Concept of Imagination by I.A. Richards

INTRODUCTION

literary Criticism has found itself as an important and independent branch. In the modern times, Literary Criticism has established new horizon. I. A Richards and T. S. Eliot are considered as The Father of New Criticism.

                        

Simple means of IMAGINATION :  

The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

According to I. A Richards, we can define the term Imagination at least in six distinct sense. He discusses Various meaning and concepts of the same term. Since Imagination is an abstract noun, it can be defined in many different ways.

1) The first concept of IMAGINATION is very common that is the production of vivid images, usually visual images, already sufficiently discussed. It is the commonest and the least interesting things which is referred to by Imagination.

2)   Another concept of IMAGINATION is the use of figurative language. People who naturally employ Metaphor and simile especially when it is of an unusual kind are said to have Imagination.

3)The Third is, a narrator Sense is that in which Sympathetic reproducing of other people 's states of mind, particularly their emotional states is Imagination.

4)Moreover, a different concept of IMAGINATION is the inventiveness the bringing together of elements which are not ordinary connected.

5)Fifth concept According to I. A Richards is that Imagination means a kind of relevant connection of things ordinary thought as disparate which is exemplified in scientific Imagination. The technical triumphs of The Arts are examples of this kind of Imagination.

6)Finally, we come to the sense of Imagination with which we are here most concerned. It is closely connected with Coleridge 's great Contribution to Critical Theory.

In this words Imagination means......

"That Synthetic and magical power,

to which we have exclusively appropriated

the name of Imagination....... "

   It is a sense of novelty and freshness with Old and familiar objects, a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order.

   At the end of the article, I. A Richards refers Wordsworth 's pantheistic interpretations of the imaginative experience, in' Tintern Abbey ', which is in verifying form has been given by many poets and critics.

Imagination plays very vital role in creation of literature.