English Literature / Unit 12 ENL 1137 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Biographia Literaria: Fancy and Imagination
Captions available
The idea
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, of eighteen seventeen, distinguishes the primary imagination, "the living power and prime agent of all human perception," and the secondary imagination, which recreates, from fancy, which "has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites."
In practice
Imagination creates; fancy assembles.
Where people slip
Fancy is lower than imagination for Coleridge.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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