Imagination and the Individual

Paper Summary:

This comparative essay focuses on Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" and Shelley's "Mont Blanc". Although it focuses on the author's respective philosophical views on the mind and perception as it is affected by language, the essay maintains attention to poetic form. Reality, truth, imagination and illusion are all discussed.

From the Paper:

"Both Coleridge and Shelly center imaginative investigations on perception. They study the relationship between thoughts and the individual and the relationship between thoughts and surroundings. The imagination is the most direct faculty of creating images in the mind's eye. Perception is greatly affected by the impact of the external world upon the mind. The imagination plays with impressions in Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" and Shelley's "Mont Blanc", to both interpret and create reality. Both Coleridge and Shelley attempt to reflect the imaginative process which is inaccessible. In both works, a step back from the external world is taken, in a reflection upon experience. In "Mont Blanc" and "Dejection: An Ode", the poet engages the external world in an attempt to make sense through perception. Both "Dejection:An Ode", and "Mont Blanc" present a sublime moment between the "self" and the "other." Through interpretation and poetry, illusion is created, masking reality. Both works reflect the world's imprint upon human senses which is organized through nature and nurture. Shelley and Coleridge express value in the imagination, a product of both nature and nurture, containing the essential nature of the universe."

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