"When the Brain is hurt by Accident, or the mind disordered by Dreams or Sickness, the Fancy is over-run with wild dismal Ideas, and terrified with a thousand hideous Monsters of its own framing."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)


Place of Publication
London
Date
Thursday, July 3rd, 1712
Metaphor
"When the Brain is hurt by Accident, or the mind disordered by Dreams or Sickness, the Fancy is over-run with wild dismal Ideas, and terrified with a thousand hideous Monsters of its own framing."
Metaphor in Context
We have now discovered the several Originals of those Pleasures that gratifie the Fancy; and here, perhaps, it would not be very difficult to cast upon proper Heads those contrary Objects, which are apt to fill it with Distaste and Terrour; for the Imagination is as liable to Pain as Pleasure. When the Brain is hurt by Accident, or the mind disordered by Dreams or Sickness, the Fancy is over-run with wild dismal Ideas, and terrified with a thousand hideous Monsters of its own framing.
(p. 416)
Provenance
Reading. Found again reading Neil Saccamano's "The Sublime Force of Words in Addison's 'Pleasures,'" ELH 58:1 (1991): 83-106. p. 102.
Citation
Addison, Joseph, and Richard Steele. Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator. Ed. Robert J. Allen. Second ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1970.
Date of Entry
06/01/2006
Date of Review
02/05/2011

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.