ABSTRACT
Since classical times, imagining had always been conceptualized as a unique form of eyesight. In The Language of Imagination, Alan White notes that an “assumption of a connection between imagination and imagery became the common ground to almost all philosophers, psychologists, and laymen from Aristotle's time to the present day.” Early in his career, Daniel Defoe defended the unique transcendence of print in this oft-quoted observation from The Storm. Beginning with the Old Testament's allegorical story of the tower of Babel and extending to the prophetic image of a lone voice crying out in the wilderness at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, an awareness of both the voice's divine accord as well as its literal vulnerability pervades much of the Judeo-Christian literary tradition.
