The Poetics of Phantasia: Some Remarks on the Renaissance Concepts of Imagination and “Fantastic Imitation”

According to the traditional view, the notion of imagination in early modern aesthetics was a rather marginal and subsidiary concept within the classical doctrine of mimesis dominated by rules and reason. The present paper raises some doubts about this well-established opinion. It argues that even if imagination in early modern aesthetics did not play as prominent role as in Romantic poetics, the concept had significant relevance. It presents one important episode from the Renaissance debate on imagination, which arose from the sixteenth century literary quarrel over the artistic quality and the uncertain genre of Dante’s Commedia. Its main distinctive category was “fantastic imitation” — a concept derived from Plato, yet misunderstood and thus transformed.