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

everything we process through that same medium – science – that now rules most of the domain of our minds with its interpretations of what is sane, what is not, what is real, what is not, and – no doubt soon to come – will dare dicate to us what we might be allowed to create, and what we will dare not.  As evidenced in police states, satire, wit and humor can unlock thought-prisons.  Satire, in particular, provides the creative imagination its last foot-hold on the mountain of which reason is King. In this King-of-the-Mountain scenario, satire cannot win, cannot wrest away any lasting laurels for Imagination. But it can challenge the King with a dissident voice.

.   Says critic Marilyn Butler: “With the passing of time, critics seem to have become less rather than more aware of the satirical and intellectual strain in Romantic writing…” (191).  That is because satire’s shafts strike most deeply into contemporary targets, some now so remote to our imaginations (dare I use the word?) that we no longer see the original target, if even the direction of the arrows.

That  richness of potential for creativity (that a term such as “imagination” might have had on the minds of those sophisticates and idealists who thought of themselves as exemplars and pioneering rebels embracing Romanticism) as a holistic and all-pervading philosophy with a utilitarian function – dealing with a world in which man found himself suddenly aware that he might be in charge of his universe, that he might be standing alone, and alone responsible for the events of the world in which he lived,  unsure whether or not his actions were be ordained by God(s) or imposed upon him by happenstance and instinct — this freedom may be denied us in our modern

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