Question

Primary imagination, according to Coleridge, is:

• A. The ability to create new ideas
• B. The faculty of perceiving the world and forming images
• C. A purely decorative faculty
• D. A mechanical skill

Answer 1

Answer:

B. The faculty of perceiving the world and forming images

According to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, primary imagination is the ability to perceive the world through the senses and form clear images. It's a universal, unconscious faculty that's the basis for all human perception. 

• Primary imagination

  This is the ability to perceive the world through the senses and form clear images. It's a universal, unconscious faculty that's the basis for all human perception. 

• Secondary imagination

  This is the conscious, creative faculty that poets use to shape and unite perceptions into new forms. It's a heightened creative power that allows poets to blend conscious and unconscious elements into new wholes. 

• Fancy

  This is the faculty that combines dissimilar images, but it doesn't fuse them into something new. 

Coleridge was the first critic to study the nature of imagination and examine its role in creative activity.