Wim botha commune suspension of disbelief literary

Suspension of Disbelief Meaning

What does suspension of disbelief mean?

English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge is widely credited with introducing “suspension of disbelief” in his 1817 text Biographia Literaria.

This “suspension,” also referred to as poetic faith, is meant to examine supernatural “persons and characters, 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.”

Coleridge and colleague William Wordsworth espoused the philosophy of suspending disbelief in their writing. 

At some level, we must be able to recognize a story as something unbelievable – because the alternative is that we recognize a story as something just as real as our regular lives. 

This next video examines Coleridge’s philosophy behind the suspension of disbelief in further detail.