What is the difference between imagination and fancy

It only combined what it perceives into beautiful shapes, but does not fuse or unify. It is a kind of memory that arbitrarily brings together images, and even when brought together , these images continue to retain their separate and individual properties. They receive no coloring or modification from the mind. The materials have to be assembled before imagination can get to work and make the transformation and synthesis.

Fancy has to do this act of collecting and so fancy presupposes imagination. Like Like. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

Skip to content Home Philosophy What is the difference between imagination and fancy? Ben Davis February 25, What is the difference between imagination and fancy? Who coined the term fancy and imagination? What type of word is imagination? What is poetic imagination? The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward autobiography. Through this discussion, he makes many value judgments, leaving his audience with a clear understand of his stance on certain issues.

Some of the issues he tackles include politics, religion, social values, and human identity. He expresses his own thoughts from a personal viewpoint. Imagination Imagination in its real sense denotes the working of poetic minds upon external objects or objects visible to the eyes. Imaginative process sometimes adds additional properties to an object or sometimes abstracts from it some of its properties. Therefore, imagination thus transforms the object into something new.

It modifies and even creates new objects. According to Coleridge, imagination has two types: Primary and Secondary. Primary is perceiving the impressions of the outer world through the senses. It is a spontaneous act of the human mind, the image so formed of the outside world unconsciously and involuntarily.

It is universal and is possessed by all. It is an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will. It works upon the raw materials that are sensations and impressions supplied the primary imagination. Imagination for Coleridge dissolves, diffuses, scatter in order to recreate, it struggles to idealize, to unify, it is essentially vital. On the other hand According to Coleridge, fancy is different for it deals with fixities and definite. Coleridge further points out that, fancy is only a mode of memory, something we have by chance and volition.

Imagination on the contrary is a divine gift, the poet as an inspired creature, the magic or the vehicle of the spirit. This discussion regarding the difference between fancy and imagination is in chapter XIII but it is incomplete and left abruptly. Coleridge points out that, the mind becomes mechanical, a mere association of ideas, nature without life under the impact of fancy.

Imagination is not mere copy or imitation; it means a power which the artist can use only at his best. A further distinction made by Coleridge is that fancy tends to be too personal, subjective, and erratic whereas imagination is objective, universal.

The basic difference what the imagination perceives and communicates is valid, fancy is eccentric. Imagination is different the supreme source of truth for the artist, and the philosopher. Imagination is transcendental, cosmic, universal whereas fancy is basically a narrower activity, a matter of choice dealing with fixed ideas and realities.

Imagination as in Milton has divine frenzy something supernatural, a sense of unity and a central vision. The completeness of this discussion by Coleridge becomes their great limitation.

The charge is obvious. This is because those concepts cover the area of philosophy and metaphysics. This brief definition has an unlimited scope for interpretation. Coleridge perhaps means that individual although living in a finite and temporal world has some awareness of the indefinable, the boundless, the infinite. He would also say that in the mind of every person, there is some desire, instinct, some awareness of belonging to a cosmic reality.