The Humanities Index

Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is a confusing play, but one lesson that it seems to impart is that sometimes idealistic value systems do not work when put into practice. Titus Andronicus goes to great — almost hyperbolic — lengths to make this clear, though it is often overlooked trying to make ethical sense out of a [...]

Shelley, in his A Defense of Poetry, begins by making a distinction between reason and imagination: “Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole” (109). Shelley likens reason to analysis and imagination to synthesis; reason examines the workings of particulars, [...]

‘Arnold attempts in this speech, “On the Modern Element in Literature,” a “general survey of classical literature” in an effort to deliver his age from its current imperfection, i.e., to comprehend man’s present and past. He suggests that for an epoch to be great, it must have a significant spectacle to contemplate and one who [...]

Matthew Arnold, in his “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” examines the role of the critic in society and the idea that the “critical power” is of lower rank than the “creative power” (260). He suggests that the critic, before s/he puts pen to paper, must inquire of his or her motivations: what [...]

Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole.