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ÁLVARO ALBARRÁN GUTIÉRREZ
Universidad de Sevilla
albarran@us.es
<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9619-8861>
THE POWER OF FANCY: LIBERTY
AND IMAGINATION IN PHILIP FRENEAU’S
COLLEGE WRITINGS
EL PODER DE LA FANTASÍA: LIBERTAD E
IMAGINACIÓN EN LOS ESCRITOS
UNIVERSITARIOS DE PHILIP FRENEAU
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202510922
Abstract
Like other prominent members of the revolutionary generation, Philip Freneau
lived his formative years against the backdrop of the imperial crisis that would
lead to the independence of the US in 1776, and this would make a lasting
impression on his later life and writings, especially as regards his ideas on the
possibility for creativity and individuality in a time of increasing politicisation.
This article examines the particular terms in which the poet’s college experiences
influenced his conflicted take on liberty and imagination, which remained a
persistent concern both during and after his time at the College of New Jersey
(now Princeton). Drawing on original archival work, the article focuses on his
most extensive reflection on the matter, “The Power of Fancy” (1770), and offers
an analysis of the poem in connection with several other prominent eighteenth-
century philosophical and literary texts that also address the imaginative faculty.
In so doing, the article reveals the workings of an anti-imaginistic tradition,
instilled through the curriculum of late-colonial Princeton, in Freneau’s college
writings — a tradition that the poet both espoused and resisted on his quest for
individual autonomy and creative expression.
Keywords: Philip Freneau, fancy, liberty, imagination, Princeton.
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Resumen
Al igual que otros miembros de la generación revolucionaria, Philip Freneau vivió
sus años de formación en el contexto de la crisis imperial que llevaría a la fundación
de los EEUU y esto, por diversas razones, sería decisivo para su vida y escritos
posteriores, especialmente en lo concerniente a la posibilidad de aseverar su
individualidad creativa en una época de creciente politización. Este artículo
examina los términos en los que la experiencia universitaria del poeta influyó en
su forma de entender la libertad y la imaginación, una problemática que siguió
siendo una preocupación persistente del autor tanto durante como después de su
estancia en el College of New Jersey (ahora Princeton). Basado en un trabajo de
archivo original, el artículo se centra en la reflexión más extensa sobre el tema que
hizo el autor, “The Power of Fancy” (1770), comparando el poema con otros
textos filosóficos y literarios del siglo XVIII que reflexionan también sobre la
imaginación. Al hacerlo, el artículo revela la influencia de una tradición anti-
imaginista, inculcada a través del plan de estudios del Princeton tardocolonial, en
los escritos universitarios de Freneau — una tradición que el poeta abrazó y
resistió a la par en su esfuerzo por encontrar la forma de disfrutar de autonomía
individual y expresión creativa.
Palabras clave: Philip Freneau, fantasía, libertad, imaginación, Princeton.
1. Introduction
Notwithstanding his relative obscurity in contemporary criticism, Philip Freneau
has been credited as “one of the founders of American literature” (Sayre 2017: 59)
and “an author who was inextricably bound up in the political and aesthetic
identity of the newly formed United States” (Gailey 2015: 14). Also known as the
“Poet of the Revolution” and, by some accounts, as the “Father of American
Poetry”, Freneau flourished during the Revolutionary War and early national
period, when he devoted his work to a staunch republican and liberal agenda in the
service of patriotism and, subsequently, the French Revolution and the Jeffersonian-
Republican party. At the heart of his literary as well as journalistic writings lay a
profound concern with the nature of liberty and imagination, and the constraints
besetting creative exploration and individual self-assertion in the newly founded
republic (Broderick 2003: 7-12; Daniel 2009: 66-72; Anderson 2015: 208-213).
In 1770, just two years after his admission to the College of New Jersey (now
Princeton), Philip Freneau composed “The Power of Fancy”. Like Phillis Wheatley’s
“On Imagination” (1773), the poem examines the liberating potency inherent in
the imagination (or fancy) over the poetic mind and the creative process the power
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of fancy appears to enable.1 Foremost in the text lies the idea that fancy, the “regent
of the mind” (1786: l. 4), is a superior faculty of cognition, divine in nature and
unlimited in scope. The “spark” (ll. 5, 7) where humankind may trace “[r]
esemblance to the immortal race” (l. 10), fancy seems to provide the poet privileged
access to an alternative mode of perception, one that allows him to escape the
limitations of “[s]ense” (l. 82) by exposing him, “in vision” (l. 106), to “[n]oble
fabrics” (l. 23), “livelier colours” (l. 108) and “[e]ndless images” (l. 143) of “[i]deal
objects” (l. 145). Prima facie, such an experience would appear a form of liberation,
physical as well as cognitive in nature. On careful consideration, however, engaging
the power of fancy affords the poet nothing but a new form of submission, for
fancy, reluctant to let him roam at will, assumes not only a mediatory but also a
supervisory role in the poet’s journey to her “painted realms” (l. 142). Echoing
Wheatley’s “roving Fancy” (1988: l. 9), which released the poetic mind only to
have it bound into “soft captivity” (1988: l. 12), Freneau’s fancy comes across as a
double-edged sword — one that provides the poet with an experience of creative
transcendence that, paradoxically, can be enjoyed only within set constraints.
