Coleridge's Fancy and Imagination Analysis

Fancy and Imagination

Especially it deals with two distinctions:

·       Primary imagination

·       Secondary imagination

They are discussed in relationship with poetry; especially with romantic poetry

Another term ‘Fancy’ comes parallel with these two terms.

Fancy: Coleridge builds his theory on basic difference between fancy and imagination. To him imagination is very very important to the making of a piece of poetry. Fancy is something which goes into logical fact. It’s the mechanical ability of a poet; a poet’s ability to use the mechanics of a poetry making. Like his art in using the devices, like metaphors, simile, alliteration, assonance, the ability to use these poetic devices and blend words into sentences carefully to make them beautiful like poetry.

In fancy, a poet’s imagination doesn’t come into play. It is merely the representation of feeling or reality of an observation by making it appear patterned than it would have been, can be represented by someone who is not poet. So, what makes a poet say some mundane things differently is a fancy. So, in order to be fanciful as a poet, one needs good knowledge in language, the way rhymes work, rhythms work and very good knowledge of poetic devices like. So, by using these things a poet can make his poem beautiful. So, what does, a poet do is merely tags his impressions. He takes the photographic impressions from nature or from experiences and weaves them in source of well at, they appear beautiful. But a poet does not use his personal musing. The poet does not create anything out of what he collected from his experiences, his impressions. So that is fancy.

Now, from a piece collected from experience or impressions or from thoughts or from memories when the poet starts using his conscious, unconscious mind and add something from his personal side other than what was there in his speaking from his experiences, he enters the domain of imagination.

So, fancy is a lower class and imagination a higher class of the same thing. Now, what happens in imagination? The point can do two things. What happens in primary imagination is, Primary imagination is creative. It is a regional and it comes from the unconscious mind of the poets mind. Human individual power to produce images is brought into play, creating something which was not there in the plain reception done by the heart, mind and the heart.

For, example, you saw many things on the river banks and beautifully note them describing what you saw, you’re still using fancy. And now you start contemplating on the rambles comparing it with life, thinking that you too are like the river bank then you’ve started primary imagination. The power to give chaos, the certain by bringing in your personal emotions and sympathies, you give it order, you give a colour, you add something to the photographic description and that is where the primary imagination is worked. You’ve started infusing your personal feelings which were not there. Certain things you infuse, you make connections, you make comparisons of natural things with your personal life and thoughts and there you’ve added something to what was already there. That is where your primary imagination has come into use.

Secondary imagination to Coleridge is very high, very powerful, probably the highest faculty the poet posses from where high and sublime poetry becomes possible. What there is in secondary imagination?

It is the poetic faculty which not only gives shape and certain order to given word but builds a new world, a new art theme is produced from a producer or writer. So, it is here where the poet re-creates the world. He creates something different which was not there in his impressions. For example, in Kubla khan towards the end, by imagining the music of Dulcimer maid from Abysinia, he creates his imaginary dome, his own imaginary building, his own imaginary cave of ice which is not the cave of ice of kubla khan. The cave of ice described in the last stanza of kubla khan is not kubla khan’s original pleasure dome, that is described in the first part of the poem. In the last by imagining the music, the poet is able to create the environment of ground where the real palace of Kubla Khan stood. And in the banks of these imaginary environment, he is able to create all together new things.

This faculty, this power of a poet to create all together new things is the handy work of secondary imagination. So, fancy receives things. In fancy, the poet doesn’t add any other imagination from his or side. All that the poet does is decorates the goods, place them in correct order, in beautiful order, give beauty to expression. In Primary Imagination, the poet starts cementing the fancies by something original, by something creative unconsciously.

For example, in the second stanza of the poem Kubla Khan, in the palace that was built by Kubla khan, Coleridge starts musings these sounds, the wailing of a demon’s lover, the weeping of a woman which was not there in the original scene you saw. By connecting these with human sympathies, he is using human emotions.

By doing this, he is not creating something that is not there. In what was already, in those sounds that was already there, he starts feeling the sounds of humanity, the sound of prophesies are being made. So, these sounds are the amplification of sounds to sounds that already existed, the sound of river are before long the sounds were played in savaged place and in those sounds, Coleridge through imagination is locating human sympathies. This is where Primary Imagination works and towards end, he is all together recreating the place that was not there and here Secondary Imagination has come into play.

Subjectivity is an aesthetic theory of mind’s subjective experience of the external world.

We feel pleasure from our secondary imagination.