ABSTRACT
The re-proportioning of poetic values moved in two directions: the naturalistic grounds of description led to discussion of details of nature and their expression in language; the other was the imaginative recreation of nature by the poet and its apprehension by the reader. Description in rhetoric seemed tied to reality and, since the reality was considered one and unchangeable, the words were to represent it 'truely' and 'genuinely'. Simultaneously with the conception of description as 'vividness'— a theory which was identified with the mode of perception of works of art, the theory of imagination and creation—'description' continued for other critics to be limited to inanimate nature rather than human actions or to literal accuracy rather than emotive vividness. The misinterpretation of 'description' as a definition of what Thomson, for example, was doing, is prevalent in other modern uses which define 'description' as 'discourse whose object is to present a picture' or a use of language.
