By: Rebecca Beyer and Victoria Battaglia<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Innocence and Imagination: Joseph Addison\u2019s \u201cPleasures of the Imagination\u201d and Alexander Pope\u2019s \u201cEloisa to Abelard\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joseph Addison\u2019s philosophical essay \u201cPleasures of the Imagination,\u201d published in The Spectator<\/em> (1712), takes a wary approach to the imagination. According to Addison, if employed properly, the imagination can be a means for one to avoid falling into slothful or illicit ways. Addison goes so far as to claim that if one fails to widen \u201cthe sphere of his innocent pleasures,\u201d one may forfeit virtue (482). Alexander Pope\u2019s poem \u201cEloisa to Abelard\u201d (1717) also considers the role of the imagination in maintaining or threatening one\u2019s moral righteousness and peace of mind. In the case of Eloisa, her surrender to the imagination ultimately becomes a paradoxical form of self-enslavement which temporarily frees her from her miserable reality. While Addison\u2019s essay is promotional or instructive, it is finally theoretical. Addison hopes to encourage the \u201ccorrect\u201d use of the imagination and warn against its misuse. In Pope\u2019s epistolary poem, readers follow the imagination at work in a lovelorn subject and find it to be no innocent diversion. Rather than strengthening Eloisa\u2019s virtue, her imagination feeds her passion, trapping her in an unbearable fantasy. Reading these two works side by side poses the question of whether Pope\u2019s poem serves as an example of why Addison\u2019s advice is necessary or as proof that his counsel is misguided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Addison\u2019s central goal in \u201cPleasures of the Imagination\u201d is to harness the imagination to improve society. He defines the imagination as a sort of effortless contemplation, an immediate \u201cassent to the beauty of an object\u201d (482). Such pleasures do not require wealth or education to access, he points out. Great contentment of mind, he asserts, can be reached by any \u201cman of a polite imagination,\u201d meaning one whose imagination has been refined, making him capable of enjoying pleasures that the \u201cvulgar\u201d of mind are unable to reach (482). This vulgarity of mind has no correlation to status, as Addison presents the \u201cman in a dungeon\u201d as one who uses his imagination\u2019s \u201cpower of retaining, altering, and compounding\u2026 scenes and landscapes\u201d which he has seen in order to find virtuous pleasure despite his situation (481).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Addison emphasizes the rarity of such a mind: \u201cThere are indeed but very few who know how to be idle and innocent, or have a relish of any pleasures that are not criminal; every diversion they take is at the expense of some one virtue or another, and their very first step out of business is into vice or folly\u201d (428). Addison points out that most people fail to remain virtuous when inactive. Perhaps more alarming, Addison observes that many find that their \u201cdiversions\u201d overlap with criminality. According to Addison, this should not be so. The pursuit or maintenance of virtue can and should cohere with the imagination. He encourages his readers to turn to \u201cpleasures that are not criminal,\u201d meaning fancies that are not enjoyed at the necessary expense of any virtue. Addison defines the morally compromising diversion to be one focused on \u201cour more sensual delights\u201d that allow the mind to sink into \u201cnegligence and remissness\u201d (482). In contrast, those virtuous imaginations that are derived from sight, the \u201cmost perfect and most delightful of all our senses,\u201d effortlessly recall the peaceful and pure joy experienced when witnessing a beautiful landscape (481). Addison presents this proper use of the imagination as a means of improving one\u2019s mind, having similar effects to academic pursuits. In this way, the fancy (or, the \u201cagreeable visions of things that are either absent or fictitious\u201d) is experienced not only as pleasurable but also \u201cas great and as transporting\u201d as the achievement of knowledge and understanding (482).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A vital claim of Addison\u2019s essay is that achieving the innocent and pleasant benefits of the imagination requires cultivation. A man must choose \u201cto make the sphere of his innocent pleasures as wide as possible, that he may retire into them with safety\u201d (482). Addison argues that one must strive for an imagination which recalls the simple and virtuous joy of \u201cfields and meadows\u201d or of \u201ca description in Homer\u201d (482). Addison asserts that the profane, vulgar imaginings of \u201cour more sensual delights\u201d that men so often fall prey to (482).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In \u201cEloisa to Abelard,\u201d Eloisa\u2019s imagination explores the agonizing struggle between human and divine love. Her mind serves as a delirious distraction from her tragic separation from her lover, allowing her to escape \u201cbeyond this last retreat\u201d (225). Triggered by the receipt of Abelard\u2019s letter, Eloisa resurrects her thoughts of being with Abelard once again. She imagines a \u201cphantom\u201d embrace: \u201cround thy phantom glue my clasping arms\u201d (234). The circumstances of her religious vows along with Abelard\u2019s castration, however,<\/strong> restrict any ideas of love to Eloisa\u2019s erotic imagination. \u201cWhen at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, \/ Fancy restores what vengeance snatched away, \/ Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free, \/ All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee. \/ O curst, dear horrors of all-conscious night! \/ How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!