Literature and imagination Essay Example for Free

Literature and imagination undertakeIn Critical Approaches to Literature, David Daiches has said that the imagination, in its primary manifestation, is the great assigning principle, an agency which enables us some(prenominal) to discriminate and to order, to separate and to synthesize, and thus makes perception possible, for without it, we would have only a collection of meaningless receptive data. Literary theory and poetry materialize concurrently, for poets have a strong tendency to form opinions to the highest degree their craft and to rehearse these opinions as part of the message of their poems. Imagination is undoubtedly inherent in literature, the immemorial component in any work of art, plainly this view has been a cause of debate since the get across of literature and criticism. As with most dissentions and philosophy regarding literature and its attendant features, the first records of this debate are to be found in the germinal works of Aristotle and Plato. W riting at a time when the poet was venerated for his work, and the philosopher persecuted for his, it is precisely internal that Plato would react negatively towards poetry.He regarded it as being fundamentally unsound and his view of imagination was much the same, since the imagination is the wellspring from which poetry arises. Imagination was inspirational and emotional, and he did not agree or divulge with it for he did not find it logical. Aristotle, on the other hand, acknowledged that art represented reality, and that imagination was an pregnant element of the structuring and creating of art. Horace, while admitting that poets utilized fiction and often mingled facts with hear, put forth a synthesis of Aristotle and Platos views. check to him, the end function of poetry is to please and instruct, a mixture of pleasure and profit appeals to every lecturer and hence, imagination took on a fairly central position. John Dryden, a Seventeenth Century expectant and neo- c lassical critic, acknowledged imagination as inspiration breathd into man by God. Increasingly we observe that, as it is investigated down the ages, the primary human mental faculty of imagination becomes inseparable from poetry- Dryden acknowledged both(prenominal) the didactic and aesthetical nature of poetry.The term picture, so commonly used, was coined by him. Pope, in accordance to the vigorous structural dissimulation of the Augustans, declares that imagination was native, but that it should be kept under control, for there was a necessity for decorum. In the 19th Century, the issue of imagination became one of utmost importation, mostly due to the theorizing of Wordsworth, and much significantly, of Coleridge. While imagination, as a primary and unique faculty of the human psyche and consciousness, was never debated, both poets managed to convey its indisputable significance in poetry.In the Seventeenth Century, the writer became of soul importance- the readers reac ted to the experience of emotion with delight. This delight, the Romantics stressed, was the prime objective of their poetry, but was not achieved by mechanical application of rules, but by the strength of the imagination. An early and somewhat indiscriminately attempt on the part of Wordsworth to discriminate amid imagination (Impressive effects out of simple elements), and fancy (Pleasure and surprise excited by sudden varieties of situation and accumulated imagery), appears in The Thorn.In earlier discussions, both of these had been in most part used synonymously to denote a faculty of the mind which is terrific from reason and judgement, and which receives images from the senses and records them into juvenile combinations. He stresses that imagination, and not fancy, should be used to refer to the creative or poetical principle. The distinction between imagination and fancy was a key element in Coleridges theory of poetry, as well as in the general theory of the mental reg alees. This laconic differentiation is the core of his expo on the nature and genesis of the imagination. M. H. Abrams, in The Mirror and the Lamp, points out that, As in his philosophy, so in his criticism, Coleridge roots his theory in the constitution and activity of the creative mind. The memory, for Coleridge, is mechanical, and fancy passive, which acts only by a sort of juxtaposition. The imagination, on the other hand, recreates, its elements by a process to which Coleridge sometimes applies terms borrowed from the physical and chemical substance unions- it is a synthetic, a permeative and a blending, fusing power. The imagination is essentially vital it generates and produces a form of its own. Fancy is thus a perfunctory process which receives the elementary images- the fixities and de boundeds which it receives from the senses, and without altering the parts, reassembles them into a different spatial and blase order form that in which they were schoolmasterly perceive d. The imagination creates rather than reassembles by dissolving the fixities and definites, and unifying them into a new whole. The faculty of imagination generates and produces a form of its own while its rules are the very powers of egress and production. It assimilates and synthesises the most disparate elements into an organic whole- a newly generated unity, constituted by a living interdependence of parts whose identity cannot survive their removal from the whole. Fancy can be taken to mean start decorations of new combinations of memories and perceptions, while imagination involved a combination of elements in the cauldron of the poets mind, with imagination playing as a base of sorts more(prenominal) than anything else, which results in the creation of a new work. Coleridge further distinguishes between the Primary and Secondary imagination.If the process of creation is conceived as being essentially and perpetually the bringing of order out of chaos, then the Primary i magination is essentially creative and a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the finite I AM. This could be explained by cut back imagination to a single image, or a train of thought, in ones mind- this quality, being inherent in every conscious, human being (that is, in evolutionary terms, the ability of foresight and being able to cypher around a situation), and Coleridge has recognized this as constituting the Primary imagination.The Secondary imagination is the conscious human use of this power. When we employ our Primary imagination in the act of perception, we are not doing so with our conscious will, but are exercising the basic faculty of our awareness of ourselves and the external world the Secondary imagination is more conscious and less elemental, but it does not differ in kind from the primary. In imagination, elements in an environment that strike the creators sensibility are blended and fused into a new whole- the poet has to merge reaso n and emotion, control condition and spontaneity, the abstract and the concrete, etc.The entire exercise is a reconciliation of opposites, (precisely why it is a conscious one), accent the dialectical character of creativity. The action can be reduced to three basic phases thesis, antithesis and synthesis, but this process is inexplicable, as is imagination, and particular to the poet himself. The resultant exposition can never be stripped down to its original elements. To exemplify this, Coleridge uses the analogy of the transformation of a seeded player into a plant to explain this theory.Once the seed has been planted, and grows into a plant, it is impossible to reduce the plant to singular elements like the seed, the water, the air, the soil, etc. It is a whole- an organic unit. In the same manner- a creation of the imagination has an inherent organic unity- it cannot be reduced to any of its contributing(prenominal) elements. This is the dialectical character of creativity that involves synthesis- the result of this blend and fusion is a whole. Coleridge stressed that imagination makes new perception possible.If indeed a work springs out of imagination, it holds the ability to penetrate the experience of its genesis and find the essence of the object. This echoes Aristotles view that poetry or art penetrates through the idea of an object and brings to the surface not the particular, but the universal in the particular, the essence. In a writers imagination, thus, the experience is unifying or coadunative- what Coleridge calls Esemplastic- it is moulded into an expression by the imagination.Literature thus becomes a piece of actuality subjected to the laws of imagination. Most critics after Coleridge tended to make fancy simply that faculty that produces a lesser, lighter, or more humorous kind of poetry, and to make imagination the faculty that produces a higher, more serious, and more passionate poetry. However, the mark of Coleridges theories is un doubtedly present in each of these. As he himself has utter I laboured at a solid foundation, in the component faculties of the human mind itself and their relative dignity and importance.