English Romanticism

1. English Romanticism The RomanticImagination

2. Blake: A Vision of theLastJudgment (1810) Thisworld of Imagination is the World of Eternity; it is theDivinebosomintowhichweshallall go afterthedeath of theVegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite & Eternal, whereastheworld of Generation, orVegetation, is Finite & Temporal. ThereExistinthatEternal World thePermanentRealities of EveryThingwhichweseereflectedinthisVegetableGlassofNature.

3. Coleridge: The Nightingale (1798) she knows all their notes, That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment’s space, What time the moon was lost behind a cloud, Hath heard a pause of silence: till the Moon Emerging, hath awaken’d earth and sky With one sensation, and those wakeful Birds Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy, As if one quick and sudden Gale had swept An hundred airy harps! And she hath watch’d Many a Nightingale perch giddily On blosmy twig still swinging from the breeze, And to that motion tune his wanton song, Like tipsy Joy that reels with tossing head.

4. Coleridge: KublaKhan I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

5. Shakespeare: A MidsummerNight’sDream (v, 1 [1600]) • THESEUS More strangethantrue: I nevermaybelieveTheseantiquefables, northesefairytoys.Lovers and madmenhavesuchseethingbrains,Suchshapingfantasies, thatapprehendMore thancoolreasonevercomprehends.The lunatic, thelover and thepoetAre of imaginationallcompact:Onesees more devilsthanvasthellcan hold,That is, themadman: thelover, allasfrantic,SeesHelen'sbeautyin a brow of Egypt:The poet'seye, infinefrenzyrolling,Dothglancefromheaventoearth, fromearthtoheaven;And asimaginationbodiesforthThe forms of thingsunknown, thepoet'spenTurnsthemtoshapes and givestoairynothingA local habitation and a name.

6. Theories of theimagination

7. Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (1651) [I]magination and memory, arebutonething, whichfordiversconsiderationshathdiversnames […] [I]magination being only of thosethingswhichhavebeenformerlyperceivedbysense, eitherallatonce, orbypartsatseveraltimes; theformer, (which is theimaginingthewholeobject, asitwaspresentedtothesense) issimpleimagination; aswhenoneimagineth a man, orhorse, which he hathseenbefore. The other is compounded; aswhenfromthesight of a man atonetime, and of a horseatanother, weconceiveinour mind a Centaur.

8. Coleridge: BiographiaLiteraria (1817) 1) The Imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. 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 to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

9. 2) Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.

10. Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Defence of Poetry (1819) Intheinfancy of societyeveryauthor is necessarily a poet, becauselanguageitself is poetry; and to be a poet is toapprehendthetrue and thebeautiful, in a word, thegoodwhichexistsintherelation, subsisting, firstbetweenexistence and perception, andsecondlybetweenperceptionandexpression. Everyoriginallanguageneartoitssource is initselfthechaos of a cyclicpoem: thecopiousness of lexicography and thedistinctions of grammararetheworksof a laterage, and aremerelythecatalogueandtheform of thecreationsofpoetry.

11. Poets, accordingtothecircumstances of theage and nationinwhichtheyappeared, werecalled, intheearlierepochs of theworld, legislators, orprophets: a poetessentiallycomprises and unitesboththesecharacters. For he notonlybeholdsintenselythepresentasit is, and discoversthoselawsaccordingtowhichpresentthingsoughtto be ordered, but he beholdsthefutureinthepresent, and histhoughtsarethegerms of theflower and thefruit of latesttime.

12. Butpoetryin a more restrictedsenseexpressesthosearrangements of language, and especiallymetricallanguage, whicharecreatedbythatimperialfaculty, whosethrone is curtainedwithintheinvisiblenature of man. A poem is thevery image of life expressedinitseternaltruth.

13. Keats’s letter to Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817 I wish I was as certain of the end of all our troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination—What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth–whether it existed before or not–for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty

14. To George and Tom Keats, 22 Dec.1817 ...several things dove-tailed in my mind, and it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously–I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...

15. John Keats: Odeto a Nightingale My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

16. Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

17. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod.

18. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?