Comment on Wordsworth’s distinction between Imagination and
Fancy in Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
In order to understand Wordsworth's view on imagination, we
have to go to his poems, and to his letter. In ‘The Preface’, the word occur
first when Wordsworth tells us that his purpose has been to select incidents
and situations from humble and common life and make them look uncommon and
unusual by throwing over them a coloring of imagination. This clarifies that
imagination is a transforming and transfiguring power which presents the usual
in an unusual light. The poet does not merely present “image of men and nature”
but he also shapes, modifies and transfigures that image by the power of his
imagination. Thus imagination is creative; it is a shaping or ‘plastic’ power.
The poet is half the creator; he is not a mere mechanical reproducer of outward
reality, but a specially gifted individual, who, like God, is a creator or
maker as he adds something to nature and reality. It is the imagination of the
poet which imparts to nature, the ‘glory and freshness of a dream’, the light
that never was on land and sea.
In making the poet’s imagination a creative power, Wordsworth goes counter to the ‘associationist’ theories of David Hartley who had considerable influences on the poet. Hartley and other associationist psychologist thought that the human mind receives impressions from the external words, which are therein associated together to form images. In this way, the mind merely reflects the external world. But according to Wordsworth the mind does not merely reflect passively, it actively creates. At least, it is half the creator. Imagination is the active, creative faculty of the mind. As Florence Marsh points out, for Wordsworth imagination is a mental power which alters the external world creatively.
In making the poet’s imagination a creative power, Wordsworth goes counter to the ‘associationist’ theories of David Hartley who had considerable influences on the poet. Hartley and other associationist psychologist thought that the human mind receives impressions from the external words, which are therein associated together to form images. In this way, the mind merely reflects the external world. But according to Wordsworth the mind does not merely reflect passively, it actively creates. At least, it is half the creator. Imagination is the active, creative faculty of the mind. As Florence Marsh points out, for Wordsworth imagination is a mental power which alters the external world creatively.
“It is a word of higher import, denoting
operations of the human mind upon those objects and processes of creation or
composition, governed by certain fixed laws."
