Imagination and Literature Essay -- Literature Essays Literary Critici

Imagination and Literature The importance and influence of imagination on the creation and limited review of literature varies between and within various artistic eras. Originally seen as an aberrant function of the mind, imagination was subservient to the powers of reason and order. Art involved absolute replication of the real, a craft rather than an unique act of creation. Beginning as early as Aristotle, however, human imagination has been linked to the power and place of art. The ascendancy and, in some eras even superiority, of imagination as a potent mental faculty gave birth to new critical enterprises bent on articulating the manner, motivation, and merit embedded in art and the artistic process. By tracing the development of this basic literary concept, it may not be possible to expose a coherent and universal idea of imagination that has evolved throughout history. However, such an inquiry could lead to a better understanding of how the ideas and attitudes about imag ination from ane age enter into an informative and influential dialogue with others. From the rational and pragmatic critics of the Enlightenment to the expressive and Romantic critics of the Nineteenth Century, we can begin to formulate a synthetic rather than absolute understanding of imagination. Though Aristotle first created room for imagination by expanding the expressions of a poet from the actual to the possible in accordance with the laws of opportunity or necessity, it was not until much later that the capacity and power of imagination was adequately explored. Imagination was seen as a turbulent, unpredictable, but potentially just force which must be refined and kept within the bounds of reason to pragmatic critic... ... each definition of imagination we have discussed struggles to be breakaway while simultaneously remaining intertwined to the preceding critical traditions. Works Cited Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Bibliographia Literaria The tiny Tradition. Ed., Da vid H. Richter, New York St. Martins Press, 1989. Hume David. Of the Standard Taste The Critical Tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York St. Martins Press, 1989. Johnson, Samuel. Rambler, No. 4 The Critical Tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York St. Martins Press, 1989. ---. Rasselas, Chapter 10 The Critical Tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York St. Martins Press, 1989. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. A Defence of Poetry The Critical Tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York St. Martins Press, 1989.