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

order to better orient and connect the modern student’s thoughts to what was a driving force behind the literary productions of the Romantics.

Although it is seems reasonable to assume that the Romantic definition of “imagination” seems to have evolved as a result of long thought based on then-modern ideas and ideals of the nineteenth century, and the influence of prior great lights who had pondered and labored to formulate their own definition, it seems that the great eighteenth century ideals that were expressed at that time were based upon the same philosophical definitions for “imagination” that –later— were looked upon by our young Romantics as fodder to foment literary rebellion, even though:

“(While) The common thesis of eighteenth-century optimists was…The proposition that this is the best of possible worlds;….(which) gave rise to the belief that the adherents of this doctrine….(were) insensible to all the pain and frustration and conflict which are manifest through the entire range of sentient life… far from asserting the unreality of evils, the philosophical optimist in the eighteenth century was chiefly occupied in demonstrating their necessity (Lovejoy 319).”

Lovejoy adds that “the logical exigencies of the optimistic argument involved…ideas pregnant with important consequences for both ethics and aesthetics, since they were to be among the most distinctive elements in what perhaps best deserves to be named ‘Romanticism’ (319).”

The definition of Imagination, in fact, as it was slowly formulated, explored, and finally used by many Romantics, probably needs to be studied along with the contextual consideration of satire, and of the ideals behind the rebellious writings of the Romantics,

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