There is much in “The Power of Fancy” that may seem, a priori, puzzling, for
rarely is the imagination conceived as a constraining or, for that matter, constrained
mode of perception in contemporary popular use. Revolutionary Americans,
however, remained deeply at odds as to how to respond to the potential for creative
liberation and transcendence often ascribed to the imaginative faculty, and part of
the reason for this conflict, at least for collegians like Freneau, resided in the
contents underpinning higher education syllabi during their formative years — a
period that unfolded against the backdrop of the crisis that would soon lead
to the founding of the US. From his admission in 1768 to his graduation in 1771,
the soon-to-be “Poet of the Revolution” was exposed to an ambitious program of
curricular and extracurricular reforms, primarily designed to spread across
campus “a spirit of liberty and free inquiry” (Princeton University 2010: 237).
This course of study would lead the poet to embrace a spirit of resistance and
protest during and after his college years, but it would also fuel a longstanding
concern regarding the possibility for individual autonomy and creative expression
in a time of increasing politicisation. It is the aim of this article to explore this
conflict and to shed light on how the poet’s college experience influenced his take
on the imagination. Firstly, this study considers several key features of late-
colonial Princeton’s curricular and extracurricular organisation, with a particular
focus on how it influenced students’ approach to civic life and creative liberty.
Subsequently, it examines the poet’s response to Princeton’s curriculum by
analysing his best-known work on the subject, “The Power of Fancy”, including
in the analysis a representative selection of other prominent eighteenth-century
philosophical and literary texts on the topic. In so doing, this paper reveals the
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ideological foundations framing the poet’s conflicted approach to the imagination,
which, under the influence of Princeton’s instruction and eighteenth-century
convention, became a contested site in his quest for creative autonomy and
individual self-assertion.
2. Princeton and Late-Colonial Higher Education
Philip Freneau’s formative years were certainly exceptional. His was a time of
revolution, and nowhere was this more apparent than at the college where he
spent three years studying during the tenure of Reverend John Witherspoon,
Princeton’s sixth president and soon-to-be signer of the Declaration of
Independence. A hotbed of revolutionary sentiment, late-colonial Princeton was
no ordinary college but, rather, one of the most politicised institutions of higher
education across the Atlantic seaboard. “No other college”, as John Murrin
notes, “was so nearly unanimous in support of the patriot cause. Trustees, faculty,
and nearly all alumni and students rallied to the Revolution” (1996: xxi).
However, Princeton was not the only college whose students (or faculty) openly
challenged Britain’s policies in the 1760s and 1770s — nor could this be the case,
considering how far-reaching resistance to such reforms proved to be. Just like
colonials from Boston to Savannah were beginning to challenge parliamentary
abuse, students from Dartmouth to William and Mary were protesting on and off
campus, burning tea, letters and effigies, boycotting local retailers, wearing
homespun, and organising debates on subjects as varied as “Monarchy”,
“Patriotism”, and “Liberty” (Robson 1985: 57-102; Rudy 1996: 4-18; Hoeveler
2002: 297-302; Geiger 2015: 76-87). In all these protests, Princeton remained at
the vanguard, serving as one of the foremost contributors to the upcoming
revolution by providing students with a privileged space to engage with ongoing
polemics. For all intents and purposes, late-colonial Princeton was “the premier
Patriot college” (Robson 1985: 70).
Arguably, the reason for this lay with the numerous reforms that Reverend John
Witherspoon introduced during his presidency at Princeton (1768-1794). As
Gideon Mailer states, “Witherspoon realized that rising tensions between Britain
and the American colonies called for special attention to the instruction of young
men [...] [He] believed that educated young men were increasingly likely to
assume positions of public prominence in ‘the present state of things’” (2017:
182). Like Aaron Burr, Sr., Jonathan Edwards and other prominent former
presidents, John Witherspoon refashioned the course of study at the College of
New Jersey to instill in his students a spirit of intellectual restlessness and critical
inquiry that enabled them to assess and partake in the ongoing discussions. As he
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argued in a 1772 address, “I would not be understood to say that a seminary of
learning ought to enter deeply into political contention [...] But surely a
constitution which naturally tends to produce a spirit of liberty and independence
[...] is infinitely preferable to the dead and vapid state of one whose very existence
depends upon the nod of those in power” (2015a: 111-112). It was this spirit that,
during his administration, led him to enrich Princeton’s curricular and
extracurricular structure, expand the holdings of the university library, improve
teaching methods and materials, and enhance academic standards — a set of
reforms aimed to foster among his student body an interest in civic life and public
service (Sloan 1971: 110-145; Dix 1978: 41-53; Harrison 1980: xxx-xxxii;
Robson 1985: 58-74; Daiches 1991: 167; Hoeveler 2002: 297-298; Longaker
2007: 185-191; Miller 2010: 66-70; Mailer 2017: 212-214).
The imagination, for this reason, remained central to Princeton’s curricular
structure. Even though the concept may sound foreign to contemporary political
and social discussion, British and American thinkers had been writing about the
connection between public life and the imagination at least since the seventeenth
century, in a direct line binding John Locke and Thomas Hobbes to Alexander
Hamilton and Benjamin Rush (Holbo 1997: 22-25; Torre 2007: 136-142;
Schlutz 2009: 13-14; Geuss 2010: 67-69; Frank 2013: 48-55). This explains the
prominence the imaginative faculty had in the lectures given during Witherspoon’s
administration, which elaborated on the teachings and writings of the British
Enlightenment. This tradition, admittedly, did not afford Princetonians a simple
definition of the concept. Joseph Addison did not err when he argued that “[t]
here are few Words in the English Language which are employed in a more loose
and uncircumscribed Sense than those of the Fancy and the Imagination” (1982:
368, emphasis in the original). The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
produced a myriad of competing articulations of the imagination in the fields of
philosophy, aesthetic theory, literature and medicine, to name but a few.
