Imagination and Fancy in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria

Imagination and Fancy in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria


Coleridge,in his essay "Biographia Literaria",rejecting the empiricist assumption that the mind was tabula rasa on which external experience and sense impressions were imprinted, stored,recalled, combined both come from respectively the Latin word 'imaginato' and Greek word 'phantasia'. Coleridge defines imagination by saying that "The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception,and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am . The secondary I consider as am echo of the former, co-existing with the concious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degrees, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate, or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to dealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects are essentially fixed and dead."Coleridge either the imagination into Primary and Secondary and draws a distinction between creative acts those are unconscious and intentional and deliberate acts. Primary imagination was for Coleridge, the "necessary imagination" as it "automatically balances and fuses the innate capacities and powers of the mind with the external presence of the objective world that the one receives through the senses."Secondary imagination, on the other hand, represents a superior occulty which could only be associated with artistic genius. It is more active and concious in its working. It is at the root of all poetic activity. The secondary imagination selects and orders the raw material and reshapes and remodels it into objects of beauty. Thus it is "a shaping and modifying power." It "dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate." primary imagination is the conciousness shared by all men, while the secondary imagination is limited to poets."Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixitier and definities. Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space. But equally with the ordinary memory it must receive but its materials readymade from the law of association."So, Coleridge seems to be saying that one can use fancy as a kind of power to create memory mosaics or colleges, rearranging what we've experienced into a new contribution or share to suit our fancy.Coleridge has distinguished between Fancy and Imagination in the following ways:
# Fancy in Coleridge's eyes was employed for Tasks those were 'passive' , 'mechanical', the accumulation s of fact and documentation of what is seen. Fancy, Coleridge argued, was "too often adulterator and counterfeiter of memory." (59)The imagination, on the other hand, was 'vital' and transformative, "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation". For Coleridge it was the imagination that was responsible for acts that were truly creative and inventive and, in turn, that identified true instances of find or noble art. (60)# Fancy is "the faculty of mere images or impressions, as imagination is the faculty of intuitions."# Fancy is light and playful, while Imagination is grave and solemn.# Fancy was concerned with the mechanical operations of the mind, those which are responsible for the passive accumulation of data and shortage of such data in the memory.Imagination on the other hand, described the "mysterious power," which extracted from such data, "hidden ideas and meaning"# Fancy sports with the definite and static images and doesn't modify them; while imagination dissolves and reshapes them into new wholes.# For Coleridge, fancy is the attribute of poetic genius, but imaginaton is its soul, which transforms all hoto one graceful and intelligent whole.# Fancy is equated with a mechanical mixture and Imagination is equated with a chemical compound. In a mechanical mixture a number of ingredients are brought together. They are mixed up, but they do not tore their individual properties, they will exist as separate identities.
In a chemical compound, on the other hand, the different ingredients combine to form something new. The different ingredients no longer exist as separate identities. They kore their respective properties and fuse together to safate something new and entirely different. A compound is am act of creation; while a mixture is merely a bringing together of a number of separate elements. Thus imagination creates new shapes and forms of beauty by during and unifying the different impressions it receives from the external world. Fancy is not creative, it is a kind of memory; it arbitrarily brings together images and even when brought together, they continue to retain their separate and individual properties. They receive no colouring or modification from the mind. It is merely mechanical juxtaposition, and not a chemical fusion.Coleridge explains the point by quoting two passages from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. The following lines from this poem serve to illustrate fancy :"Full gently now she takes him by the handA lily prisoned in a hold of snowOr ivory in an albaster bandSo white a friend engirds so white a foe.In these lines images drawn from memory, but they do not interpenetrate into one another. The following kind from the same poem, illustrate the power and function of imagination:"Look! How a bright star shooteth from the skySo glides he in the night from Nenus' eye.
"How many images and feelings", says Coleridge, "are here brought together without effort and without discord-the beauty of Adones - the rapidity of the flight - the yearning yet helplessness of the unamoured gazes- and a shadowy, ideal character thrown over the whole."Coleridge's brief discussion of imagination and fancy in Biographia Literaria has been called,"perhaps the most famous single prose passage in all of English literature,yet . . .Also one of the most baffling ". He was also one first critic to distinguish between them and define their respective roles.

