The Imagination:

The Heart and Soul of the Romantic Period in British Literature

When speaking of the romantic era, roughly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one can flip through thousands of pages of books and journals and still be, while enlightened and amazed – confused. What exactly is romanticism? The fact is, "romanticism arose so gradually and exhibited so many phases that a satisfactory definition is not possible" (Harmon 452). This broad term includes the reactions to the likes of literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics. My purpose in this paper is to focus directly on romanticism in literature. Even then, romanticism is such an expansive term that an adequate thesis topic would be unattainable. With that in mind, I am going to center my paper on the "imagination" in romanticism during the nineteenth century. I will argue that the imagination, not sublime or gothic, is the heart and soul of the romantic period in British literature of the times.

So what then, is the "imagination?" The word imagination, since the beginning of literature, has been re-shaped, re-created, and re-defined. During the Renaissance, it was in opposition to reason and deemed the means for realizing poetical and religious conceptions (Harmon 263). Writers from all times have developed their own definition of the imagination. Sir Francis Bacon once wrote, "history has reference to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the reason" (Harmon 263). This was part of Bacon’s definition of the three faculties of the rational soul. Even Shakespeare says the poet is "of imagination all compact" (Saunders 145). Although a single definition cannot truly and adequately present the meaning – it can be summarized as a "new form of reality" (Harmon 264).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge took a crucial role in the reshaping and differentiating between the imagination and "fancy" (Kearney 181). In Chapter ten of the Biographia Literaria, Coleridge described the imagination as the "shaping and modifying" power and the "fancy" the "aggregative and associative" power (Kearney 182). Coleridge believed that the imagination encompassed the power to "shape into one" (Kearney 182). His definition of the imagination in Chapter thirteen, is much more complicated. He states:

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 (530).

In a sense, the primary imagination is what fuels our spirit, heart, and life. It drives us further than one could have thought. It is the lifeline of "all human perception." Without this imagination – how could one truly write romantic poetry? Imagination is what allows us to embrace nature. It allows us to reach the sublime as. As Coleridge states himself, "It is essentially vital."

Percy Bysshe Shelley was also a crucial contributor of the imagination in the romantic era. In his essay A Defence of Poetry, Shelley highlights the differences in the terms "imagination" and "reason." He declares, "According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another, however produced; and the latter as mind acting upon those thoughts so as to color them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity" (Damrosch 696). He then goes on to conclude, "Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance." Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be "the expression of the imagination" (Damrosch 696). Shelley was full aware of the impact that the imagination was having on the genre. He not only noted it in his writing as "the similitude of things," he embraced the imagination as an irreplaceable element of romanticism.

During the literature romantic period, nobody utilized the imagination better than William Wordsworth did. In his creation, The Prelude (Book Sixth – Travelling in the Alps: Simplon Pass), Wordsworth cleverly applies the imagination as foundation for his central idea that guides the reader into understanding the very essence of the section. Wordsworth, in his attempt to cross the deceitful Alps, learns abruptly that his goal had already been achieved; he had made it over that mountain and didn’t even know about it. He recalls:

And, further, that thenceforward all our course/ Was downwards, with the current of that Stream/. Hard of belief we questioned him again,/ And all the answers which the Man return’d/ To our inquiries, in their sense and substance,/ Translated by the feelings which we had,/ Ended in this, that we had cross’d the Alps (lines 518-532).

This presents a very real problem; how can one grasp nature, feel nature, and be nature – if the one breathtaking, awe inspiring moment (the moment that one feels when a monumental feat had been accomplished) goes unnoticed by the conqueror with the complete lack of the sublime? The answer to this seemingly complex question can be answered with Wordsworth’s next line; "Imagination! Lifting up itself/ Before the eye and progress of my Song/ Like an unfather’d vapour; here that Power,/ In all the might of its endowments, came/ Athwart me; I was lost as in a cloud,/ Halted without a struggle to break through,/ And now recovering to my Soul I say. I recognize thy glory…" (Wordsworth 393).

While writing, Wordsworth can return to the moment and manipulate the imagination – apply it as a bridge in order to reach the sublime. He is able to draw on this "new form of reality" and experience what he though he would from the beginning. Wordsworth very cleverly used the imagination as a "vivid imaging process" that affected his passions and formed "a world of beauty of its own" (Harmon 263). In this instance, without the imagination – the sublime is lost.

The outwardly adoration that Wordsworth illustrates towards the imagination in The Prelude, seemingly grows to be lost when he hedges somewhat in his essay, Supplementary to the Prelude. Here, Wordsworth leaves behind his main argument at one point to say, ironically, that "the word, imagination, has been overstrained, from impulses honourable to mankind, to meet the demands of the faculty which is perhaps the noblest of our nature" (Donoghue 1).

Wordsworth was correct in his analysis that the imagination was "overstrained" in the literature of the times. It had to be "overstrained" because the very essence of the word is needed to develop all of the other "overstrained" concepts that embody romanticism – the sublime, gothic, and nature.

Although Wordsworth felt that the imagination was "overstrained," he also realized its necessity and potential. In book XIV of The Prelude, Wordsworth describes the imagination as "another name for absolute power…and Reason in its most exalted mood" (Kearney 184). With that in mind, isn’t romanticism’s principal goal to empower the writer? Isn’t it supposed to bring one closer with nature? Isn’t romanticism designated to position the individual at the center of all life, and to place the individual, therefore, "at the center of art, making literature valuable as an expression of unique feelings and particular attitudes?" (Harmon 453). If one concludes so, then one can unmistakably call romanticism "the predominance of IMAGINATION over reason and formal rules" (Harmon 452). Again, the contradicting qualities of imagination compared with reason are exposed. Imagination then, is what allows us to liberate ourselves of reality and experience the finer facets of life in romanticism.

Throughout all of the different definitions that each of the great romantic poets had for imagination, one thing remains the same; they all knew the absolute need for the imagination in romanticism. Sure, the sublime is imperative in the romantic era, however, without the imagination as a vehicle to reach the sublime, all is lost. This "new form of reality" that is "the expression of the imagination," "is essentially vital." That is not just my opinion, but the opinions of Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth. If time permitted, I could expand from just these three and locate examples from literally every major British romantic poet of the time. There is not one major romantic poet that wasn’t extensively predisposed by the imagination. I believe that if history had been different, if the romantic period was called the imagination period – the name would be very fitting.