Fancy Vs. Imagination

Coleridge, in Chapter 13 of his Biographia Literaria, makes a distinction between Fancy and Imagination. Fancy, Coleridge states, is the faculty that receives images from the senses and reassembles them into a different order of time and space, without transformation. In his own words, it 'has no counters to play with, but fixities and definites.' Fancy is visualised by Coleridge as a primarily mechanical process.

Imagination, on the other hand, is heralded as a more creative process. Coleridge claims that it:

dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

Coleridge, therefore, attributes to Imagination a 'vital', creative faculty.

Later, in Chapter 14, Coleridge tries to answer his own question: 'What is poetry?' His explanation of Shakespeare's 'genius' further expands on his theory of poetic creation.

For Coleridge, poetry arises from the internalised knowledge of the world. Coleridge asserts that the world must be studied and understood till it becomes 'habitual and intuitive'.

What this implies is that although Coleridgean and the general Romantic conception of Imagination centralises the poet's authority, it also in a way negates it. By suggesting that poetry is an unconscious, intuitive act, this Romantic idea of the Imagination takes away some of the poet's conscious agency.

This view of poetic creation, therefore, is not as simplistic as later critics and denouncers of it might seem to make it.

Sources:

M.H. Abrams: A Glossary of Literary Terms.
Patricia Waugh (Ed.): Literary Theory and Criticism
Samuel Coleridge: Biographia Literaria

Criticism: Theories of Authorship

Theory of Expressivity:

Expressivity is one of the theories of authorship. It was most in vogue during the Romantic era. Expressivity posits the role of the author as central to the creation of a literary text. It views language as a translation of thoughts, desires, feelings arising primarily within the author. One implication of this theory then, includes viewing language as a copy, an expression, of the inner thoughts and feelings of those who use it. Another implication of this view is that language presupposes two intrinsic, dependent entities of (i) an original idea and, (ii) its formulation or utterance (rough correlation to signifier-signified relationship).

Foucault (all-hail) has suggested that this reflects a larger movement in thought, towards a newer conceptualisation of language and its expression: from 'imitation and duplication of things' (mimesis?) to a direct expression of 'the fundamental will of those who speak it' (Foucault, The Order of Things).

M.H. Abrams's famous analogy of the Mirror and the Lamp explains this in a similar way. Poetic creation which was largely seen as a mirror of society before, is re-conceived as a source of light; as a lamp. This change happens during the 18th century, aided by theorisations of Coleridge, Wordsworth and other champions of Romanticism.

This author-centric view of poetic/linguistic creation however comes under multiple attacks in later times.

• Modernism insisted on the objectivity (not Wordsworthian spontaneity of emotion) of the author as his (read: Eliot's) paramount virtue.
• Marxism claimed that the author's subjectivity was not as innocent as a bounding roe but was instead shaped by class and economic forces.
• Structuralist and later derivative critical theories rethought language as a discourse and gave it an autonomous position, making the author redundant.
• New Criticism too attacked the author-centric view by denouncing the 'intentional fallacy' or the mistake of giving priority to the author's intent while reading a text.

CoP and Crit

I have found a copy of the 1971 film Sacco e Vanzetti. If you want one for yourself, let me know.

Also, first Criticism class test this Friday: 18th February.