Notwithstanding the inherent diversity that defined the concept, it is possible to
discern in the writings of the Enlightenment a transition with which Witherspoon’s
students became familiar both in his newly founded courses on “Moral
Philosophy” and “Eloquence”, and in the new volumes added to the university
library (Charvat 1936: 35; Martin 1961: 3-27; Sloan 1971: 103-145; Dix 1978:
41-53; Daiches 1991: 167-172; Court 2001: 30-33; Hoeveler 2002: 297-302;
Miller 2010: 67-76; Cahill 2012: 13, 25-26; Geiger 2015: 72-74; Mailer 2017:
182-214). “Prior to the eighteenth century”, as Michael Saler notes, “many
Western thinkers defined the imagination as the mediating faculty between the
senses and the understanding”, a mediatory power that operated primarily as an
assistant or “subordinate to human reason” (2011: 199). Up to the mid through
late eighteenth century, the imaginative faculty was primarily conceived as a
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secondary mode of cognition and perception, which, like memory, remained
dependent on, and subservient to, reason. In essence, the imagination was regarded
as a mediatory power — the mind’s capacity to produce complex ideas and images
out of the combination of simple ideas, memories and sensible stimuli. John Locke
aptly phrased this idea when he wrote that, “[a]s simple ideas are observed to exist
in several combinations united together; so the mind has a power to consider
several of them united together, as one idea” (1997: 159). Such was the power
ascribed to the imagination, to reconcile or, rather, mediate between a set of
experiences and stimuli to provide cognitive and perceptual unity.
Through the imagination, it was assumed, the mind was capable of cognition,
insofar as it enabled the individual to establish mental links between ideas. As the
eighteenth century progressed, however, the imagination came to be seen less as a
mediatory power and more as a creative force. Rather than depending on past
experiences and sensible stimuli, it began to be conceived as a faculty enabled to
establish associations conducive to ideas not previously encountered in the sensible
realm. As Christine Holbo explains, “the imagination was itself coming to seem,
not a faculty of mediation and moderation, but a revolutionary force challenging
all limits” (1997: 23). Whereas most early conceptualizations of the imagination
had underlined its dependence on external stimuli, from the mid through late
eighteenth century, it was elevated to serve as a creative and liberating power,
presumably equal in status to reason. David Hume would hence conclude that
“[n]othing is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot
exceed that original stock of ideas furnished by the internal and external senses,
it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these
ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision” (2007b: 47). Even though the
imagination remained primarily associative in its operations over the mind,
in the second half of the eighteenth century, it was broadly assumed that it afforded
the individual the capacity to establish an endless variety of cognitive associations,
serving as the precondition for the individual to partake in a specific mode of
perceptual liberation and transcendence (Engell 1981: 33-50, 65-77; Holbo 1997:
22-25; Schlutz 2009: 5-14; Cahill 2012: 39-41; Holochwost 2020: 6-11).
Such an experience, however, was vexing for eighteenth-century thinkers given its
(alleged) potential for private and public disorder. In discussing the relevance of
the concept of the imagination in Western philosophy, John Sallis explains that,
ever since classical antiquity, discussions and debates on the imaginative faculty
have been traditionally framed within these ambivalent terms: “Ever again
philosophy attests that imagination has a double effect, a double directionality,
bringing about illumination and elevation, on the one hand, and deception and
corruption, on the other, bringing them about perhaps even in such utter
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proximity that neither can, with complete assurance, be decisively separated from
the other” (2000: 46). This potential for liberation and creativity, while inspiring
much praise, sparked the revolutionary generation’s anxieties concerning the
possibility that, were it to establish associations between ideas without limits and
restraints, the imagination could turn into a delusive and corrupting influence.
British and American philosophers often gave voice to these anxieties throughout
the eighteenth century. David Hume, who, as stated above, celebrated elsewhere
the imagination’s liberating and creative potency, warned, somewhat
contradictorily, that “[n]othing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of
the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among
philosophers” (2007a: 174). Rather than as the key to obtain epistemological
certainty via conceptual association and perceptual transcendence, the imagination
was also depicted occasionally as a potentially deranging and delusive power,
which could drive the experiencing self to establish connections between ideas
that could prove to be not only false, but also harmful for the individual as well as
for society. In enabling the self to escape from the constraints of sensible stimuli
and, by extension, reason, it could also serve as a foundation for epistemological
confusion, psychological distress and social instability, all resulting from fancy’s
unregulated and, hence, potentially delusive and deranging operations (Martin
1961: 107-108; Engell 1981: 51-62; Holbo 1997: 23-24; Cahill 2012: 165-166;
Frank 2013: 52-55; Holochwost 2020: 20).
