German idealism’s elevation of imagination grounded the Romantic artist as prophetic seer.
Evidence
The legacy of German idealism feeds directly into English Romanticism, particularly in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who drew on Kant and Schelling to suggest that objects of perception are really composed only of ideas in the perceiving mind. In literature, idealism came to mean the representation of things in an ideal form or as they might be: the imaginative treatment of a subject through poetry or fiction. If true reality is located in our consciousness, then this bestows a central importance on the imagination. Coleridge’s poetic practice famously begins from an appreciation of the importance of imagination, a vital force with the power to transform objects and transfigure the mundane. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 88
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships