ABSTRACT
In fantasy one is likely to roam in the more purely speculative tenses, to turn these into “real time”. These are the twilight tenses of “what might have been”, “what will have been”, “what should have been”, “what will be”, unleashing all kinds of fortune-telling, reading of tea leaves, and other inappropriate temporal meddlings. Unlike D. W. Winnicott’s fantasying patient, rather than drifting outside time, others who are time-disturbed may colonize a particular segment of time, giving it unnatural prominence and so interrupt the natural flow of past, present, and future. For Winnicott, therefore, fantasy appears defensive rather than creative. Fantasy resembles and is illuminated by the poet Coleridge’s contrasting of what he refers to as the cerebral activity of fancy with imagination. A comparison between two illustrations from the work of the Metaphysical poet, John Donne, clarifies this possible contrast between imagination and fancy.
