The Concept Of Imagination In Samuel Coleridge's Poetry

701 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Literary analysis on the poem dreams

Throughout romantic poetry, during the 1700s, many poets described imagination in a unique way. The romantic poets imagine the past, present, and future in connection with God, this is their concept of imagination. Also, they connect the infinite to the finite. They believed that what controls us and the world is our minds. Some imagination could be happy as the morning sun and others could be gloomy as the midnight sky. Imagination is what is in our mind that tells us good from bad, which is the perception of the world. How do we know that dreams are not reality and reality is not dreams? Romantics believed thinking alone is the only thing that is real. Samuel Coleridge, a romantic poet, wrote many poems that used the sense of imagination. According to Coleridge, “Imagination is the primary imagination that a person holds to as the living power of all human perceptions, and as a repetition …show more content…

(43-46)
As we look at line 46, “The passion and the life, whose fountains are within,” Coleridge indicated this line of poetry was symbolized with finding passion and life through the imagination of the fountains within us, which is connected to God. William Wordsworth, a famous romantic poet, used imagination throughout his poetry. Also he believes, Imagination comes from within the mind. Wordsworth describes that the cruelty people see is not what we saw as a small child, it is what we see when we are older. As a child, we see a princess movie we either want to be a princess (girls), or a knight (boys). “Shaped by himself with newly-learned art/ a wedding or a festival” (92-93). The common path of our lives comes between our happiness and us; as a child we do not feel pain and/or hopelessness. Also, he describes that human beings are born connected to God and Nature, but when humans grow up they lose this connection because they began to believe the information they stored

Show More
Related

  • Imagination in Jane Eyre

    559 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Wordsworth’s view on imagination can easily be seen in the two poems Expostulation & Reply and The Tables Turned. In these two short poems Wordsworth gives respect to the sciences; he does not look down on them. However, he does argue that ignoring nature, and by extension, imagination, would be to ignore part of what it means to be human. Another poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud, shows Wordsworth’s appreciation for imagination, as he reflects on the joy of being able to look inward and see the beauty of nature as he sees it, not as science does.

    Read More

  • Comparing Romanticism In The Devil And Tom Walker

    578 Words  | 2 Pages

    Romanticism is an essential part of the early forms of American literature. Romantic’s, who value feelings and intuition as opposed to reason, seek to reveal higher truths through their writings. One way to reveal these truths is by the use imagination, as Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow do. Through the utilization of imagination, Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reveal distinct truths about life.

    Read More

  • Racism In 'I Not Racist But' By Anita Heiss

    866 Words  | 2 Pages

    ,“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity" as William Wordsworth, the English Romantic poet, stated. Poetry is a way to express vast emotions and feelings in a way which is unique to the poet. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses.

    Read More

  • The Wonder Of Imagination In Deborah Ross's Escape From Wonderland

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagination is the action of creating new ideas, scenarios, or concepts that are not present. It is the ability to form a mental image of anything that is not perceived through senses. It’s the ability of the mind to build mental scenes, objects or events that do not exist or are not there or have never happened. “...the pleasures of the imagination exist because they hijack mental system that have evolved for real world pleasure. We enjoy imaginative experiences because at some level we don’t distinguish them from real ones.” (pg.577 parg 4, Bloom)

    Read More

  • Understanding the the Romantic Imagination with Ramond, Wordsworth and Shelley

    1937 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...here are similar aspects to each writer's experience. Engaging the imagination, Ramond, Wordsworth and Shelley have experienced a kind of unity; conscious of the self as the soul they are simultaneously aware of 'freedoms of other men'. I suggested in the introduction that the imagination is a transition place wherein words often fail but the experience is intensified, even understood by the traveler. For all three writers the nature of the imagination has, amazingly, been communicable. Ramond and Wordsworth are able to come to an articulate conclusion about the effects imagination has on their perceptions of nature. Shelley, however, remains skeptical about the power of the imaginative process. Nonetheless, Shelley's experience is as real, as intense as that of Ramond and Wordsworth.

    Read More

  • The Power of the Imagination and Its Relationship to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

    1950 Words  | 4 Pages

    S. T. Coleridge divides the concept of imagination into two separate parts: Primary imagination and Secondary imagination. Primary imagi...

