SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

Willing suspension of disbelief is important as it is a psychological or mental process that readers and writers use to shift between words on the page and the reality.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the English critic and poet, described aesthetic illusion as the product of a “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” The logic of the imagination provides a basis for the fluid continuity of conscious experience. In our experimental art work, we have found that viewers and readers can develop deep relationships with texts, artworks, and industrial design objects. People can feel a personal relationship with creative works, see them as an expression of their identities, or as embodiments of idealized social values and messages. Encounters with artworks can simulate reflections about personal growth and encourage people to come to terms with their personal or collective histories. In for meaning, people encounter not just the artists but themselves.

Origin of the termWilling suspension of disbelief

BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA OR BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF MY LITERARY LIFE -COLERIDGE

In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

Coleridge coined the phrase in his Biographia Literaria, published in 1817, in the context of the creation and reading of poetry .Chapter XIV describes the preparation with Wordsworth for their revolutionary collaboration Lyrical Ballads (first edition 1798), for which Coleridge had contributed the more romantic, gothic pieces including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Poetry and fiction involving the supernatural had gone out of fashion to a large extent in the 18th century, in part due to the declining belief in witches and other supernatural agents among the educated classes, who embraced the rational approach to the world of the creation and reading of poetry.

Chapter XIV describes the preparations offered by the new science. Alexander Pope notably, felt the need to explain and justify his use of elemental spirits in The Rape of the Lock, one of the few English poems of the century that invoked the supernatural. Coleridge wished to revive the use of fantastic elements in poetry. The concept of "willing suspension of disbelief" explained how a modern, enlightened audience might continue to enjoy such types of story.

Suspension of disbelief is often applicable to fictional works of the action, comedy, fantasy, and horror genres. Cognitive estrangement in fiction involves using a person's ignorance or lack of knowledge to promote suspension of disbelief.

The suspension of disbelief in fiction is a powerful psychological development that is creative and interactive. Unlike a painting, we can apply our own working mental references and understanding to a text. This makes writing highly subjective.

When he speaks of "suspension of disbelief for the moment," he is speaking of the fact that while not everyone may believe in the supernatural under every normal circumstance, he wrote his poems in such a way that a reader "suspends" disbelief, meaning refrains from concluding that the content is unbelievable, which in simple terms only means that he wrote his poems in such as a way as they might seem believable.

Coleridge's use of supernatural

He wrote his supernatural poems in a way that they would be believable for the reader and able to evoke genuine emotions in the reader.

Coleridge lists The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "The Dark Ladie," and "Christabel" as his examples of romantic, supernatural poetry. 

He used supernatural element to enable readers to feel the emotions the symbols evoke and find the tale believable in the sense that the reader can relate to experiencing the supernatural.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge called drama "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." When we sit in a theatre, we willingly suspend our disbelief because we know that everything that is happening on the stage isn't real, but the playwright, the actors and the audience all enter into a conspiracy "of poetic faith" in an attempt to bring to life a quasi-reality that transcends and communicates some perception about life in this world.

Willing suspension of disbelief- in Coleridge's PoemsColeridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner“ stands as a fine example in which the reader (along with the targeted Wedding Guest of the poem) must accept the Ancient Mariner's tale at face value and assume the old man is telling the truth about his experiences. Coleridge builds this "willing suspension of disbelief" by beginning the Mariner's tale in familiar territory-a ship exploring the frozen wastes of the ocean-and slowly but inexorably drawing the reader into the Mariner's more supernatural encounters.

"Christabel" follows the same pattern, beginning with the allegedly violated woman being rescued by the title character, but eventually paves way to the so-called victim's malignant supernatural identity. A similar "suspension of disbelief" occurs in modern literary genres such as "magical realism" and horror, where the supernatural or unbelievable elements are framed in mundane terms and possess their own internal logic.

REFERENCES

1.www.google.com2. Wikipedia3.Psyc18-Psychology of Emotion Lecture 4 Professor: Gerald Cupchik4. The meaning and origin of the expression: suspension of disbelief-www.phrases.org.uk5. www.enotes.com6. Galgut, Elisa. Poetic faith and prosaic concerns. A defense of ‘suspension of disbelief’.South African Journal of Philosophy. 2002, Vol. 21 Issue 3, p190, 10p.7. Faith & Art: Willing suspension of disbelief by Ron Samuel Jr.