President Witherspoon was not oblivious to these fears and anxieties. Rather,
the anti-imaginistic prejudice that informed eighteenth-century writings on the
imaginative faculty dominated his lectures, where he endeavored to instruct his
students on the means to contain the potential excesses inherent in the operation
of the imagination — an exercise he equated to a form of civic duty. In addressing
an audience, Witherspoon argued, public writers and speakers should partake in
“an exercise of self-denial” (2015b: 270) and assume “[d]ignity of character and
disinterestedness” (305). As he explained, “it is not easy to procure attention
unless there is some degree of character preserved; and indeed, wherever there is
a high opinion of the candor and sincerity of the speaker, it will give an
inconceivable weight to his sentiments in debate” (305). Because they were
expected to be exemplary civic leaders, Princetonians were discouraged both
from showing excessive interest and passion, and from confusing the provinces of
private introspection and self-expression with those of public life. As Witherspoon
concluded, “[t]hey who reason on the selfish scheme, as usual, resolve all into
private interest” (2015c: 188). This, in turn, explained his call for imaginative
restraint. Instead of nourishing “a warm fancy” (2015b: 291), he argued, public
writers and speakers were to be defined by their capacity to restrain any potentially
subjective mode of expression and perception, and “keep [their] thoughts, desires,
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and affections in due moderation” (2015c: 183). Even though he acknowledged
the potential benefits inherent to “the creative power of fancy” (2015b: 252), he
advised against its use. In addressing an audience, instead, students were
instructed to assume a civic-oriented stance, presenting themselves as disinterested
representatives of the public good, able to sublimate their private interests, and
willing to exercise not full creative autonomy but, rather, what Terence Martin
(1961) referred to as an “instructed vision”.
3. Praising Fancy: Perceptual Liberation and Associationism
Philip Freneau’s college poems bear the imprint of late-colonial Princeton’s
curriculum and, as such, they reflect the roots of a conflicted poetics, especially
as regards the physical and aesthetic limitations Princetonians were instructed to
exercise in conjuring up the imagination. Marcus Daniel does not err when he
writes that “Freneau discovered politics as well as poetry at Princeton” (2009:
67). To this list, however, one should add the anti-imaginistic tradition that
informed the authors with whom he was also becoming acquainted at the college.
From Joseph Addison and John Locke to Francis Hutchinson and David Hume,
the poet grew increasingly familiar with a plethora of voices that insisted that the
imaginative faculty, the key to creative and perceptual liberation, was to be
commended and praised but also used with utmost caution. This ambivalence
arguably became central to early writings like “The Power of Fancy”, where the
poet addressed the constraints that hindered his poetic pursuits — a quest for
meaning to realise “the Romantic sentiment of creative freedom” (Anderson
2015: 211). Such freedom and the possibility for the imaginative faculty to realise
its potential lie at the center of the text, reflecting the multiple strands of conflict
as well as the course of study Freneau worked through during his formative years.
At first glance, “The Power of Fancy” (1770) reads as a prototypical celebratory
paean to the imagination, similar in nature and scope to the writings of British
and American authors in the eighteenth century, from Mark Akenside’s “The
Pleasures of Imagination” (1744) and Joseph Warton’s “To Fancy” (1746) to
Phillis Wheatley’s “On Imagination” (1773). Like these authors, the poet opens
his text with an extended description of the imagination, which, like his
predecessors, he personifies and genders as a female.2 “WAKEFUL, vagrant,
restless thing,/ Ever wandering on the wing” (1786: ll. 1-2), fancy is represented
as an active and dynamic principle, “wondrous” (l. 3) and “unknown” (l. 6) in its
workings, and vested with divine authority, presiding over the mind as a “regent”
(l. 4), a role the poet assigns by virtue of her celestial origin. Twice referred to as
a “spark” (ll. 5, 7), the imagination is rendered as a heavenly power, a privileged
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mode of perception that affords humankind intellectual and spiritual elevation,
and a distinctive creative capacity likening the poet to the divine: “THIS spark of
bright, celestial flame,/ From Jove’s seraphic altar came,/ And hence alone in
man we trace,/ Resemblance to the immortal race” (ll. 7-10). The terms in which
fancy is addressed echo eighteenth-century writings on the imagination, which
was often considered the central element of cognition in philosophical and literary
discussion because of its presumed capacity to link ideas and experiences into
(complex) thought (Engell 1981: 3-10; Holbo 1997: 22-25; Schlutz 2009: 3-14;
Cahill 2012: 1-5; Holochwost 2020: 3-11). The primacy accorded to fancy above
other modes of cognition and perception in the period explains the reference to
the imagination’s divine nature and regal authority in the poem — a depiction
that reinstates an oft-trodden portrayal that can be readily found in multiple
other renditions of the matter with which Freneau became familiar at Princeton.3
Presenting himself as a loyal subject at the service of the imaginative faculty, the
poet completes his celebration with a detailed exploration of the terms whereby
the imagination energises or, rather, galvanises the mind. This power, the poet
intimates, relies on its unique capacity to establish conceptual links between
ideas. This much is suggested when the poet describes in the opening lines of the
text the whole of creation as the product of divine fancy combining preexisting
ideas into a complex and cohesive unit: “What is this globe, these lands, and seas,/
And heat, and cold, and flowers, and trees,/And life, and death, and beast, and
man,/ And time—that with the sun began—/But thoughts on reason’s scale
combin’d,/ Ideas of the Almighty mind?” (1786: ll. 15-20, emphasis in the
original). Like their creator’s, human fancy realises its creative power through the
establishment of trains of associations between “[e]ndless images of things” (l.
