Suspension of disbelief

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Suspension of disbelief, often willing suspension of disbelief, is a person's intentional setting aside of critical thinking, logic, or real-life expectations when experiencing a work of fiction, in order to better enjoy it and be absorbed into its narrative. Historically, the concept originates in the Greco-Roman principles of theatre, wherein the audience ignores the unreality of fiction to experience catharsis from the actions and experiences of characters. The phrase was coined and elaborated upon by the English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1817 work Biographia Literaria: "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith".

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