"The hunger of the imagination": discordia concors in Emma

[...]when Emma begins Harriet's education, she finds it "much plea s an ter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts" (69). Because she has been taught to fancy herself loved, Harriet is crushed when she learns that Mr. Elton has disabused Emma of her error. Ironically, when imagination might have been called for, Emma fails to imagine. [...]Mr. Knightley' s imaginings are based on observation and evidence and are more like the reasoning process, not the sort of fancies that Emma spins from what she would like to happen. [...]Austen has established harmony in the discord of reason and imagination in her two characters. [...]of the Pharaohs who ordered the construction of the pyramids, he writes, "Those who have already all that they can enjoy, must enlarge their desires," and they are led on by "the hunger of the imagination, which preys incessantly on life" (118). [...]many of the eighteenth-century novelists whose works Austen both parodied and enjoyed reading reflect discordia Concors, usually of reason and passion.