Lost Classics: Wilhelm Dilthey, "The Imagination of the Poet"

Please join the Workshop in Poetics for our annual Lost Classics event, in which we revisit a neglected but important contribution to poetic theory and criticism. 
 
This year's event is on the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), whose work on hermeneutics influenced important strains of continental philosophy, from Martin Heidegger to Paul Ricœur. We will discuss Dilthey’s 1887 essay, “The Imagination of the Poet: Elements for a Poetics,” focusing on the subsection, “An Attempt to Explain Poetic Creativity Psychologically.” Wide-ranging, interstitial, and deeply invested in the psychology of the production and reception of art, the essay supplies crucial links from Romantic aesthetics to modern hermeneutics.
 
(Please find the essay under "Attachments")