THE CHAMELEON’S BLUSH AND THE POETIC IMAGINATION FROM SHAKESPEARE TO KEATS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2022.2.14Keywords:
imagination, chameleon, William Shakespeare, John Keats, blushAbstract
The Chameleon’s Blush and the Poetic Imagination from Shakespeare to Keats. When English Romantic poet John Keats likened William Shakespeare to a chameleon, far from being original, he was tapping into a venerable tradition of drawing analogies between human beings and the colour-changing reptile. In literary criticism, the analogy is usually taken to refer to poetic indeterminacy; in sociopsychology, to conscious or unconscious, opportunistic versatility of identity. This study traces the evolution of the polyvalent chameleon trope from the zoological treatises of antiquity, through wonder literature and Renaissance and early modern works on psychology and witchcraft, to Shakespeare’s plays. It shows more specifically how the chameleon came to acquire an imagination and how that imagination was, on the one hand, instrumental in prompting the sort of inter-subjective absorption Keats emblematised in the blush, and, on the other, projective in a sense akin to Hazlitt’s own theory of the imagination. As a result, new light is thrown not only onto specific features of Shakespeare’s art and Romantic poetics, but also onto past conceptions of the imagination and the generative role of zoological analogy in their formulations.
Article history: Received 13 December 2021; Revised 28 April 2022; Accepted 4 May 2022; Available online 30 June 2022; Available print 30 June 2022.
REZUMAT. Cameleonul roșind, imaginația poetică de la Shakespeare la Keats. Atunci când poetul romantic John Keats l-a asemuit pe William Shakespeare unui cameleon, departe de a fi original, el recurgea la o venerabilă tradiție de a trasa analogii între oameni și reptila ce își poate schimba culoarea. În critica literară, analogia e de obicei înțeleasă ca referindu-se la nedeterminarea poetică; în socio-psihologie, la versatilitatea oportunistă a identității, conștientă ori inconștientă. Studiul de față urmărește evoluția tropului cameleonului polivalent de la tratatele de zoologie din antichitate, prin literatura de mistere și opere de psihologie și despre vrăjitorie renascentiste și din modernitatea timpurie, până la piesele lui Shakespeare. Lucrarea arată în mod specific modul în care cameleonul a ajuns să capete o imaginație și cum aceasta a fost, pe de o parte, un instrument în declanșarea acelui tip de absorbție inter-subiectivă pe care Keats a emblematizat-o în actul de a roși, și, pe de altă parte, proiectivă într-un sens apropiat teoriei asupra imaginației a lui Hazlitt. Ca rezultat, lucrarea pune într-o nouă lumină nu doar trăsăturile artei lui Shakespeare și poetica romantică, dar și concepțiile anterioare asupra imaginației și asupra rolului generativ al analogiei zoologice în formulările acestora.
Cuvinte-cheie: imaginație, cameleon, William Shakespeare, John Keats, a roși
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