognized in various, past cultures as possessing its own particular

dimensions, which now will be refined through Wordsworth, who redefines imagination as a

choice which may acted upon by the will.

Todays students, largely exposed to scientific method and scientific jargon, have not

experienced the making of a major definition in the matter of creativity: it is almost a fearful

thing to call oneself creative. To admit having a big imagination is to invite speculation as to

ones ultimate mental stability: there are already correlations that exist between creativity and

manic depression, creativity and insanity. Unfortunately, the fact that a person in danger of

insanity, or who is mentally unstable, might resort to a creative stratagem in order to survive or

to improve ones grasp, by the will, of reality, through the act of creation, does not seem to be

understood in that light, and I suggest that this is an unfortunate oversight. As for the rest of us,

the use of imagination as a tool to explore realistic outcomes after making a certain choice

provides a basis for understanding the utilitarian advantages of such a function. The viability of

imagination as a source of attaining logical order in our lives, having explored, via the

imagination, the likely and unlikely consequences of certain choices, is generally ignored. And

of course, that same range of choice, developed as a result of contemplating imagined outcomes

and scenarios, allows the artist, the writer, the poet, the logician and the scientist to make better

creative choices in their respective fields.


12/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Imagination, even today, might be understood, then, under Wordsworths interpretation as a

device or resource a potential means, one might say-- to obtain or to take advantage of a

strategy with which to cope with events or ideas potentially unendurable, or, to produce new

ones, relative to, or irrelevant to, ones surroundings, milieu, and environment, with the

understanding that to exert Imagination is to utilize a key element in the successful adaptation, or

expression, of the human being.

The Wordsworthian definition of Imagination empowers. It is a passport to new and

unimagined events, to possible worlds otherwise unable to be entered without permission from

some higher authority, whether deity or dictator. I suggest that the Romantic approach to

Imagination allows the mind a degree of freedom for radical exploration which modern

definitions might eventually deny to us (if we do not wish to be regarded as somehow overly

creative, and, therefore, possibly mentally unstable, etc.).

In all such considerations, the element of satire should not be ignored. Imagination, alone, in

any realization as a movement by Romantic writers/poets worthy of adoption in our own

philosophy, must not exclude the consideration of the role of satire in its implementation. Satire

can mask or disguise the creative product, allowing it to be a sugar-coating for what otherwise

might be a difficult pill for a contemporary world glutted on scientific thought to swallow.

So that we might get a better grasp of what imagination might have meant to Romantics, rather

than what it now means to us, looking back at them, we need to consider that the role of satire

has been somewhat overlooked, I think, as an influence in the works of the Romantics. I

consider their satirical asides and creations as a response to the social pressures which keep so

many writers and artists pathetically poor. Just as farmers are at the bottom of the heap,

supplying food to all the world, and nevertheless receiving less than anyone else for what they

sell (as that food is processed and becomes more expensive per consumable unit, which the

farmer must purchase back, keeping him poorer), so, too, artists, poets, and writers produce

thoughts and ideas which others eventually adapt and enjoy, while the benefits of their labors,

which employ Imagination, rarely return to them in the form of monetary rewards or respect.


13/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Romantic Imagination was a dynamic concept that helped spur the fearless production of

works which may have originated as responses to yet earlier works: the whole chain was almost

a living structure, both dynamic and active, composed of a socially interacting set of creative

people, who generally produced their works with vigor until they died. As the Romantics died,

their creative outlook, their definition of Imagination, died with them. Their concept of

Imagination yet struggled for expression, here and there: I see impressionistic painting, stream of

consciousness writing, and other marvelous instances of the Romantic legacy still asserting itself

in the works of the last great believers in imagination.

It is important to understand that explosions of creativity typically are associated with

new things, or new ways of looking at things. It is imagination both stimulates and that is

stimulated in this way, and it is the definition of imagination that was central to Coleridges

almost desperate search for understanding the relevance of creativity in the grid-locked universe

described by scientific method. Coleridges attempt to define Imagination reaches an apex in

Chapter Thirteen of theBiographica Literaria, a statement so famous I wont repeat it here, but

of which Thomas McFarland says

Not only is there no preparation for the threefold distinction of Chapter Thirteen

in Coleridges previous writings, there is none even in theBiographica...in

Chapter Thirteen...in an astonishing volte face, he writes himself a letter in

which...(he) proceeds simply to dump upon (the reader) the threefold

distinction...(210).

Indeed, the spontaneous assertion of a threefold property to Imagination may have had its real

roots in Blakes opinions, according to McFarland: To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from

Albions covering, to take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with Imagination... (215)

And yet Coleridge wanted to reconcile mysticism and Imagination, systematically if possible,

with the dictates of common sense with the conclusions of scientific Reasoning. For Coleridge


14/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

...shared the respect of his age for science and scientific theories, the

confidence that human experience could be explained as physical nature

could be explained, that there were laws of human nature as well as laws

of motion....What he required was a means of reconciling the experience

of the oasis [i.e. of visionary insight] with acceptable conceptions of

physical and psychological reality (216).

Not an ignoble venture.

Coleridge was aware that there is an element of passivity in the idea that Imagination is

merely a by-product of a physical brain undergoing some permutations which cannot at present

(but eventually might always) be controlled. McFarland shows how Coleridge tried to attack

some of the difficulties that arise in relying only upon scientific concepts of imagination. When

Coleridge understands not only Kant, but the objections of the philosopher Tetens, he begins to

breathe more easily. An excerpt of Tetens thought will reveal what Coleridge was learning:

Dichkraftcan create no elements, no fundamental materials, can make only

nothing out of nothing, and to that extent is no creative power. It can only

separate, dissolve, join together, blend; but precisely thereby it can produce new

images, which from the standpoint of our faculty of differentiation are discrete

representations.

There is accordingly a Selbstthatigheit a spontaneous activity--in the

receptivity of the psyche ...a perceiving, reproducing and co-adunating power

(222).

Coleridge, noted McFarland, as especially found in Chapter Eight of hisBiographica

Literaria, embraced ideas such as these expressed by Tetens (even more, McFarlane asserts

rather convincingly, than those of Kant), which gave him the intellectual relief he sought from t


15/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

the Newtonian outlook which had so depressed him:

Newton was a mere materialist Mind in his system is always passive a lazy

Looker-on an external World. If the mind be not passive, if it indeed be made in

Gods Image, & that too in the sublimed sense the Image of the Creator there

is ground for suspicion, that any system built on the passiveness of the mind must

be false, as a system (222).

While I cannot embrace Coleridges precise religious interpretations, nor, for that matter,

the twofold or threefold vision of Imagination, with which we could occupy the timber of a

whole tree made into paper, McFarlane makes another interesting argument that the lineage of

the secondary imagination extends not only backwards beyond Kant to Teens, but also beyond

Teens to Leibniz, and finally beyond Leibniz to Plato.

And that makes all the difference: Coleridge contemplates this unbroken succession of

thought (as I think we, too, might profit from doing), and thus,

With antecedents of this kind,....Coleridges threefold theory of imagination

actually bears less on poetry than it does on those things that always mattered

most to him as they did to Leibniz and to Kant that is, the freedom of the

will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God (224-226).

With the advent of the computer, we entered a new frontier: we did not know how to explore

it all its functions and potential were not defined for us in advance. Of itself, the computer

offered the human mind endless variations using Imagination. Once more, marvelous, creative

things can happen, because we aren't fettered by a totally mechanistic interpretation of

everything that we do. It is a new creative frontier, waiting to be expanded and developed.

It will be tamed faster than any frontier behind it, as we speed up everything we process

through that same medium science that now rules most of the domain of our minds with its

interpretations of what is sane, what is not, what is real, what is not, and no doubt soon to


16/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

come will dare dicate to us what we might be allowed to create, and what we will dare not. As

evidenced in police states, satire, wit and humor can unlock thought-prisons. Satire, in

particular, provides the creative imagination its last foot-hold on the mountain of which reason is

King. In this King-of-the-Mountain scenario, satire cannot win, cannot wrest away any lasting

laurels for Imagination. But it can challenge the King with a dissident voice.

. Says critic Marilyn Butler: With the passing of time, critics seem to have become less rather

than more aware of the satirical and intellectual strain in Romantic writing... (191). That is

because satires shafts strike most deeply into contemporary targets, some now so remote to our

imaginations (dare I use the word?) that we no longer see the original target, if even the direction

of the arrows.

That richness of potential for creativity (that a term such as imagination might have had on

the minds of those sophisticates and idealists who thought of themselves as exemplars and

pioneering rebels embracing Romanticism) as a holistic and all-pervading philosophy with a

utilitarian function dealing with a world in which man found himself suddenly aware that he

might be in charge of his universe, that he might be standing alone, and alone responsible for the

events of the world in which he lived, unsure whether or not his actions were be ordained by

God(s) or imposed upon him by happenstance and instinct -- this freedom may be denied us in

our modern day. But not satire. Satire breaks through, sharp and sincere.

Morality and new meaning, when a human being could imagine good and evil as choices that

might be made without interference from a higher moral power these will not be topics of

debate in a future where everything will be explained by DNA and environment. Nature was

once mans teacher, and the forces of his own nature his dictator, with the whole wide world

opening before him, ready to explore and conquer. What was imagined could become real. What

seemed to be real did not have to be substantiated by the senses. Today, using imagination not

mere formulae for success in a world where scientists declare what we should or should not

think, is the hallmark of an intellectual rebel.

