Title: What is the significance of imagination to the Romantics? Why is imagination important to the Romantics? - eNotes.com
Headings: What is the significance of imagination to the Romantics? Why is imagination important to the Romantics?
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What is the significance of imagination to the Romantics? Why is imagination important to the Romantics?
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Content: This was important to the Romantics as it was from the depths of their imaginations that they produced their works. Download PDF
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The Romantics didn't see the world in the same way as thinkers and artists of the Enlightenment. The latter tended to see the world as an object to be measured, studied, observed, and controlled through the use of the reasoning faculty. The Romantics, on the other hand, while not necessarily deprecating the use of reason, saw the imagination as providing us with a deeper and fuller understanding of what was, for them, a world full of enchantment and mystery. It was only through the imagination, they believed, that it was possible to begin to plumb the depths of the world around us, a world that, far from being an object of scientific research, was a subject in its own right, a living force. The Romantics further believed that the world around us was, to some extent, shaped by the imagination.