143) and “[i]deal objects” (l. 145), refashioned into “[n]oble fabrics” (l. 23), new
“shape[s]” (l. 78) and “livelier colours” (l. 108) in her “bright, celestial flame” (l.
7). Freneau’s fancy, it follows, is of the associationist kind, and, as such, conforms
to the prevailing eighteenth-century theory that the imagination creates new
ideas by combining memories, experiences and sensible stimuli. This theory, it
should be noted, had a particular following among Scottish philosophers from
the “Common Sense” school, whom Princetonians studied as part of President
Witherspoon’s course on moral philosophy. Through these thinkers, Freneau and
his classmates learned about the imagination’s boundless capacity for cognitive
linking but also about the potential corruption to which excessive imaginative
associations could lead the mind (Martin 1961: 3-27; Lesley 1970: 90-126;
Holbo 1997: 22-27; Court 2001: 30-33; Craig 2007: 46-59; Cahill 2012: 25-26;
Holochwost 2020: 3-11). This explains the poet’s move to include reason as the
arbiter whose “scale” (Freneau 1786: l. 19) assesses the products of divine
imagination and, one would assume, the human mind: fancy, the text implies,
creates through cumulative and continued association, yet under supervision.
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This point is not to be taken lightly, for it directs the reader to one of the central
tensions the text takes up as a theme. In the poem, after all, fancy does not submit
to but, rather, resists control, which it can do quite successfully and with ease due
to its perpetual, accelerated motion. “Sense”, as the speaker asserts, “can never
follow her” (1786: l. 82), for only fancy may strike her “SWIFT” (l. 57), though
“unseen” (l. 22), course through the “painted realms” (l. 142) where,
notwithstanding reason’s efforts, she holds sway as the undisputed “regent of the
mind” (l. 4). To prove this point, the central section of the text elaborates in
detail on a “vision” (l. 106), mediated by the power of fancy and phrased in terms
of an imaginary journey around the world, in which the poet, both royal subject
and travel companion, joins fancy on an eastbound flight from the Atlantic
seaboard to California by way of Europe, India and the Pacific Islands. Freneau’s
college writings often elaborate on such journeys. The Rising Glory of America,
too, opens with a cursory view of major locations associated with Western
civilisation, from Ancient Egypt to Britain through Greece and Rome, only to
end up asserting that the text will sing “[a] Theme more new” (1772: l. 24), the
rise of a new imperial seat in America. Exploiting one of the most recurrent tropes
in late-colonial political literature, translatio imperii, the text vindicated America’s
prospective centrality in the global theater of nations by claiming that the seat of
power had historically moved westwards (McWilliams 1988: 159-160; Wertheimer
2009: 21-22; Giles 2012: 142-143; Adams 2013: 394). Though resorting to the
journey trope, “The Power of Fancy” strikes a different tone, thematically as well
as geographically. James Engell suggested as much when he noted that the text
“is a progress poem in reverse, a stunning redirection of the usual British theme
of the progress of poetry westward […] The reverse progress [comes across as] a
continuous eastering, an ‘orienting’, until fancy returns to the New World on the
California coast” (1981: 194). Reversing the westward course of empires for an
eastbound flight, Freneau subverts the foundations animating late-colonial
political writings as he reorients the journey trope in a move that bespeaks fancy’s
power to transcend limitations.
This power becomes conspicuous in the journey that fancy and the poet
undertake, itself a trope occasionally found in eighteenth-century poetry. David
Mallet’s The Excursion also has the reader follow a journey where fancy takes the
poet around and beyond the globe: “Fancy, with me range Earth’s extended
Space,/ Surveying Nature’s Works: and thence aloft,/ Spread to superior Worlds
thy bolder Wing,/ Unweary’d in thy Flight” (1728: ll. 6-9, emphasis in the
original). Like Mallet, Freneau’s journey with fancy is conducted both on the
sensible and on the noumenal worlds. Engaging the imagination, the poet claims
to partake in an experience of creative transcendence where the barriers that
would otherwise define phenomenal existence collapse, enabling the poet to
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perceive existence at large. Thanks to fancy, the poet may not only explore the
world but also “[l]isten[ø] to the chimy tune/ Of the bright, harmonious spheres”
(1786: ll. 30-31), a reference to the Pythagorean belief that the movement of
celestial bodies followed a harmonious arrangement, which also informed the
organisation of the cosmos. Fancy, in that sense, affords the poet an experience
not far removed from what Thomas Akenside’s “The Pleasures of Imagination”
identified as the imaginative faculty’s capacity for ontological and epistemological
certainty: “[F]or with thee comes/ The guide, the guardian of their lovely
sports,/ Majestic TRUTH; and where TRUTH deigns to come,/ Her sister
LIBERTY will not be far” (2015: ll. 21-24). Freneau’s fancy, like Akenside’s,
affords a privileged mode of perceptual liberation and creative self-assertion,
which grants the poet the power to ascertain and alter the order of possibility. In
the text, fancy comes across as a creative as well as regenerative force, a “spark”
(1786: ll. 5, 7) that galvanises “[n]oble fabrics” (l. 23) and “[e]ndless images” (l.
143) into being while also reenergising “faded scenes” (l. 101) into “livelier
colours” (l. 108). Elevated by fancy, the poet depicts himself as an agentive force
who can perceive and recast reality at whim — an idea that anticipates Percy
Bysshe Shelley’s claim that “[p]oets are the unacknowledged legislators of the
World” (2018: 883).
