The willing suspension of disbelief

[Carol]

Since several posters on the main list are discussing the willing
suspension of disbelief in relation to Harry Potter (with an apparent
small difference of opinion regarding the meaning of the phrase, as
well as a difference in their willingness to suspend disbelief in DH),
I thought I'd bring up the original context of the phrase from Samuel
Taylor Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria." He and his friend William
Wordsworth were writing a book of poetry called "Lyrical Ballads"
together, with Wordsworth's poems relating to everyday life (over
which he intended to throw a coloring of Imagination) and Coleridge's
poems being about the supernatural, which, naturally, required a
suspension of the rational reader's disbelief to have their intended
effect (essentially, suspense and terror, preferably with our hair
standing on end--Ever read the unfinished "Christabel" or 'The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner"? "I fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny
hand!")

Here's the relevant excerpt from "Biographia Literaria":

"The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that
a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the
incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and
the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the
affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally
accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense
they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of
delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency.
For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life;
the characters and incidents were to be such, as will be found in
every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and
feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they present
themselves.

"In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which
it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and
characters supernatural, 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, which constitutes poetic
faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as
his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and
to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the
mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the
loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible
treasure, but for which in consequence of the film of familiarity and
selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and
hearts that neither feel nor understand."

This passage is central to Romanticism; it's like Golpalott's Law in
that, if you understand it, you understand at least the essence of
Romantic poetry (and fiction: I'm sure that Coleridge would have felt
right at home with "Wuthering Heights" had he lived thirteen years
longer). To enjoy "Wuthering Heights" and feel any kind of sympathy or
empathy for Heathcliff (no small feat given some of his villainous
tendencies and his disposition), we have to willingly suspend our
disbelief in ghosts. 

Obviously, the moment that Dumbledore appears out of thin air dressed
like a Disneyfied Merlin and starts unlighting the street lamps with
the Putter-Outer, we know that we'll have to suspend our disbelief,
not just for the moment, as Coleridge says regarding his "lyrical
ballads," none of which is more than ten or fifteen pages long, but
for at least the few hundred pages of the first book (and possibly for
about four thousand, or however long the series is). Some of us are in
a state of permanent belief suspension if that makes any sense. IOW,
her world is so real that in some part of our minds, the WW and its
characters actually exist, so we actually go around talking about
whether some favorite character is "really" dead.

I don't think that Coleridge was talking about what Betsy HP mentioned
onlist, the author's responsibility to create a world and characters
and situations that the reader can believe in. He was simply aiming at
the creation of a particular effect (or, rather, a particular
*affect*, in the sense of an emotion or set of emotions experienced by
the reader).

JKR, OTOH, is writing about Wizards and magic, and whether she's
aiming at setting a mood or establishing backstory or creating
suspense or attempting to establish empathy, her books require us to
keep our disbelief on hold from beginning to end. how well the story
is told has nothing to do with it, nor does the possibility of an
alternate "better" plot in which someone besides Dumbledore knows
what's going on and the Wizards put up a fight to save their world.
The moment we accept that Wizards and magic exist, that a green-lit
spell can kill anyone it hits except the Boy who Lived, we've
suspended our disbelief, whether we like the way the series ended or
not. Just discussing the WW and Dumbledore as if they were real (all
the while knowing in some part of our minds that it's all just words
on paper and the result of readers' minds interacting with the
author's imagination in its paper incarnation) involves the willing
suspension of disbelief, as does admiring or liking or criticizing the
characters as people (as opposed to analyzing them as, say, variations
on character types established in the Gothic novel or Snape as Byronic
hero or something of that sort).

Possibly, Betsy is thinking of verisimilitude, a state in which
characters and events have the appearance of truth (within the world
of a particular novel). It's not the same as realism, which resembles
the real world of the writer. For example, for Betsy, the robbery of
Gringotts violates verisimilitude because, for her, it exceeds the
limits of probability even within JKR's imaginary world. (I have my
own moments "That wouldn't happen" "Or that's not right. She's
forgotten such and such a detail" moments that jerk me into awareness
that I'm holding a book in my hand and reading words on a page, but
those moments don't take away the world and characters and magic that
I in some sense believe in, the world that's real for me as I read
even when particular moments (the letter from Sirius is one, Ron
knowing about Draco's Hand of Glory is another) seem like errors.
(Until I came up with the *to me* satisfactory explanation that
Voldemort must have used the word "Horcrux" in front of Kreacher,
Regulus's figuring out what a Horcrux is was another such moment.)

Carol, not sure whether Coleridge and his sometime-friend Wordsworth
belonged on the main list or not and deciding it was best to post
about them here