Critical View on Emma by Jane Austen

<Tab/>Jane Austen's Emma and the Romantic Imagination "To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour." --William Blake, 'Auguries of Innocence' Imagination, to the people of the eighteenth century of whom William Blake and Jane Austen are but two, involves the twisting of the relationship between fantasy and reality to …

…of aesthetic pleasure, or it can stimulate emotional responses that enhance visual images in opposition to reason. It has the capability to wrangle the body and make it sick, to falsify emotions, and charge a language with meaning. To imagine is to blend fantasy and reality in abstract but beautiful ways, to have a mind open to ideas, and to have a hand large enough to hold in its palm all of infinity and more.