Editing Suspension of disbelief (section)

== Origin ==
The phrase first appeared in English poet and [[Aesthetics|aesthetic]] philosopher [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]]'s ''[[Biographia Literaria]]'', where he suggested that if an author could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a story with implausible elements, the reader would willingly suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the narrative.<ref name="coleridge">{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69385/from-biographia-literaria-chapter-xiv|title=from ''Biographia Literaria'', Chapter XIV|last=Coleridge|first=Samuel Taylor|website=[[Poetry Foundation]]|date=13 March 2020 }}</ref> Coleridge was interested in returning fantastic elements to poetry and developed the concept to support how a modern, enlightened audience would continue to enjoy such types of literature. Coleridge suggested that his work, such as ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'', his collaboration with [[William Wordsworth]], essentially involved attempting to explain supernatural characters and events in plausible terms so that implausible characters and events of the imagination can seem to be truthful and present a greater contrast between fiction and reality.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Poetic Faith in Film|last=Ferri|first=Anthony J.|date=2007|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=9780739117781|location=Lanham, MD|pages=6, 7}}</ref><ref>Safire, William. ''On Language; Suspension of Disbelief''. New York Times. 7 October 2007.</ref> Coleridge also referred to this concept as "poetic faith", citing the concept as a feeling analogous to the supernatural, which stimulates the mind's faculties regardless of the irrationality of what is being understood.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions|last=Coleridge|first=Samuel Taylor|date=1834|publisher=Leavitt, Lord & Company|location=New York|pages=175}}</ref>

Coleridge recalled:

{{quote|It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us.<ref name="coleridge" />}}

This concept had previously been understood in antiquity, particularly in the Roman theoretical concerns of [[Horace]] and [[Cicero]] who wrote in a time of increasing skepticism about the supernatural. In Horace's ''[[Ars Poetica (Horace)|Ars Poetica]]'', he used the quotation ''[[Ut pictura poesis]]'', meaning "as is painting so is poetry". According to David Chandler, Coleridge also originally drew his notion from [[Johann Jakob Brucker]]'s ''Historia Critica Philosophiae'' which cited the phrase "''assensus suspensione''" ("suspension of assent");<ref name=":0" /> Brucker's phrase was itself a modernization of the phrase "''adsensionis retentio''" ("a holding back of assent") used by Cicero in his ''[[Academica (Cicero)|Academica]]''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chandler |first=David |date=1996-03-01 |title=Coleridge's 'suspension of disbelief' and Jacob Brucker's 'assensus suspensione.' |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=00293970&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA18339862&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs |journal=Notes and Queries |language=English |volume=43 |issue=1 |pages=39–41|doi=10.1093/nq/43.1.39 }}</ref><ref>Cicero, ''Academica'' Book II (Lucullus), Section XVIII (59)</ref>