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

the likely and unlikely consequences of certain choices,  is generally ignored.  And of course, that same range of choice, developed as a result of contemplating imagined outcomes and scenarios, allows the artist, the writer, the poet, the logician and the scientist to make better creative choices in their respective fields.

Imagination, even today, might be understood, then, under Wordsworth’s interpretation as a device or resource— a potential means, one might say– to obtain or to take advantage of a strategy with which to cope with events or ideas potentially unendurable, or, to produce new ones, relative to, or irrelevant to, one’s surroundings, milieu, and environment, with the understanding that to exert Imagination is to utilize a key element in the successful adaptation, or expression, of the human being.

The Wordsworthian definition of Imagination empowers.  It is a passport to new and unimagined events, to possible worlds otherwise unable to be entered without permission from some higher authority, whether deity or dictator.   I suggest that the Romantic approach to Imagination allows the mind a degree of freedom for radical exploration which modern definitions might eventually deny to us (if we do not wish to be regarded as somehow overly creative, and, therefore, possibly mentally unstable, etc.).

In all such considerations, the element of satire should not be ignored.  Imagination, alone, in any realization as a movement by Romantic writers/poets worthy of adoption in our own philosophy, must not exclude the consideration of the role of satire in its implementation.  Satire can mask or disguise the creative product, allowing it to be a sugar-coating for what otherwise might be a difficult pill for a

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