4. Taming Fancy: Creative Autonomy and Imaginative
Restraints
The poet’s response to the power that fancy affords is presumptively positive.
Presiding over the creative process, fancy is the recipient of much praise and
commendation. This image, however, is consistently, though subtly, questioned as
the poet begins to detect flaws in fancy’s operations. In the conclusion to the text,
as a case in point, the speaker claims as follows: “Fancy, to thy power I owe/ Half
my happiness below” (Freneau 1786: ll. 147-148). The quantifier “half” in the
passage invites discussion, for it is not rare to locate similar suggestions of fancy’s
partial or, rather, defective nature. As he celebrates the experience of perceptual
transcendence that fancy makes possible, he yet again suggests that, through her
mediation, he can “[l]isten[ø] to the chimy tune/ Of the bright, harmonious
spheres” (ll. 30-31), which he is nonetheless quick to qualify as a flawed endeavor,
for he can listen only to “[n]otes that half distract the mind” (l. 40). The idea the
text advances is that fancy affords an experience that cannot be fully enjoyed, as if
the imagination ultimately failed to achieve the elevation the poet seeks. John Keats’
“Ode to a Nightingale” elaborates on a similar idea as the poem, also a vision
mediated by fancy, concludes, “Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well/ As she is
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fam’d to do, deceiving elf” (2018: ll. 73-74). The idea that fancy is deceitful, which
was prevalent in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings, is one that,
admittedly, Freneau would address more explicitly in later publications. Like Keats,
however, the poet presents the imagination as a limited and, to some extent, limiting
power, which brings about a much less gratifying experience than it first appeared.
The reason for this flawed performance, the poet intimates, has to do not so
much with an inherent defect as with the terms in which fancy exerts its power.
The central section of the poem provides evidence as to the underlying power
dynamic that animates the relationship between the imagination and the speaker,
and his reaction to what he perceives as an oppressive demand for subservience.
As the “regent of the mind” (Freneau 1786: l. 4), fancy expects the poet to submit
to her command, forcing him to follow her lead on the allegorical voyage they
both conduct in her “painted realms” (l. 142). Rather than moving alongside him
and enabling him to explore her domains at will, fancy controls the path as well
as the pace of the journey, so much so that the speaker struggles to follow and is
occasionally forced to ask his guide for assistance: “Lo! she leads me wide and
far,/ Sense can never follow her—/ Shape thy course o’er land and sea,/ Help me
to keep pace with thee” (ll. 81-84). That the poet struggles to follow fancy seems
like an interesting point to make but one that should not come as a surprise, for
fancy “[b]ears” (l. 111), “[l]eads” (ll. 35, 81, 113), “[p]laces” (l. 116), and, in
essence, drags him around the world, supervising the poet’s exposure to her “[i]
deal objects” (l. 145) and, hence, controlling the extent of his creative potential.
Literally carried by fancy, the poet comes across on closer examination not as an
agentive force but, rather, as a passive observer at the mercy of the “Fickle
Goddess” (l. 65) he acknowledged as regent in the opening lines.
It is difficult not to see in the poem traces of the same conflict Wheatley took up
as a theme in her own take on the matter. In “On Imagination”, the poet begins
what reads at first as an ode to the imagination with a praise to a faculty she also
identifies in royal terms as an “imperial queen” (1988: l. 1). For the two poets,
the imagination presides as a monarch over the mind, enabling the experiencing
self to transcend sensible limitations by releasing him (or her) in visions that, as
Wheatley puts it, “amaze th’ unbounded soul” (l. 22). The terms of reference the
poets use become telling when one considers the context in which the texts were
composed. As colonial resistance to imperial authority spread, Freneau and
Wheatley see a monarch at the helm of human cognition and perception — a
move that leads them to struggle with the same tensions late-colonial Americans
experienced with power and authority beyond the domains of poetry. These
struggles manifest in “On Imagination” in what Wheatley, much like Freneau,
identifies as the imagination’s insistent demands for submission: though seemingly
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a liberating force, the imagination ultimately attempts to “bind” the mind with
“silken fetters” (l. 11) into a “soft captivity” (l. 12). Edward Cahill provides a
lucid analysis of how this conflict manifests in Wheatley’s text, writing that,
[i]nsofar as the “soft captivity” of aesthetic pleasure enables liberty of imagination,
it might be read as a bold expression of abstract liberty and a dangerous form of self-
authorizing individualism, especially for a slave. But insofar as the poem emphasizes
the imagination’s authoritative role as the “ruler” of her “subject-passions”, it
functions as precisely the kind of Cato-like bracketing of selfhood demanded by
republican virtue. (2012: 60)
This contradiction, which Wheatley veils in what reads at first as a paean to the
imaginative faculty, remains central to her approach to the imagination, and
parallels Freneau’s own rendering.
Like in “On Imagination”, in “The Power of Fancy”, the imagination is not
presented merely as a benevolent assistant but as a despotic figure, insofar as she
allows the poet to participate in an experience that requires him to submit to her
guidance and command. Although quick to engage and praise her power, the
poet, aware of fancy’s demands, seems unwilling to endorse full submission and,
instead, attempts to reclaim authority by commanding, rather than obeying,
fancy, such as when he demands through accumulated imperatives that she “[w]
aft [him] far to southern isles” (Freneau 1786: l. 73), “[s]hape [her] course o’er
land and sea” (l. 83), and, as the text concludes, “stop, and rove no more” (l.
