The Glorious Faculty: A Critical Analysis of Addison’s Theory of Imagination in ‘The Pleasures of Imagination’ Declaration: I declare that this is my original work and I have acknowledged indebtedness to authors I have consulted in the preparation of my paper. (I) An auxilier light Came from my mind which on the setting sun Bestow’d new splendor …[1] - William Wordsworth (II) Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud![2] - S. T. Coleridge The synthesizing ‘essemplastic power’[3] of imagination that bestows ‘splendor’ on beauty, enabling the Romantic poet to transcreate reality in terms …show more content…
Coleridge later defines it in a somewhat similar way; according to him the mind is active in perception and primary imagination is the repetitive ‘act of creation of the finite mind in the infinite I AM’ [194]. Addison describes it in his own logical way: ‘Our imagination loves to be filled with an object, or to grasp at anything that is too big for its capacity…such wide and undetermined prospects are as pleasing to the fancy, as the speculations of eternity or infinitude are to the understanding’ [Addison 19]. One may object to the use of ‘fancy’ instead of ‘imagination’ keeping in mind Coleridge’s definition of ‘fancy’ and ‘imagination’[6] but Addison was not aware of this finer division so he deliberately uses both the words offering the same meaning. As Addison observes the feeling of ‘stillness’ and ‘amazement’ at the encounter of ‘unbounded views’ and effect of objects in motion on our imagination, quite unconsciously he echoes the aesthetic critic of Romanticism Walter Pater: ‘everything that is new or uncommon…fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity.’ [Addison 20] Addison explains that ‘beauty’ immediately diffuses a ‘secret satisfaction, and ‘complacency’ through imagination which gives a finishing touch to everything that is great or uncommon and strikes the mind with a sense of inner joy and spreads cheerfulness and delight in the mind of the readers. This description at once reminds us of
11. A poet can work its magic on the reader by “choice of images, music of the language, idea content, and cleverness of wordplay” (Foster 17).
Within this passage the central idea of “beauty” is developed by Crommelynck’s explanation of beauty and its application to art, and more specifically, poetry. Crommelynck’s description of the beauty develops the idea because it gives an understanding of how wide the scope is for something to be beautiful. She also explains that beauty cannot be created and how it instead resides in something which ties in with her view on truth in art. She believes that if an art form is truthful then beauty can reside in it. This develops on the concept of what beauty
I, Andrew Khanano, of sound mind, declare that the work submitted is of my own work, and all resource and information used has been appropriately cited.
I declare that the work contained in this assignment is my own, except where acknowledgement of sources is made.
George Szirtes article “Formal Wear: Notes on Rhyme, Meter, Stanza, and Pattern” from the Poetry Foundation opens with opinions which focus on limitations of poetic form. As a counter to these common arguments, Szirtes claims, “Verse is not decoration: it is structural. It is a forming principle and words at depth” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). He then develops an argument explaining, “the constraints of form are spurs of the imagination: that they are in fact the chief producers of imagination” ("Formal Wear: Notes” 2). Taking these ideas into consideration Szirtes incorporates the idea of language explaining how language connects to memory and imagination which come together to form poetic images. Additionally, when poets use form it develops
The resources of the soul are immense and go far beyond our highest imagination. We do not know our soul’s potential, however, we do know that it is almost immeasurable.Finally, both men believe that the imagination can uplift and change our lives.
Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.” concerned initially with how we reflect on solitude, the stars, and the grandeur of nature, symbolized in the stars that Emerson views at night, and focuses on how we perceive objects around us. Emerson speaks of the landscape in which he walks and how he, as a poet, can best integrate all that he sees. What is most important in this sequence is the similar ways we perceive the various objects — stars, the landscape, and the poet.(117)
By analysing the structure (shift from external to internal landscape), language (tenses, pronoun), and presentation of the experience of seeing the daffodils, I seek to demonstrate that feelings of the sublime are only evoked when the narrator’s imagination participates in the scene he has internalized in his memory. While the first three stanzas exemplify a merely physical stimulus and response mechanism to nature, the last stanza shows how active poetic imagination enables man to recreate and amplify emotions encountered, thus resulting in feelings of the sublime. Why does the observer not recognise the ‘wealth’ the scene brings in that moment? How does poetic imagination connect the physical eye and the inner eye to allow for sublime, transcendental experience? Hess argues that the poem “depend[s] for [its] power on the narrator’s ability to fix a single, discrete, visually defined moment of experience in his mind, to which he can later return in acts of private memory and imagination” (298). An example of the recapturing of emotions is seen where “gay” (I. 15) is recaptured as “pleasure” (I. 23) at the end. Active imagination, which draws inspiration from memory of the initial encounter, is now a permanent possession that
The exploration of the mind and the way our conscious mind perceives the symbols of our subconscious minds was new ground and it gave art a new voice with which to sing.
“Yet the absence of the imagination had Itself to be imagined” (Stevens, Wallace 2014). Here, Stevens is desperately trying to convey the message that even though imagination was slipping at
In his essay, Imagination as Value, Stevens reminds us that “the imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things […] it is the source not of a single value but of as many values as can reside in the possibilities of things” (136). With these words in mind and from what we have already noted in “Men Made Out of Words,” we can assert that the “possibilities of things,” mentioned in the essay, are the same as the reveries, poems, and myths, hinted at in the poem; however, one needs to clarify the difference between the ‘possibilities of things’ and the ‘things’ themselves. For Stevens, the imagination is ‘metaphysical’ or something which resides in the abstract but at the time it serves as “the only clue to reality [i.e. things]” (137); therefore it is through the imagination that reality derives its possibilities i.e. its myths, reveries, and poems. In Stevens argument, the imagination is the liberator
This paper started with a quote which mainly emphasize on the power of imagination. The line which is quoted above, said by one of the early romantic poet, one who never went to university, never took opium, did not end up his life in a very tender age, never left England, did not went on any Grand tour in his life span, did not have any illicit or failed affairs or relationships, had no one who would call him father and unfortunately never got the fame during his own lifetime. He is the one, who shine out like a star whenever one talks about Mysticism and Imagination in English Literature, William Blake. What he says about Imagination is
Romantic Literature focuses on the natural world and the use of the human imagination to explore that world. For the Romantics, reason which was valued by the enlightenment authors found its meaning with imagination and was possibly even more important. This allowed them to ignore the strict rules in regard to diction, style and form that the enlightenments were so enthralled with. Samuel T Coleridge, one of the most popular Romantics, in his time and ours is well known to have had a substance abuse problem. This problem while eventually ruining his poetic gift, it wasn’t until after her gave us one of the most fantastical poems of the era in Kubla Kahn. Like the other prominent Romantics he believed that our dreams are our imagination at work. By disregarding the formal reverence for reason and using uniquely styled landscapes and an inspiring use of sound Coleridge is able to express his imagination in such a way that his readers are able to build and see their own version of his world through their imagination.
“imagine” it gives me the feeling that the poet is beginning to create something, he is