    Read More

  • Romanticism

    346 Words  | 1 Pages

    Romantics often emphasized the beauty, strangeness, and mystery of nature. Romantic writers expressed their intuition of nature that came from within. The key to this inner world was the imagination of the writer; this frequently reflected their expressions of their inner essence and their attitude towards various aspects of nature. It was these attitudes that marked each writer of the Romantic period as a unique being. These attitudes are greatly reflected in the poem “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer” by Walt Whitman.

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth And Wordsworth's Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

    1848 Words  | 4 Pages

    Wordsworth is raised in a simple country side and he views his childhood as a time when his relationship with nature was at its greatest; he revisits his childhood memories to relieve his feelings and encourage his imagination. Even if he grew up within nature, he didn’t really appreciate it until he became an adult. He is pantheistic; belief that nature is divine, a God. Since he has religious aspect of nature, he believes that nature is everything and that it makes a person better. His tone in the poem is reproachful and more intense. His poem purpose is to tell the readers and his loved ones that if he feels some kind of way about nature, then we should have the same feeling toward it as well. On the other side, Coleridge is raised in rural city such as London  and expresses his idea that, as a child, he felt connected to nature when looking above the sky and seeing the stars. Unlike Wordsworth who felt freedom of mind, Coleridge felt locked up in the city. Since he did not have any experience with nature, he did not get the opportunity to appreciate nature until he became an adult. In Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight,” readers see how the pain of alienation from nature has toughened Coleridge’s hope that his child enjoy a peaceful nature. Instead of looking at the connection between childhood and nature as

    Read More

  • Theme of Christianity in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ous allegory represents Christian ideals such as sin, forgiveness, and prayer. In addition, Coleridge’s use of language and form contribute to the message conveyed in the text. The form fluctuates throughout the text by use of different rhyme schemes, loose meter, and stanzas in length varying four to nine lines. The variety of form could be representative the array of interpretations of this text. Coleridge conveys profound religious meaning by using symbolic language with interpretive representations. Although his use of elevated language possibly narrowed the audience, that could have been his intentions due to the complexities of this philosophical poem. In the end, Coleridge’s depiction of the Mariner’s journey ultimately conveys the Christian ideal, which is to love and appreciate all creatures created by God, whether Albatross or snake.

    Read More

  • Imagination in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner versus Kubla Khan

    968 Words  | 2 Pages

    In two works by Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, both works regard the imagination as vitally important. In the Ancient Mariner, the imagination (or rather, the lack of it) condemns the Mariner to a kind of hell, with the fiends of sterility, solitude, and loneliness: “’God save thee, Ancient Mariner, from the fiends that plague thee thus! Why look’st thou so?’ ‘With my crossbow I shot the Albatross’”. In Kubla Khan, the imagination of an external being, the narrator that Coleridge created, the ideal critic, can create a masterpiece that far outstrips the meager piece of work that even the emperor of a huge, rich civilization can produce: “I would build that dome in air, a sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, and all should cry, Beware! Beware!” In Kubla Khan, the imagination can even make people fear an otherwise inconsequential event, sequence, or organism.

    Read More

  • A Force of Nature: Imagination in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery

    1612 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...human imagination and reality, the role of imagination in shaping that reality, and the role of the reader, as an observer as well as participant, in the understanding of poetry, of language shaping the world around him.

    Read More

  • The Poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coloridge

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    Coleridge successfully illustrates the qualities of imagination in his poem, Kubla Khan, through the sound of words, the creative content and his ability to create and recreate. Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that are suspended in the reader’s mind. Coleridge uses creative powers to establish the infinite I AM, a quality of the primary imagination. Coleridge mirrors his primary and secondary imagination in the poem by taking apart and recreating images. The qualities of imagination discussed in the poem exist independently but also work together to create an imaginative world.

    Read More

  • William Wordsworth's Use of Nature

    1393 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wordsworth had two simple ideas that he put into his writing of poetry. One was that “poetry was the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The second idea was that poets should describe simple scenes of nature in the everyday words, which in turn would create an atmosphere through the use of imagination (Compton 2).

    Read More

  • Knowledge Vs. Imagination

    1243 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this essay, I aim to discuss the issue whether imagination is more important than knowledge. “For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there will ever be to know and understand” (Albert Einstein).

    Read More

  • The Role of Nature in the poetry of William Wordsworth

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wordsworth comprehends, in each of us, that there is a natural resemblance to ourselves and the background of nature.

    Read More

More about The Concept Of Imagination In Samuel Coleridge's Poetry

Open Document