The Glorious Faculty: a Critical Analysis of Addison’s Theory of Imagination in ‘the Pleasures of Imagination’
The Glorious Faculty: A Critical Analysis of Addison’s Theory of Imagination in ‘The Pleasures of Imagination’
Declaration: I declare that this is my original work and I have acknowledged indebtedness to authors I have consulted in the preparation of my paper.
(I) An auxilier light Came from my mind which on the setting sun Bestow’d new splendor …[1]
- William Wordsworth
(II) Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud![2] - S. T. Coleridge
The synthesizing ‘essemplastic power’[3] of imagination that bestows ‘splendor’ on beauty, enabling the Romantic poet to transcreate reality in terms of an Ideal owes its origin much before the Romantics, nay, even the Pre-Romantics. In the 18th century literary and critical history of ideas, as espoused by contemporary litterateur Joseph Addison on whom the status of pioneering the theory of Imagination might be said truly rest upon. In fact despite his profound discussion of this theory in his noted Spectator papers, his ideas tended to be, by and large, subsumed under the weight of popular unconcern. The Spectator was principally looked upon as a manifesto of bourgeois issues and probably the nascent conception of Addison’s Imagination theory, along with the disinclination of the age, accounted for the gross neglect of the Addisonian theory of Imagination for years. It is only posthumously and in retrospect (with Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria having popularized the Imagination theory in more concise and scientific terms) that Addison’s contributions in opening up a new vista of criticism can be recognized. The intention of this term paper is to re-instate the critical relevance of Addison’s theory of Imagination not just in the light of other critiques of Imagination, in terms of its individualistic fervor also.
As a man of the Eighteenth century, the Age of Prose and
Declaration: I declare that this is my original work and I have acknowledged indebtedness to authors I have consulted in the preparation of my paper.
(I) An auxilier light Came from my mind which on the setting sun Bestow’d new splendor …[1]
- William Wordsworth
(II) Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud![2] - S. T. Coleridge
The synthesizing ‘essemplastic power’[3] of imagination that bestows ‘splendor’ on beauty, enabling the Romantic poet to transcreate reality in terms of an Ideal owes its origin much before the Romantics, nay, even the Pre-Romantics. In the 18th century literary and critical history of ideas, as espoused by contemporary litterateur Joseph Addison on whom the status of pioneering the theory of Imagination might be said truly rest upon. In fact despite his profound discussion of this theory in his noted Spectator papers, his ideas tended to be, by and large, subsumed under the weight of popular unconcern. The Spectator was principally looked upon as a manifesto of bourgeois issues and probably the nascent conception of Addison’s Imagination theory, along with the disinclination of the age, accounted for the gross neglect of the Addisonian theory of Imagination for years. It is only posthumously and in retrospect (with Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria having popularized the Imagination theory in more concise and scientific terms) that Addison’s contributions in opening up a new vista of criticism can be recognized. The intention of this term paper is to re-instate the critical relevance of Addison’s theory of Imagination not just in the light of other critiques of Imagination, in terms of its individualistic fervor also.
As a man of the Eighteenth century, the Age of Prose and
Cited: Arnold, Matthew, Essays in Criticism, quoted in Literary Criticism: A Short History, W. K. Wimsatt & Cleant Brooks, New York: Knopf, 1957. Coleridge, S. T., Biographia Literaria, Chap.XIV, J. Shawcross, O.U.P., (1907); English Critical Texts, ed Dyson, A. E.; Butt, John, Augustans and Romantics, London: O.U.P., 1940. Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957. Humphreys, A. R., ‘Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison’, British Writers, Vol.-III, Ed. Ian Scott & Kilvert, New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1978. Longinus, ‘On the Sublime’, Chap. I, ‘Classical Appendix’, English Critical Texts, ed. D. J. Enright & Ernest de Chickera, Delhi: O.U.P., 1975. Richards, I. A., ‘The Imagination’, Literary Criticism: A Reading, ed. B. Das, J. M. Mohanty, New Delhi: O.U.P., 1985. Wordsworth, William, ‘Poems’ (1815). The Poetical Works of Wordsworth, Ed. T. Hutchinson & E. de Selincourt, London: O.U.P., 1904. ----------------------- 1 See The Prelude (1805), vol.-ii, lines-387-89 [2] “What distractions in what we expect! … What confusion of counsels! What division of parties!” [Defoe, Daniel, A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France (London) (1704-13)] [3] See Leviathan (1651), Chap