124). There is an element of predictability in the fact that a British colonist, on
the brink of the Revolutionary War, purports to rebel against a figure explicitly
associated with monarchic authority — a figure that, contrary to his
contemporaries, Freneau astutely identifies not as a “queen” but as a “regent”,
curtailing her claim to absolute power.4 Though still carried by the imaginative
faculty, the poet resists full submission to her authority, managing to redirect the
course of the creative process originally spurred by the power of fancy so that it
continues to unfold on his own terms. Fancy and the poet’s struggle for power,
however, is never fully solved, so much so that, by the end of the text, they
continue to vie for creative authority. This may explain the poem’s concluding
lines, which, to some extent, come across in this light as a call for reconciliation:
“Come, O come—perceiv’d by none,/ You and I will walk alone” (ll. 153-154).
This is not the only instance in which the poet tries to appease fancy and
encourage her to join him, not as his regent but as his equal. Earlier in the text,
the poet urged fancy neither to command nor to obey but to walk alongside him
so that, working in tandem, they might “wandering both be lost” (l. 119) and
retire “to some lonely dome” (l. 35), where the creative process, a theme of the
poem, may go on unmediated by external or, for that matter, internal constraints.
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“The Power of Fancy”, hence, points to a potential compromise between fancy
and the poet’s competing demands for authority — a compromise defined by a
foundation of shared sovereignty. Such a compromise remains elusive, as does the
possibility for the poet to exert the power of fancy without restraint. Rather than
a “conventional view of imagination” as a “cooperative” faculty (2005: 66), to
use a phrase from Annie Finch, Freneau ends up taking a highly ambivalent
position on the limits of the imagination, which becomes a restraining force
precisely when the individual attempts to conjure up its creative and liberating
potential for a private purpose. Given the nature of late-colonial Princeton’s
curricular and extracurricular organisation, that the poet should have remained
conflicted as to the private application of the creative powers of the mind may
come as no surprise. Witherspoon explicitly argued in his “Lectures on
Eloquence” that, when “kept in great moderation” (2015b: 291), and when
directed to serve a public cause, the imaginative faculty could have a positive
influence but, otherwise, “[i]magination is not to be much used” (2015b: 291).
Elaborating on the anti-imaginistic discourse that informed much of eighteenth-
century Anglo-American philosophical, literary and aesthetic thought,
Witherspoon exposed his student body to a civic paideia that problematised the
pursuit of private modes of self-representation and expression. In texts like “The
Power of Fancy”, Freneau addresses the extent of its creative expectations and,
hence, questions the burden and limitations it imposed on the poetic mind.
This query is phrased, however obliquely, in the context of a battle of the sexes, a
power struggle between the male and female forces operating in the text, namely,
the poet and fancy. The explicit gendering of fancy as a female figure in the opening
lines and the ensuing battle for autonomy that pits the imaginative faculty against
the poet, an implicitly male figure, is not rare among eighteenth-century writings.
Barbara C. Freeman examined how this dynamic informed the works of Immanuel
Kant, particularly his understanding of the sublime, which, for him, “presupposes
an interplay between two highly personified faculties of the mind, the imagination
and the reason. This dyad is in fact a barely disguised hierarchy that provides the
grounds for debasing one half of the couple at the expense of the other” (1997: 69).
As detailed in his Critique of Judgment (1790), Freeman continues, “the attainment
of the Kantian sublime is dependent upon a sacrifice; its cause is the collapse of the
imagination’s capacity to connect empirical reality with the realm of abstract
ideality” (1997: 69-70). This collapse unfolds in Kant’s discussion as the
imagination (gendered as female) battles for control with reason (gendered as
male), a process that required the latter’s victory to enable the experiencing self’s
perceptual and cognitive transcendence via the sublime. As Freeman concludes,
“what is at stake is a certain violence that imposes a hierarchical relation whose
paradigm is achieved through a self-sacrifice by the putatively weaker partner” (72).
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This dynamic, which would become prevalent in the writings of the Romantics, is
anticipated in “The Power of Fancy”. Unlike his counterparts in Europe, Freneau’s
take on the matter fails to bring about the collapse that Kant envisioned. Admittedly,
the dynamic established between the female and male drives in Freneau’s poem is
not one that can be pinned down to an allegorical rendition of imaginative and
rational forces in battle. Be that as it may, the break that would result in the self’s
liberation in the Kantian tradition via sublime transcendence does not occur in
Freneau, who, despite his resistance, endeavors to find common ground with fancy
and negotiate a compromise, which never fully materialises neither in this text nor
in later writings.5 In the absence of this break perhaps lies the poet’s inability to
transcend the barriers of the imagination, attain creative autonomy, and escape
from, as Wheatley would put it, fancy’s “silken fetters” (1988: l. 11).
