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Adela Anaszkiewicz
Semester III English Literature
Professor Jim Valero
October 12, 2010
Authors from different periods of time have theorized about poetry and
literature. Concepts that have proved useful for such themes are Imagination,
Wit and Fancy. However as the ideas about literature and poetry change, so
does the meaning and use of these concepts. This is particularly evident in the
critical works of John Dryden that deal with the poetic process and in several
chapters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria that deal with the
poetic genius.
For Dryden, Imagination is the main faculty involved in the poetic process, for
since the 14th century to the “faculty of the mind which forms and manipulates
images,”1 but the concept evolved and broadened enough so that in the XVIII
century Hume on one side and Kant on the other were exploring it in terms of
Art. That introduced the term creative imagination or creative thought that
The aesthetic problem of the Eighteen century focused on judgment and taste.
What makes a man admire something? What makes that object beautiful?
These were the fundamental questions of the time, as we can see in the works
Addison wrote on the faculty of taste. But, Dryden was interested in the creative
1
Online Etymology Dictionary
Dryden & Coleridge…
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process as well as in the result. He was interested in how a poet came to write
a poem, but also in the appreciation of such poem. He used the term Wit to
refer to the results of the process; the process itself occurred inside a Poet’s
mind and involved the faculty of imagination and the faculty of judgment. The
metaphor of the Spaniel that searches for ideas in the memory, illustrates the
way he thought the process worked: “a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges
through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after”2. For him
ideas and images are “a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another
in the dark” which the poet gains access to through the faculty of imagination.
Involved in the development of a poem, there are some specific stages, related
with particular talents of the poet. All of them are dependent from imagination,
and in some cases of judgment. The first one is Invention, in this stage the poet
any kind. The second is fancy, this word is used both as a capacity of the mind,
and as the stage in which the thought is molded “as the judgment represents it
proper to the subject”. The third is elocution, and it is the “election of words” to
properly present the thought. So, Dryden says, “the quickness of the
imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy and the accuracy in
the expression”.
Wit is then, the result of the successful “poetic process”. A work of wit should
show quickness, fertility and accuracy. It should be “some lively and apt
description, dressed in such colours of speech, that it sets before your eyes the
absent object as perfectly and more delightfully that nature.” Dryden tends to
2
Prefix to Annus Mirabilis,1666
Dryden & Coleridge…
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set distinction between a poet that achieves “true wit” and one that fails to do
so. He places particular emphasis in a poet that tries too hard, and can end up
polishing a work too much not finding the right expression; a poet that uses
convoluted language, when in his opinion “wit is best conveyed in the most easy
language”; and finally, for him a poet may arrive to a particular expression of
“true wit” by mere chance, but from his talent it will depend whether he realizes
or not.
In the Nineteen century, the debate on the creative process was not exhausted.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge discusses in Biographia Literaria what poetry is, what
a poet is. Poetry in the words of Coleridge “is a distinction resulting from the
poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts and
emotions of the poets own mind.” He introduces the concept of poetic genius,
which shows some similarities with what Dryden calls imagination, and presents
the familiar scene of a poet’s mind: A place full of images and thoughts,
In fact emotion plays a very important role in Coleridge’s critical theory, and this
is a major point of contrast to his and Dryden’s works on the creative process.
thought, the fine balance of truth in observing with the imaginative faculty in
modifying the objects observed”. We can perceive some similarity with Dryden’s
imagination; Coleridge is concerned with the imaginative faculty that allows the
poet to modify previous thoughts, but places an emphasis in the source of such
thoughts. The expressions “truth in observing”, and “the object observed” may
Dryden & Coleridge…
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imply an experience of visual representation, but also of emotion, if we use
Hume’s affirmation that thought and emotion both play a role in a poet’s
imagination3.
source which produces the corresponding pleasure. The highest esteem for him
not proper “poetic thoughts” but “thoughts translated into the language of
imagination is therefore one that fuses the many elements, and spreads a “tone
and spirit of unity.”5 Coleridge highlights the coherence and unity of Milton’s
poetry, who he considers an imaginative poet, by saying that one cannot move
or replace one word without changing this undercurrent of feeling, and say
And so, we can point out to some differences as well as some correspondences
among the view of Dryden and Coleridge. They both present imagination as a
faculty that modifies previous thoughts, ideas or impressions into poetry. Thus
faculty that provides unity and fusion to opposed and discordant elements. As a
result the kind of poetry they praise is not the same. For Dryden, a well crafted
work of “true wit” is the result poets must aim for: quickness, fertility, and
that poetry for him the true poetry which provokes pleasure of a better kind.
Coleridge acknowledges the role of emotion in the whole process, a role that
Dryden does not address. The works of each of them help to understand poetry
and critical appreciation of their respective age. And the progress of the debate
on the imaginative faculties of the mind, as well as the creative process can be
• Dryden, John. “The poetic process [Wit & Fancy]” The Oxford Anthology
1976. 41.