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Romantic Poetry +2

What is the role of imagination in romantic poetry?

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2 ANSWERS

Kaira, Student
Updated Nov 9, 2018

Role of imagination in romantic poetry:

-Blake:

Blake considered imagination as the means through which man could know the world. With
imagination you could see the essence of the things, it’s a sort of divine vision. The poet has a
creative power, he is a prophet who can see the reality of things.

-Wordsworth:

For him imagination is a supreme gift, and he used imagination as synonym of “intuition”, it is
the power to see into reality. All poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity
and through the power of memory the emotion is reproduced in poetic form. The process of
composition of a poetry is the following: The poet through sensory experience proves emotion
with an object and this emotion remain in poet’s memory. Poet ,when he was in tranquility, in a
state of pensive mood, remember the emotion, contemplated it by a kindred one produced by the
first. Only now he can write the emotion in a poem so that even the reader can feels the same
emotion.
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Wordsworth believes that nature is the means through which man could arrive to the perfection
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of God: men can elevated themselves to the dive contemplating the nature.
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He has Home Answer
a Pantheistic view of world Notifs are inseparable and man exist
( he says that “man and nature
not outside the natural world but an active participant in it”).
Poet is a teacher who shows man how to understand their feelings.

-Coleridge:

He considers two kind of imagination: the primary imagination : connected with human
perception and individual power to produce images, everybody have this imagination but use it
unconsciously.
Secondary imagination doesn’t belong to everybody but only to poets who use it consciously, was
voluntary. “it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to re-create.” The poet with this imagination
see the world around him can perceive the world and was able to change and create a new world.
In fact “consciously will” and “re-create” are the two keywords for the artists who resolve the
reality to create a new world and could create something personal and original (es “rime of
ancient mariner” in which poet resolve the reality and create a new world, production of his
secondary imagination)

-Shelley:

His “defence of poetry” is an exalted defense of poetry as the expression of imagination and
understood as revolutionary creativity. It’s used to change the reality of material world. He want
to change the cosmos to create a world where freedom, I love and beauty win on their enemies
such as tyranny, destruction and alienation. To Shelley , nature describes not the real world of
Wordsworth’s poem, but it’s a sort of refuge from the disappointment and injustice of ordinary
world.

Poetry is indeed something divine, is the center and the circumference of knowledge, comprends
all science and to which all science must be referred. Poetry is like a gift.

“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Poetry
makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world. Poetry redeems from decay the
visitations of the divinity in man. Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it transmutes all that it
touches, its' secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death
through life; Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehend inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic
shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand
not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is
moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

Keats:

The imagination to Keats has two forms: in the first place the world of his poetry is
predominantly artificial and he imagines it rather than reflect from direct experiences. In the
second place keat’s poetry are a vision of what he would like human life to be like, stimulated by
his own experience of pain and misery.
The central theme of his poetry is Beauty that is the ideal of all art. In fact he is the forerunner of
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the aesthetic movement and this aspect move him away to the romantic movement.
The classical Greek world
1 inspires Keats in his works. In fact in his verse he beliefs that the greek
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world lives again in its and it is re-interpreted with the eyes of a romantic movement.
Poet need to negative capability: in fact poet must deny his rational filter to identify himself with
the object which is the source of his inspiration and the place where Truth resides.

In fact Keats when he see an Greek form of art , he goes into ecstasies because , for him, the better
form of beauty was reached by Greek Word. And beauty is the most important form of perfection
which whom man could arrive to God.
Poet is everything and nothing ,has no character.. is a Cameliom. Poet is the most unpoetical, the
sun, the moon, the man are poetical have unchagble attribute but poet has none ,no identity, the
certainly the most unpoetical of all God’s Creatures!
6.2k views · View Upvoters · View Sharers · Answer requested by ReBeka AkhTar

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Ceasar
Upvote · 3 Rodriques,
Share L.A. -Engineer/Poet
Answered Jan 12, 2017

I believe it is what transports the Reader to that ‘other dimension’. It is the catalyst that drives the
reaction between Writer, Reader and creates the bond with place and time.

Without Imagination you can read words on a page and not be moved. It would be boring...as if
reading a Newspaper. No depth, nor adventure- just the facts.

With Imagination the World and it's limitations are broken. The sky is the ocean and the fish are
aliens. The ground is a cloud and the animals are stars. Imagination makes everything exciting
and all things possible.
3.9k views · View Upvoters · Answer requested by ReBeka AkhTar

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