Suspension of disbelief, as it is often understood today, traces its formal articulation to the English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who coined the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” in 1817 in his critical work “Biographia Literaria.” Coleridge proposed that readers and audiences consciously set aside the knowledge that what they are witnessing is artificial in order to be moved, entertained, or enlightened by the piece of art before them.