Imagination in the Contemporary World and the Legacy of Romantic Literary Thought

contemporary world – glutted on scientific thought –  to swallow.  So that we might get a better grasp of what “imagination” might have meant to Romantics, rather than what it now means to us, looking back at them, we need to consider that the role of satire has been somewhat overlooked, I think, as an influence in the works of the Romantics.

I consider their satirical asides and creations as a rational response to the social pressures which keep so many writers and artists pathetically poor.  Just as farmers are at the bottom of the heap, supplying food to all the world, and nevertheless  receiving less than anyone else for what they sell  (as that food is processed and becomes more expensive per consumable unit, which the farmer must  purchase back, keeping him poorer), so, too, artists, poets, and writers produce thoughts and ideas which others eventually adapt and enjoy, while the benefits of their labors, which employ Imagination, rarely return to them in the form of monetary rewards or respect.

Romantic Imagination was a dynamic concept that helped spur the fearless production of works which may have originated as responses to yet earlier works: the whole chain was almost a living structure, both dynamic and active, composed of a socially interacting set of creative people, who generally produced their works with vigor until they died.  As the Romantics died, their creative outlook, their definition of Imagination, died with them.   Their concept of Imagination yet struggled for expression, here and there: I see impressionistic painting, stream of consciousness writing, and other marvelous instances of the Romantic legacy still asserting itself in the works of the last great believers in imagination.

It is

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