Imaginative Journey

The imaginative journey allows the individual to explore the limits of their imagination on many levels, through which speculation may occur as a product. The imaginative journey requires a catalyst to initiate the process for the individual to explore beyond the physical realm presented by reality. This allows individuals to challenge and create further values and adapt different various personae to suite their desires. The element of juxtaposition creates a provocative tension between ‘what can be’ and ‘what is’ for the individual. Through Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Lime Tree Bower My Prison, Robert Frost’s The Road not Taken and George Orwell’s Animal Farm, it becomes evident that when utilizing the imagination, the journey established in ones mind allows us to re-shape and reflect upon the new insight gained, and discover new perspectives.

Coleridge’s This Lime Tree Bower, my Prison is a conversational poem, which places the emphasis on the journey, whilst engaging the individual, to allow understanding of imaginative concepts, which reshape our reality.

The opening line “well they are gone, and here I must remain”

The evocative language used traces their journey through nature, “the roaring dell”, then across expansive “hilly fields and meadows overlooking the ocean”, reflecting both the movement of Charles and his imaginative journey, and also his newfound perceptions resulting from his enhanced understanding; he remains captive only in the physical sense.

Similarly this idea of juxtaposition and challenge is further developed through a different Coleridge poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. The desires are experienced by Coleridge to create juxtaposition between the imaginative and the real.

“Till noon we quietly sailed on, yet never a breeze did breathe”. Language techniques such as similes and metaphors “as soft as honey dew”

There is a distinct use of alliteration and repetition of words, in addition to the use of onomatopoeia, which transforms the impressions of sound into the responder’s imagination as they experience the “Rime”.

Imaginative journeys also allow individuals to challenge and create further values and adapt various personae to suite their desires. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, uses