\u201d (225-230). In Eloisa\u2019s dreams, her \u201cfancy\u201d, which is to say, the natural wanderings of her mind unhindered by her conscience, Abelard\u2019s castration is undone. It is in the conscience-free, \u201call-conscious night\u201d that Eloisa\u2019s most natural feelings take hold. Her love for Abelard is not hindered but increased by the guilt she feels each morning. These \u201cdear horrors\u201d\u2013dear because longed for and horrible because forbidden\u2013present a paradox. In the darkness, she is at once most free to feel the love from which she has been torn and to experience the desperate and addictive fantasy by which she is most enslaved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eloisa\u2019s lament highlights a conscience that is in conflict with nature. We may think of the former as aligned with her reality and the latter, her imagination. Her prayers are fancies and her fancies are prayers; it is Abelard\u2019s voice that she seems \u201cin every hymn to hear\u201d (269). It is only in her mind that Eloisa can find the love that has become inaccessible to her\u2013\u2013only in her imagination that she is able to \u201crestore what vengeance snatched away,\u201d in Abelard\u2019s mutilation. The sleep of Eloisa\u2019s conscience is presented as an opportunity for her more natural self to emerge than her waking state. This is reflected in the stark contrast between her cell and the natural world outside of the convent walls. Nature\u2019s beauty has been shielded from Eloisa\u2019s admiration by the \u201cplain roofs\u201d and \u201cawful arches\u201d of the convent (139, 143). It is only now in the night, when in her mind Eloisa can see the \u201cwandering streams that shine between the hills,\u201d that she is able to return to the loving embrace of Abelard (157).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pope\u2019s epistle provides no judgement as to whether Eloisa\u2019s imaginings are virtuous or not. Rather it is Eloisa herself who expresses that she is torn between the innocence of a chaste nun and the erotic memories of Abelard\u2019s love, crying, \u201cNow turned to heaven, I weep my past offense \/ Now think of thee, and curse my innocence\u201d (187-188). She is tormented by both the unattainable love of Abelard and the guilt she finds in prayer. The poem concludes with no instructive moral for the reader and no end to the turmoil that Eloisa endures, other than her eventual death. The primary culprit of Eloisa\u2019s anguish is not the strength of her love for Abelard but the separation from her lover and the resulting feelings of guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Addison and Pope\u2019s divergent representations of the imagination offer varying considerations and conclusions. Addison provides instructions by which one may pursue imaginative diversions in a virtuous fashion. Such diversions, in turn, provide boundaries, calling readers to a proper, controlled imagination, which in turn \u201cnot only serve to clear and brighten the imagination, but are able to disperse grief and melancholy\u201d (482). Pope\u2019s epistle explores a subject, a lover, who simply cannot heed Addison\u2019s warnings and boundaries because her imagination is driven by the love that she once had. Eloisa\u2019s mind turns constantly and frantically from prayers to memories\u2013thoughts of her lover which are at once her solace and torture. Though Pope clearly connects Eloisa\u2019s imagination to her natural self, it is uncertain whether or not her surrender to her fantasies implies moral rectitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eloisa seems to be antithetical to Addison\u2019s \u201cman of polite imagination,\u201d the man who, though in a dungeon, \u201cis capable of entertaining himself with scenes and landscapes more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole compass of nature\u201d (481). While the memories of Abelard to which Eloisa\u2019s mind inevitably returns are also more inviting than the convent walls which surround her, they consume her thoughts entirely, affecting her every moment and every prayer. Addison would surely condemn Eloisa\u2019s imagination for its sensuality; her fancies are based on sexual feelings instead of beautiful sights of the natural world. This distraught nun\u2019s mind might be an example of those whom Addison decries as besieged by vulgar and untamed imaginations. Her bedtime fantasies are far from those which Addison would present as \u201cidle and innocent\u201d due to their erotic nature (482). It is clear that Eloisa is herself unable to unite her sexualized love for Abelard and her devotion to God for the entirety of the poem, unable to \u201cdistinguish penitence from love\u201d (194).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The goal of each writer differs greatly. Addison\u2019s intention is to promote self-improvement in society. The \u201cpolite imagination\u201d, Addison believes, can be used to illuminate a \u201cmultitude of charms\u201d in one\u2019s surroundings (482). Addison\u2019s moralistic bent is clear\u00ad\u2013\u2013he wants to encourage his readers touse their imagination, but to do so by reining in wild, uncontrolled thoughts. Addison has not written a provoking narrative but an argumentative essay that presents the imagination as a form of pleasure that all can partake in. Pope\u2019s work, in contrast, examines a mind in turmoil following a traumatic event. Eloisa\u2019s addictive fantasy is a result of the conflict between the pleasant memories of Abelard\u2019s love and the oppressive reality of their separation. Whereas Addison\u2019s essay is a more clinical analysis of the imagination, Pope\u2019s poem takes us inside the afflicted mind of Eloisa. This may explain why Pope leaves the moral question of whether the imagination is good because natural or dangerous because untamed unanswered. Unlike Addison, Pope allows his own opinion on the matter to remain unclear, surrendering the moral conclusion to the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Addison presents the imagination as an \u201cinnocent\u201d means of self-improvement when correctly used and a \u201ccriminal\u201d hindrance to virtue when used without restraint (482). Pope explores an imagination devoid of control and refinement, torn between religious devotion and human love. Addison\u2019s essay is ultimately a rejection of nature before it takes hold, whereas Pope\u2019s poem delves into a nature that has already transgressed beyond control into obsession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Rebecca Beyer and Victoria Battaglia Innocence and Imagination: Joseph Addison\u2019s \u201cPleasures of the Imagination\u201d and Alexander Pope\u2019s \u201cEloisa to Abelard\u201d Joseph Addison\u2019s philosophical essay \u201cPleasures of the Imagination,\u201d published in The Spectator (1712), takes a wary approach to the imagination. According to Addison, if employed properly, the imagination can be a means for one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volume-5"],"yoast_head":"\n