Our challenge, today, is to preserve Imagination from any definition at all.


17/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

With this in mind, look once more, please, at the definition which was absorbed so rapidly

by you, the reader, at the beginning of this article:

imagination- Traditionally, the mental capacity for experiencing, constructing

or manipulating mental imagery (quasi-perceptual experience). Imagination

is also regarded as responsible for fantasy, inventiveness, idiosyncrasy, and

creative, original and insightful thought in general, and, sometimes, for a

much wider range of mental activities dealing with the non-actual, such as

supposing, pretending, seeing as, thinking of possibilities, and even being

mistaken. See representation.

Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

Note the last part of this definition: the mental capacity for even being mistaken. To have

the liberty to err, to be mistaken, to possess the ability to think about the thing which is not, as

those all-logical Houyhnhnms of Jonathan Swifts satirical imagination could not imagine the

right to be wrongthat rests at the center of Imagination this is a right and option we should

guard as our unspeakably valuable creative heritage and treasured legacy from the Romantic

tradition.


18/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Thanks to Dr. Joseph Riehl (the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) who suggested that

I expand this essay.

Works Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. S.T. Coleridge Notebooks. Kathleen Coburn and Merton Christianson,

eds. 4 vols. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.

_______________________. Biographica Literaria. Chapts. 1-22. 1815. Etext available

at Project Gutenberg; for relevant extracts, seeImagination in Coleridge (below).

Butler, Marilyn. Satire and the Images of self in the Romantic Period: the Long Tradition of

HazlittsLiber Amoris.English Satire and the Satiric Tradition. Ed. Claude Rawson.

Padstow, Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1984. Pp. 209-225.

Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind, Voice of the Shuttle e-link.

acquired 9/22/99

Edwards, S. T. Master Concepts in Literary Study: The Moral Imagination

Pp. 1-5.

acquired 9/30/99

Hobbes, Thomas. The Leviathan.

pp. 6-22

acquired 9/22/99

Imagination in Coleridge. E-textual Extracts from University of Ottawa transcripts ofThe

Letters of S.T. Coleridge. Pp 2-6.

acquired 7/28/99


19/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Lovejoy, Arthur O. Optimism and Romanticism.Eighteenth Century English Literature:

Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. James L. Clifford. New York: oxford UP, 1959. Pp.

319-343.

McFarland, Thomas. Theory of Secondary Imagination. New Perspectives on Coleridge and

Wordsworth. Ed. Geoffrey Hartman. New York & London: Columbia UP, 1972. Pp. 194-

246.

Sherwood, Margaret. Wordsworth: The Imaginative Will. Undercurrents of Influence in

English Romantic Poetry. New York: AMS Press, 1934, 1971.

Stllinger, Jack. Coleridge and Textual Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems.

New York & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Pp. 1-140.

Thomas, Nigel J. T. Are Theories of Imagery Theories of Imagination? An Active Perception

Approach to Conscious Mental Contact. In press: Cognitive Science

pp. 1-40

acquired 9/22/99

Some Additional Readings:

Babbitt, Irving. The Problem of the Imagination. On Being Creative and Other Essays, New

York: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1932.

Baker, J. V. The Sacred River: Coleridges Theory of the Imagination. Baton Rouge;

LA State UP, 1957. (This is notme!)

Baars, B. J. When Are Images Conscious? The Curious Disconnection between Imagery and

Consciousness in the Scientific Literature. Consciousness and Cognition, 5, 1996. Pp.

261-264.

Tyler, T. L. Elements of Plato in Coleridges Theory of the Imagination. Essay for

Professors McGaughey and Dalsant, Dept. Of English, Humboldt University.

acquired 9/30/99


20/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Dear Dr. Reality:

Here it is!

Ive included Internet materials, or parts of them, depending on what the dog didnt sleep on.

If you want the journal notes, or more annotated bibliographic items than what I originally turned

in, please drop a note in my box. Most of the journal notes are written in my textbook, but

wouldnt take too long to transcribe or maybe even to xerox. I also have a lot of notes I took in

class, and additional ones, which Ive been taking all along, which I can present for your

inspection just say the word just put a note in my book if you want to see that material, and

Ill get it to you the next morning.


21/21

Judyth A.V. Baker 1

A Romantic Legacy

Thanks for working with me, and for your patience.

I found out Ive taken 18 more hours than I needed....could have finished all course work last

spring.....thats what happens when youre writing a big book and teaching and having fun--- and

youve been advised you to need to sign up for various tough courses that you eventually found

out wouldnt make unless you showed up......I am the soul of naivete still......!

:-)

Your weary --and enlightened---student, wishing you the best, and glad this isnt our last

contact..... j.

:-) :-) :-)

imagination: a legacy of romantic literature

Documents