Who is credited with the assertion that “Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of will”______________?
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Answer: B. Shelley
Explanation
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in A Defence of Poetry that poetry is not subject to the conscious determinations of the rational will. He argued that poetic inspiration arrives spontaneously rather than through calculated logical reasoning. Romantic theorists viewed the creative imagination as a mysterious force beyond strict intellectual control. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a leading Romantic poet who championed the supreme power of the creative imagination. A Defence of Poetry was composed in response to utilitarian attacks on imaginative literature during the industrial age. Romantic aesthetics emphasized inspiration and feeling over neoclassical rules and mechanical composition.
Wordsworth defined poetry as a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings but did not write this exact statement. Coleridge explored the mechanics of the primary and secondary imagination in his critical prose work Biographia Literaria. Arnold viewed poetry as a criticism of life governed by high standards of seriousness and moral touchstones.
- Subject
- English
- Category
- English Literature
- Topic
- —
- Difficulty
- medium
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