5. Concluding Remarks
Princeton University Library holds a copy of the eighth volume of The Works of
Alexander Pope (1757), formerly part of the Freneau library. The volume contains
a collection of the letters written by the British poet, in the margins of which
Freneau scribbled occasional lines and reflections. Foremost among these
marginalia lies a brief stanza located below Alexander Pope’s letter to Richard
Steele, the co-founder of the influential British magazine The Spectator, dated
November 7, 1712. In the letter, Pope provides a translation of Emperor Hadrian’s
famed last words as recorded in Historia Augusta, where the Roman leader
addresses his soul as the “pleasing companion of [his] body” and compares,
rather melancholy, “[its] former wit and humour” to its current “trembling,
fearful, and pensive” state (Freneau 1774: 228). Elaborating on Pope’s translation,
Freneau noted what comes across as a revision of “The Power of Fancy” in the
margins. The fragment, which bears the date “1774”, reads as follows: “Little
pleasing wandring [sic] mind/ Guest and companion soft and kind/ Now to
what regions will you go/ All pale and stiff and naked too/ And just no more as
you were wont to do”. Far from serving as the galvanising power conjured by the
original poem, the imaginative faculty stands, like Emperor Hadrian’s soul, in a
state of decay. “[P]ale”, “stiff” and “naked” (l. 4), the poet’s “mind” (l. 1) or,
rather, fancy has lost its vigor, leading the poet to wonder whether it can still exert
its liberating and creative power as it was “wont to do” (l. 5) or, were it not to be
the case, then, “to what regions will [it] go” (l. 3).
Even though the fragment was composed on a later date, its connection to “The
Power of Fancy” is telling, insofar as the faculty with which the poet had struggled
to come to terms during his formative years has seen its condition worsen after his
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graduation. Echoing the calls for union and resistance then spreading across the
Thirteen Colonies, the imperial crisis brought profound politicisation to
Princeton, leading President Witherspoon to introduce an ambitious program of
curricular and extracurricular reforms to raise a generation prepared and desirous
to resolve the crisis. This civic paideia, however, remained a source of much
conflict for the poet, whose college writings suggest multiple layers of tension
underpinning his response to the demands late-colonial Princeton made for
prospective public writers. In his early writings, the poet envisioned the possibility
to escape from such demands through the mediation of the power of fancy.
Rather than affording perceptual transcendence, however, fancy partly releases
the mind, but it does so by anchoring him to a frame of reference where his
creative impulses are tamed under her command. The type of fancy the poet
praises but also resists in the text, in this light, responds to that “instructed
vision” (Martin 1961) that Princetonians were encouraged and educated to
endorse — a controlled imaginative power that Freneau fails to embrace and,
instead, contests, though to no avail. In later years, the tension between the
impulses that dominate college writings like “The Power of Fancy” would
rapidly escalate, forcing the poet to choose between writing in the service of the
American Revolution and finding a space to assert his own creative autonomy as
the country came into being.6 It was at Princeton, nonetheless, that the “Poet of
the Revolution” first encountered the problem of the imagination, and it was the
experiences at this institution that laid the foundations upon which his later
writings would address the potential for creative autonomy afforded by the
power of fancy — a power he both admired and resented throughout his career.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation and founded on original
archival work, which would not have been possible without the funds provided by
the University of Seville’s Departments of Internationalization and Research
(VIPPIT-2018-II.2), as well as the assistance and support provided by Dr. Ramón
Espejo Romero (University of Seville).
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1. The terms “imagination” and
“fancy” have a complex history. For most of
the eighteenth century, both referred to the
same faculty. Although the foundations upon
which nineteenth-century thinkers would
mark the distinction between them were
introduced in the eighteenth century, in
general terms, they were virtually
interchangeable by the time Freneau attended
Princeton (Engell 1981: 172-183; Pyle 1995: 38-
39; Cahill 2012: 246; Costelloe 2013: 195;
Holochwost 2020: 9-10). This paper,
accordingly, uses these terms interchangeably.
2. From classical to early modern
literature, the imagination was gendered
either as male or female. Beginning in the
early modern period, the representation of the
imagination as a woman became increasingly
consolidated, becoming standard practice in
late-colonial writing. See Maura Smyth (2017)
for an extensive analysis.
3. . The opening lines in Mark
Akenside’s “The Pleasures of Imagination”
provide a case in point, considering that the
poet dubs fancy the “smiling queen of every
tuneful breast” (2015: l. 9, emphasis added).
Likewise, Joseph Warton’s “To Fancy”
introduces the imagination as a “crown’d”
(2015: l. 12) figure, a “Goddess” (l. 49), later
acknowledged to rule the poetic mind as
“queen” (l. 129).
4. In context, the term “regent”
affords two possible readings: a generic term
for a person who rules or governs (OED n. 1a)
and a specific term for a person vested with
authority by or on behalf of another for a
period of time (OED n. 2). Unlike Wheatley’s
“imperial queen” (1988: l. 1), Freneau’s
terminology affords the possibility of rebellion
because fancy’s authority is as temporary as a
regent’s.
5. Evidence supporting this idea
lies in the terms framing the poet’s relation to
“The Power of Fancy”. The full text was issued
only in the 1786 edition. In the 1795 and 1809
editions, it was extensively revised and
separated into two texts, “Ode to Fancy” and
“Fancy’s Ramble”, which omit most of the
central conflict of the poem. Rutgers
University Library holds Freneau’s personal
copy of the 1786 edition (RUL, “Freneau
Collection”, Association Volumes, Item 8, Box
1). “The Power of Fancy” is almost entirely
crossed out, which suggests how conflicted
the poet remained in later years both with the
text and with the ideas he tried yet failed to
reconcile.
6. See, for example, “Mac
Swiggen; a Satire” (1775), “The Beauties of
Santa Cruz” (1779) and “The House of Night, a
Vision” (1779).
Notes
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Received: 15/07/2024
Accepted: 15/01/2025