Read more »

S. T Coleridge As a Critic

S. T. Coleridge As a Critic

Coleridge is one of the greatest of literary critics, and his greatness has been almost universally recognized. He occupies, without doubt, the fist place among English literary critics. After eliminating one after another the possible contenders for the title of the greatest critic, Saintsbury concludes:

"So, then there abide these three – Aristotle, Longinus and Coleridge."

According to Arthur Symons, Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is,

"… the greatest book of criticism in English."

Herbert Read concludes Coleridge as:

" … head and shoulders above every other English critic."

I. A. Richards considers him as the fore-runner "of the modern science of semantics", and Rene Wellek is of the view that he is a link, "between German Transcendentalism and English Romanticism."

A man of stupendous learning, both in philosophy and literature, ancient as well as modern, and refined sensibility and penetration intellect, Coleridge was eminently fitted to the task of a critic. His practical criticism consists of his evaluations of Shakespeare and other English dramatists, and of Milton and Wordsworth. Despite the fact there are so many digressions and repetitions, his practical criticism is always illuminating and highly original. It is rich in suggestions of far reaching value and significance, and flashes of insight rarely to be met with in any other critic. His greatness is well brought out, if we keep in mind the state of practical criticism in England before him. The Neo-classic critics judged on the basis of fixed rules. They were neither legislative nor judicial, nor were carried away by their prejudices. Coleridge does not judge on the basis of any rules. He does not pass any judgment, but gives his responses and reactions to a work of art. His criticism is impressionistic-romantic, a new kind of criticism, a criticism which dealt a knock out blow to neo-classic criticism, and has been in vague, more or less, ever since. He could discover new beauties in Shakespeare and could bring about fresh re-valuations of a number of old English masters. Similarly, his criticism of Wordsworth and his theories enable us to judge him and his views in the correct perspective.

In the field of theoretical inquiry, Coleridge was the first to introduce psychology and philosophy into literary criticism. He was interested in the study of the process of poetic creation, the very principles of creative activity, and for this purposes freely drew upon philosophy and psychology. He thus made philosophy the basis of literary inquiry, and thus brought about a union of philosophy, psychology and literary criticism. His literary theories have their bases in philosophy; he imparted to criticism the dignity which belongs to philosophy. He philosophized literary criticism and thus brought about a better and truer understanding of the process of creation and the nature and function of poetry.

His greatest and most original contribution to literary criticism is his theory of imagination. Addison had examined the nature and function of imagination, and Wordsworth, too, had developed his own theory on the subject. But all previous discussions of imagination look superficial and childish when compared with Coleridge's treatment of the subject. He is the first critic to differentiate between Imagination and Fancy, and to differentiate between primary and secondary Imagination. Through his theory of imagination he revolutionized the concept of artistic imitation. Poetic imitation is neither a servile copy of nature, not is it the creation of something entirely new and different from Nature. Poetry is not imitation, but creation, but it is creation based on the sensations and impressions received from the external world. Such impressions are shaped, ordered, modified and opposites are reconciled and harmonized, by the imagination of the poet, and in this way poetic creation takes place.

Further, as David Daiches points out:

"It was Coleridge who finally, for the first time, resolved the age old problem of the relation between the form and content of poetry."

Through his philosophical inquiry into the nature and value of poetry, he established that a poem is an organic whole, and that its form is determined by its content, and is essential to that content. Thus metre and rhyme, he showed, are not merely, "pleasure super-added", not merely something superfluous which can be dispensed with, not mere decoration, but essential to that pleasure which is the true poetic pleasure. This demonstration of the organic wholeness of a poem is one of his major contributions to literary theory.

Similarly, his theory of "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" marks a significant advance over earlier theories on the subject. His view that during the perusal of a poem or the witnessing of a play, there is neither belief nor disbelief, but a mere suspension of disbelief, is not universally accepted as correct, and the controversy on the subject has been finally set at rest.

However, it may be mentioned in the end that as Coleridge's views are too philosophical, he is a critic no easy to understand. Often it is fragmentary and unsystematic. Victorians, in general, could not appreciate him and his appeal was confined to the few.

It is only in the 20th century that his literary criticism has been truly understood and recognition and appreciation have followed. Today his reputation stands very high, and many go to him for inspiration and illumination. Despite the fragmentary nature of his work, he is now regarded as the most original critic of England.

Read more »