Bloomsbury (2015) p/b 122pp £24.99 (ISBN 9781474257596)
Phantasia is the Greek concept that underlies our own concept of imagination. But there are many differences between the two concepts. S. tells the story of how the modern concept emerged and in particular the important role played by the later Neoplatonists. She discusses the Greek philosophical debate from Plato to Proclus but also puts it into the wider context of Greek literature from Homer onwards.
The modern connotations of imagination can be unhelpful: as S. emphasises, phantasia was hardly ever regarded by ancient writers as a creative faculty. It was more a mirror than a lamp: the mental images that constitute imagination are seen as projections either from the world of sense-perception or from a higher world altogether.
There are however some interesting affinities. Ancient phantasia was often connected with imaginative visualisation (making you feel as if you were there), and this was a technique consciously embraced by the tradition of nineteenth century realism. S. shows how this sense of phantasia was incorporated into the poetics of the Neoplatonists as they developed the philosophical ideas contained in Plato. Proclus for example identified phantasia with the bodily intellect which received intelligible principles like a mirror receives images. This covered not only mathematics, but also art and literature.
S. shows that, by opening the door to analogy and allegory, Proclus added an important dimension to imagination, one that we are in danger of forgetting. If we approach all literature with assumptions that are limited by reading fiction in the realist tradition, we are likely to be put off in advance by the difficulty of The Faerie Queene and thus miss its deeper meaning. By paying more attention to the thought that some art has the power to point beyond itself to a higher realm, our artistic sensibilities can be enhanced. This matters because allegory and symbol are still in use by modern writers and artists.
S. tackles a difficult subject with admirable clarity. It is erudite but the many references do not impede the flow of the argument. There are frequent attempts to carry the reader along by helpful summaries and by spelling out the interconnections between the different chapters. The discussion is impressively wide-ranging, embracing more recent theorists of the imagination such as Kant and Auerbach. Although written from a philosopher’s perspective, the book carries a message that will resonate with a much wider audience.
Alan Towey