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?
Literature
What is the significance of imagination to the Romantics? Why is imagination important to the Romantics?
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Content: Later he promises that his child will know nature intimately. It is not only his imagination to see the world as a better place, but it is a quality that adds to the effectiveness of his writing. For instance, Coleridge uses his imagination to personify frost in his poem, "Frost at Midnight." He also is able to make his poetry come alive with the use of his imagination in providing moving and descriptive images, especially of nature: But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags...
How wonderful for us to hear a father's words as he imagines his child's experience with nature so close, personal and free, as a breeze moves freely about, intimately knowing every surface it touches: mountains or sandy shores. The imagination of the Romantics not only allowed them to envision a better world, but provided them with the tools to make their poetry come alive to the reader, even so many years later. Approved by eNotes Editorial Team
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Part of the reaction was to the position (s) of philosophers like John Locke. Locke argued that all knowledge comes through the senses;