Navigating the Mechanics of Secondary Imagination in the Select Works of Eugene Ionesco and Harold Pinter

Abstract

The phrase “Science and Imagination”, in the most modern usage, has beckoned the interest of many critics across the globe to dwell on the many possible connections between the two conflicting concepts evoking myriad responses from social commentators. There are those who would dismiss the role of reason in imagination as the infringement of ethics in creative writing. Aesthetic imagination in creative writing perhaps demands going one step beyond the contours of reason to achieve what is artistically termed as the miraculous representation of reality. The juxtaposition of Science and Imagination is well explained in the words of Coleridge in Biographia Literaria as “To make the external internal, the internal external, to make nature thought, and thought nature_this is the mystery of genius in the Fine Arts”[223]. The confluence of science and imagination breaks down the seemingly opaque barrier between the heart and the head leaving the path open for the meeting and merging of intellect and emotion. The present paper works upon the ways by which the writers or artists of absurd literature, especially of drama, have used secondary imagination to recreate the experiences of their conscious will. The proposed paper titled “Navigating the Mechanics of Secondary Imagination in the Select Works of Eugene Ionesco and Harold Pinter” tries to explore the nuances of secondary imagination in Amedee or How to Get Rid of It and Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and The Birthday Party and The Caretaker by Harold Pinter. The paper further intends to focus on how authors of absurd literature, like Ionesco and Pinter, reflect the futility and absurdity of human existence by making use of Secondary Imagination in their work