Imagination and Literature Essay -- Literature Essays Literary Critici

Imagination and Literature The importance and influence of imagination on the creation and critique of literature varies between and within various aesthetic eras. Originally seen as an aberrant function of the mind, imagination was subservient to the powers of evidence and order. Art involved mere replication of the real, a craft quite an than an unique act of creation. Beginning as early as Aristotle, however, human race imagination has been linked to the power and value of art. The ascendancy and, in just about eras even superiority, of imagination as a potent mental ability gave birth to new critical enterprises bent on articulating the manner, motivation, and merit infix in art and the artistic process. By tracing the development of this elementary literary concept, it may not be possible to discover 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 attit udes about imagination from wholeness age enter into an informative and influential dialogue with others. From the rational and practical critics of the Enlightenment to the expressive and Romantic critics of the Nineteenth Century, we can begin to shape a synthetic rather than absolute understanding of imagination. Though Aristotle graduation exercise created room for imagination by expanding the expressions of a poet from the actual to the possible in accordance with the laws of probability or necessity, it was not until much subsequently that the capacity and power of imagination was adequately explored. Imagination was seen as a turbulent, unpredictable, but potentially beneficial force which must be sensitive and kept within the bounds of reason to pragmatic critic... ... each definition of imagination we have discussed struggles to be independent while simultaneously remain intertwined to the preceding critical traditions. Works Cited Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Bibli ographia Literaria The Critical Tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, brisk York St. Martins Press, 1989. Hume David. Of the Standard mouthful 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.