What is secondary imagination according to Coleridge?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge divides imagination into two parts: the primary and secondary imagination. The secondary imagination is an echo of the primary. It is like the former in every way except that it is restricted in some capacity.
What does Coleridge say about primary and secondary imagination?
According to Coleridge, Imagination has two forms i.e. Primary and Secondary. Primary imagination is merely the power of receiving impressions of the external world through the senses. It is the secondary imagination that which makes artistic creation possible. It is more active and conscious in its working.
What is the difference between primary and secondary imagination?
The primary imagination is the way a mind perceives and understands situations exactly as they are or appear to be. The secondary imagination is the way our minds reconstruct events and situations in relationship to our own worlds and understandings of that world.
What is the word used for secondary imagination?
Secondary imagination or poetic imagination, as Coleridge defines it, differs from the primary imagination only in degree and mode of operation. It is the characteristic trait of the artist. Secondary imagination, which requires an effort of the will, makes artistic creation possible.
Why according to Coleridge is secondary imagination superior to both primary imagination and fancy?
It represents man’s ability to learn from nature. The over arching property of the primary imagination was that it was common to all people. Whereas “The Secondary imagination” on the other hand, represents a superior faculty which could only be associated with artistic genius.
How does Coleridge define the nature and function of poetry?
Coleridge considers poetry as the fragrance of all human knowledge and thoughts. It is the scent of human passions, emotions and language. He thinks that no man was ever a great poet without being a profound philosophy. A great poet should attempt and achieve a union between the high finish and the appropriateness.
What does Coleridge mean by synthetic and magical power?
So Coleridge calls it a magical synthetic power. This unifying power of the imagination is best seen in the fact that it synthesises or fuses the various faculties of the soul, perception, intellect, will and emotion. This also fuses the internal with the external nature and the spiritual with the physical or material.
How does Coleridge explain that a poem provides pleasure through Biographia literaria?
He does not give any exact definition of poetry too. “A poem is that species of composition which is opposed to the works of science by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth.” Coleridge distinguishes a poem from poetry in his “Biographia Literaria”. He opines that poetry is a wider term than a poem.
What does Coleridge mean by organic wholeness of a poem?
Organic wholeness of a poem: Coleridge established that the poem is an organic whole, and that its form is determined by its content and is essential to that content.
How did ST Coleridge classify imagination?
According to Coleridge, imagination has two types: Primary and Secondary. According to him the primary imagination is “the living power and prime agent of all human perception”. According to him the secondary imagination is the poetic vision, the faculty that a poet has “to idealize and unify”.
How does Coleridge distinguish fancy and imagination PDF?
“Always the ape,” Fancy, Coleridge argued, was “too often the 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 …
What are the features of Coleridge poetry?
Love of liberty, interest in the supernatural and the mysterious, the revolutionary zeal, the medieval imaginative faculty, new experiments in verse, simplicity of diction, humanism, love for Nature, and expression of melancholy and similar other traits of Romantic poetry can be easily found in Coleridge’s poetry.
How does Coleridge define primary and secondary imagination?
Coleridge describes primary imagination as the “mysterious power” which can extract “hidden ideas and meanings” from objective data. Secondary Imagination :- The primary imagination is universal and possessed by all. The secondary imagination makes artistic creation possible. It requires an effort of the will and conscious effort.
What is the secondary According to Coleridge?
The secondary is a similar concept to creativity and is the focus of Kubla Khan. He says that the secondary “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate” (477). Coleridge also writes that the poet creates “by that synthetic and magical power…of imagination” (482).
Is the secondary imagination an active agent?
It is an active agent which “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates. in order to recreate” The secondary imagination is at the root of all poetic activity.
How does Coleridge use images and symbols in the poem?
During the course of the poem, Coleridge utilizes images and symbols to enlighten the reader as to his philosophy of how the imagination functions. Most of the poem describes the untamed forces of nature, implying that the poet is uncontrollable, and his imagination rages on in creation with chaotic movement.