What Coleridge Thought

          
                                        
                                   
(1971) is a precise and therefore complex book      
written by Owen Barfield.  I have not read the 
entire book but the following from pages 127   
and 128 are encapsulations that might entice                
you to learn more.  [Note: Wikipedia says this   
Owen Barfield entry is in need of citations  
but don't let that stop you from reading it.]
                                                 
Reason                                          
Imagination                                     
Understanding                                        
----------------                                
Understanding                                        
Fancy                                        
Sense                                                 
                                                    
Reason (as "the source and birthplace of ideas")
Idea                                              
Law                                               
--------                                         
Law                                                
Theory                                             
Sense                                              
                                                      
                                                      
                                                     
                                                    
                                                 
                                                   
rho00367                                   
               

Reading book by Owen Barfield 2

         
                                           
                                          
See bl00343 May 22, 2009.                     
                                               
From chapter VIII  The Making of Meaning (II)        
p. 138  [6]                                         
    When we start explaining the language of
  famous scientists as examples of 'poetic   
  diction', it may well seem that the ordinary
  meaning of that literary phrase has been     
  inflated beyond the bounds of reason.  Never-       
  theless such an extension was necessary, in   
  order to make clear its real nature.  Nor    
  has it been waste of time, if it has convinced    
  a single person who needed convincing,
  how essentially parochial is the fashionable  
  distinction between Poetry and Science as    
  modes of experience.                          
    . . . the rational principle must be         
  strongly developed in the great poet.         
-                                              
p. 139  [6]                                    
  If the poetic is unduly ascendant, behold  
  the mystic or the madman, unable to grasp   
  the reality of percepts at all--being still   
  resting, as it were, in the bosom of gods   
  or demons--not yet man, man in the fullness
  of his stature, at all.  But if the passive,  
  logistic, prosaic principle predominates,   
  then the man becomes--what? the collector,
  the man who cannot grasp the reality of      
  anything but percepts.  And here at last a   
  real distinction between poet and scientist,
  or rather between poetaster and pedant,           
  does arise.                                     
-                                                    
pp. 140-141  [7]                               
    Provided, then, that we do not look too    
  far back into the past (i.e. beyond the    
  point at which the 'given' meaning of a   
  word first began to yield place to the    
  'created' meaning) language does indeed    
  appear historically as an endless process 
  of metaphor transforming itself into meaning.   
  Seeking for material in which to incarnate   
  its last inspiration, imagination seizes   
  on a suitable word or phrase, uses it as a   
  metaphor, and so creates a meaning.  The   
  progress is from Meaning, through inspiration  
  to imagination, and from imagination, through   
  metaphor, to meaning; inspiration grasping   
  the hitherto unapprehended, and imagination  
  relating it to the already known.               
                                                     
                                                   
                                                        
                                                 
                                              
                                               

bl00353                                                                                      

Reading book by Owen Barfield

                                     
                                         
Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning         
                                                
Since I haven't gotten very far into it, 
I can't say much yet; but I know it is a   
book I like.  The copy I have is of the          
second edition -- Copyright © 1964 by the
McGraw-Hill Book Company.  I have it on     
loan through a local library.  The first   
sentence of the "Preface to the Second       
Edition" reveals this book's basis:        
                                           
  The Preface to the first edition
  described briefly how this book    
  grew out of two empirical obser-   
  vations, first, that poetry reacts  
  on the meanings of the words it    
  employs, and, secondly, that there    
  appear to be two sorts of poetry.     
                                           
On page 34 is a longer passage I would        
like to shorten but deem it best not to.
                                             
  Apart from pleasurable entertainment  
  (which must never be forgotten), there   
  are two important functions which poetry  
  is there to perform.  One of them is the
  one I have stressed throughout this book,
  namely the making of meaning, which gives
  life to language and makes true knowledge
  possible.  And this it does inasmuch as    
  it is the vehicle of imagination.  The     
  other, lying much nearer the surface of  
  life, is to mirror, not necessarily by  
  approving, the characteristic response   
  of the age in which it is written.  Now
  it may happen, and it has been happening
  increasingly since the eighteenth century,
  that these two functions conflict.  They
  may even be diametrically opposed to one
  another.  For there may be an age of which
  the characteristic response is to deny     
  the validity of imagination.  And if that
  happens, a true and sensitive poet will  
  find himself in a dilemma.
                                                
Obviously, many changes have occurred since    
Barfield wrote his book, and while I have an
idea of where he would stand, I am going to  
defer that until I have read his entire book.   
                                                 
                                           
                                                 
                                               
                                               
bl00343