S. T.

Coleridge
 Primary imagination:
the power of receiving impressions of the external world
through senses.

It is an unavoidable act of the mind which imposes some

sort of order on the impressions got through senses, and
then reduces them to shape and size and makes possible a
clear and coherent perception of the outside world.
S. T. Coleridge cont’d
 Secondary imagination:
The power of shaping and modifying the power of
receiving impressions of the external world through
senses.
S. T. Coleridge cont’d
 Fancy
Fancy not a creative power, only combines what it
perceives into beautiful shapes, not fuse and unify like
imagination,
Fancy, mechanical mixture
Imagination, chemical compound, an act of creation, a
mixture merely a bringing together of a number of
separate elements,
S. T. Coleridge cont’d
 Poetic production process:
1. observation;
Object, character, incident, setting up powerful emotions in the
mind of the poet
2. Recollection or contemplation of that emotion in tranquility;
time and solitude purifies and selects the emotions and
universalizes it
3. The interrogation of memory by the poet sets up or revives
the emotion in the mind itself. It is very much like the first
emotion but purged of all superficialities and constitutes a state
of enjoyment.
4. Composition: the poet must convey that “ overbalance of
pleasure”, or the “state of enjoyment” to others.
S. T. Coleridge cont’d
 Poem, organic whole:
Poem’s form is determined by its content and meter and rhyme
are essential to the poetic pleasure we get from the poem.
In a legitimate poem the parts mutually support and explain
each other, all in their proportion harmonizing with and
supporting the purpose and known influence of metrical
arrangement.
Willing suspension of disbelief:
To believe in the moment of reading a poem in what is
essentially incredible and improbable, treatment of poetry sends
the judgment of the reader to sleep , our consciousness is in
voluntary suspension , helps us enjoy what in our consciousness
we would condemn as incredible.
Kubla Khan
 the wild, unknowable power of nature - a major
theme in this poem
 The first stanza of the poem describes Khan's
pleasure dome built alongside a sacred river fed
by a powerful fountain. The second stanza of the
poem is the narrator's response to the power
and effects of an Abyssinian maid's song, which
enraptures him but leaves him unable to act on
her inspiration unless he could hear her once
again. Together, they form a comparison of
creative power that does not work with nature
and creative power that is harmonious with
nature.