IN BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA COLERIDGE COMMENTS THAT THE

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ‘FANCY’ AND ‘IMAGINATION’ IS THE SAME AS

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MECHANICAL MIXTURE AND A
CHEMICAL MIXTURE. ELABORATE.

In so far as it involves acts of selection and of arrangement (‘that empirical

phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word Choice’), Fancy is on a higher
level than mere perception or mere memory. But it is below Imagination in that,
instead of making all things new, it merely constructs patterns out of ready-made
materials, ‘fixities and definites’. It juxtaposes images, but does not fuse them into
unity; its products are like mechanical mixtures (as of salt with iron filings), in which
the ingredients, though close together, remain the same as when apart; whereas those
of Imagination are like chemical com- pounds (say, of sodium and chlorine), in which
the ingredients lose their separate identities in a new substance, composed of them
indeed, but differing from them both. (Basil)

The famous terms- ‘Fancy’ derived from the Greek word ‘Phantasia’, and
‘Imagination’, from the Latin ‘Imagination’, have received various meaning in different
literary periods. Imagination and fancy were regarded as a mode of memory in the
eighteenth-century literary theory. During renaissance period fancy was regarded as the less
responsible king of imagination. Whereas, the eighteenth-century neo-classical writers
viewed fancy as a medium to a more creative mental power.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian
published his Biographia Literaria, an autobiography in discourse in 1817 in which he put
forward his personal views regarding imagination and fancy. Here Coleridge pointed out the
two terms- ‘Imagination’ and ‘Fancy’ which according to him were two different ideas to
which he attributed many qualities from his own perspective. It is not clear when Coleridge
began to have an idea of distinguishing Imagination from Fancy, but it seems to have been
about in 1808, because, in one of the Lectures in 1808, Coleridge takes up Imagination in
contrast to Fancy. Since that year, Coleridge often refers to the distinction between the two,
in his lectures and other writings, as is well known. It goes without saying that Coleridge held
fast to this discrimination throughout his life. But we should notice that the concept of Fancy
is subordinate to the concept of Imagination. Thus the foundation of the theory of
Imagination was set by Coleridge at the beginning of the 19th century as the result of his
search for the principle of criticism in literature and it was at the same time in response to the
general tendency of the assertion of , ‘ego' and originality which was the quintessence of
Romanticism.

Coleridge’s imagination in its real sense denotes the functioning of poetic minds upon
external objects, visible to the eyes. Coleridge defines imagination by saying that

The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary

imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception,
and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am.
The secondary I consider as am echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious
will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only
in degrees, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to
recreate, or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it
struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects are
essentially fixed and dead. (Chapter 13)

Coleridge divided imagination into two types- the primary imagination which he considered
to be the ‘living power and prime agent of all human perception’; and the secondary
imagination which he saw as the poetic vision, the faculty that a poet has ‘to idealize and
unify’. The later is an echo of the former, co-existing with the former will.

Coleridge regards fancy as a creative power but inferior to imagination. It is more a

combining force combining different things into different shapes, not like imagination to fuse
them into one. Fancy is indeed bringing together dissimilar images to the main consideration.
He believed,

Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and definities.
Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time
and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phaenomenon of
the will, which we express by the word Choice. But equally with the ordinary memory
it must receive but its materials readymade from the law of association. (Chapter,13)

Coleridge’s thorough observation of imagination and fancy led him to conclude that
the functioning and meaning of the both are wholly different from each other. To Coleridge
fancy was meant for ’passive’, and ‘mechanical’ tasks, more like the collection of facts and
documentation of visual data. Fancy, he argued, was “too often the adulterator and
counterfeiter of memory.” The imagination, on the other hand, was ‘vital’ and transformative,
“a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation.” Imagination is responsible for
acts that were truly creative and inventive and, in turn, that identified true instances of find or
noble art.

In drawing, with Coleridge, a line between Imagination as a bringing into one—an

esemplastic power—and Fancy as an assembling, aggregating power, we must bear in
mind the purpose for which we draw it. The importance and the persistence of the
purpose, and the utility of the distinction, establish the line, and it has no other
establishment. (Richards,76)

Again, Fancy is "the faculty of mere images or impressions, as imagination is the faculty of
intuitions." Coleridge, believed imagination to be something grave and solemn in contrast to
fancy which is light and playful. Fancy is concerned with the mechanical operations of the
mind, those which are responsible for the passive accumulation of data and shortage of such
data in the memory. Imagination is described as the "mysterious power," which extracts,
"hidden ideas and meaning” from such data. Fancy deals with the fixed and static images
without modifying them but imagination dissolves and reshapes them into a new whole.
Imagination to Coleridge is the soul of fancy which is the attribute of poetic genius.
Coleridge metaphorically equates fancy with a mechanical mixture and imagination with a
chemical compound. The metaphor points out that in a mechanical mixture different
ingredient are brought together, mixed up, but this does not ensure a complete fusion of the
ingredients but rather they will exist as separate identities. But the opposite happens in a
chemical compound where different ingredients combine, fuses to form something new. The
ingredients no longer exist as separate identities.

Thus, new shapes and forms of beauty is created by imagination by unifying the
different impressions it receives from the external world. Fancy is a kind of memory, not
creative; it arbitrarily brings together images and even when brought together, they continue
to retain their separate and individual properties. They receive no colouring or modification
from the mind. It is merely mechanical juxtaposition, and not a chemical fusion.
Coleridge explains the point by quoting two passages from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.
The following lines from this poem serve to illustrate fancy:
 Full gently now she takes him by the hand
A lily prisoned in a hold of snow
Or ivory in an albaster band
So white a friend engirds so white a foe. (Coleridge,45)

In these lines there are images drawn from memory, but they do not interpenetrate into one
another. The following kind from the same poem, illustrate the power and function of
imagination:

Look! How a bright star shooteth from the sky

So glides he in the night from Venus' eye! (45)

Coleridge further says:

How many images and feelings are here brought together without effort and without
discord, in the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his flight, the yearning, yet
hopelessness, of the enamoured gazer, while a shadowy ideal character is thrown over
the whole! (46)

Coleridge owed his interest in the study of imagination to Wordsworth. However,

Coleridge is the first critic to study the nature of imagination and examine its role in creative
activity. Wordsworth, his close friend used Fancy and Imagination almost as synonyms,
Coleridge is the first critic to distinguish between them and define their respective roles. It is
his unique contribution to literary theory. Despite many criticisms, from critics throughout
the ages, the unique differentiation of Imagination and Fancy provided by Coleridge in his
Biographia Literaria stands as a crucial and valuable one. Many critics even subscribed to his
notion:

Fancy differs from Imagination in kind. (Spencer,223)

Work Cited:

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Shakespeare, A Poet Generally”. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,

Beaumont and Fletcher. 2008. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/25585/25585-
h/25585-h.html#toc11. Accessed 14 May 2019.

Hill, John Spencer. The Coleridge Companion. London: Macmillan, 1983. Print.

Richards, I.A. Coleridge on Imagination. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922. Print.

Willey, Basil. “Coleridge on Imagination and Fancy”. Warton Lectures on English

Literature. The British Academy. 29 May 1946. Lecture.

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