me We had a very enlightening discussion today about Palin(read plain)speak, which rests very heavily upon tautology(ie. circular reasoning), and how this is indicative of a conflict between the literate and the oral culture. How then does one point this out and try to aim for more intellectually developed public representatives without being accused of elitism? Getting everybody else to read books and attempt actual reason and understanding of metaphors I suppose. Because whoever's in control of metaphors has the power. Which also relates somewhat to the fact that "realistic" needs to be reexamined as a positive word. Often, it really isn't; its just a shorthand term for folk who don't have a confident grasp of metaphor.

We also learned today the definition of metonomy: using something to stand for something else. Which Plato lambasted poets for doing(rather than something useful), but did himself on multiple occaisons throughout his work. Hypocrisy or paradox? Hmmm.... probably the latter, since hypocrisy has a more deliberate malafaction at work. But anyway.

I wish to begin by stating that all of this is purely speculation on my part. I could very well be off-the-radar with this.

Here are a couple of passages from Frye's discussion of Anagogical criticism in the theory of symbols.

"In the greatest moments of Dante and Shakespeare, in, say The Tempest or the climax of the Purgatorio, we have a feeling of converging signifigance, the feeling that here we are close to seeing what our whole literary experiance has been about, the feeling that we have moved into the still center of the order of words.Criticism as knowledge, the criticism which is compelled to keep on talking about the subject, recognizes that there is a center of the order of words." pg. 117-118

"When we pass into anagogy, nature becomes not the container, but the thing contained, and the archetypal universal symbols, the city, the garden, the quest, the marriage, are no longer the desirable forms that man constructs inside nature, but are themselves the forms of nature." pg. 119

The order of words? Like an idea of order at Key West? The sea could be described as an archetypal universal symbol, at least "when the singing ended and we turned the town" and saw "The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there/As the night descended, tilting in the air,/Mastered out the night and portioned out the sea/ Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles/Arranging, deepening, enchanting night." Maybe this is one way how "But it was more than that."

Anyway...

We were presented in class today with an intriguing revelation(thank you Kevin): Ramon Fernandez, that random name in Wallace Stevens' poem, was a French literary critic whom Stevens felt had misunderstood his work. Or was he in fact a Filipino basketball player who hadn't even been born yet? Or was it just a name with no real signifigance as Stevens said? Or is the poet simply being ironic? These are questions which do not have a ready answer, at least from me.

Two interesting words: Tautology, which is basically just the fancy way of describing the state of being interested in something because you find it interesting. And incantatory, which describes something that doesn't need to be understood to be believed, like chronicles of obscure Biblical names(this could launch into a thorny discussion of the nature of belief, but never mind right now). The mere act of speaking them makes them become real through a hyponotic power.

And we are all required to see a film on literacy on Thursday October 23 at 7:00 in the evening. Sounds piquant.

And we have been asked to consider possible explanations for a phrase from Idea of Order at Key West: "it was more than that."

Here is my somewhat belated connection between Abrams' four key elements with The Idea of Order at Key West.

She sang beyond the genuis of the sea.

The water never formed to mind or voice,

Like a body, wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

In this first part we find the elements of the world(the sea), and the idea of mimesis which the ancient world thought so vital. But we also have the artist, who is able to create something that exists seperately from the natural world. And then there is also the first introduction of "we", the audience watching the girl singing by the sea.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.

The song and water were not medleyed sound

Even if what she sang was what she heard,

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred

The grinding water and the gasping wind;

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew

It was the spirit that we sought and knew

That we should ask this often as she sang.

And in these two stanzas we see further emphasis upon the Artist, and the Artist's work(a song or text) upon the audience. So throughout this poem--I don't think I will comment upon the last couple stanzas right now simply because I am congenitally lazy-- we have all of Abrams' artistic approaches dealt with: the mimetic, the pragmantic, the expressive and the objective(this last is perhaps the most elusive and yet the most integral).

I must also make a note that we are to link this poem to Frye's anagical phase of the theory of symbols by sometime next week.

And I have recieved further evidence today of why I must read Frankenstein and watch Au Hasard Balthazar. Occaisonally I feel overcome by panic thinking of all the books I haven't read and all the films I haven't seen. Then I remeber to relax, and remeber that I will get there eventtually. Unless of course the censor-people who don't read get their way and make this an impossibilty...

We have been assinged the task of connecting all four of MH(not MA) Abrams's literary perceptions within The Idea of Order at Key West. After this we learned a few things, among them that, according to Northrop Frye, there are two kinds of Romance: the secular(stories of knights) and the religous(lives of saints). Don Quixote obviously ascribes to the former, which is somewhat problematic concerning that he lives in a low-mimetic world.

We also learned that A Midsummer Night's Dream illustrates every one of Frye's Comic modes, from mythic to ironic. In fact, the mythic and ironic meet up in the herosgamos(marriage of the sacred) that occurs in the sexual union between Titiania the fairy queen, and Bottom the weaver who has the head of an ass. So when you hit bottom, you go up.

This lead into the observation that tragedy, unlike comedy, doesn't like sex at all. Hamlet after all says "there shall be no more marriages." I confess I immediately wondered where this would place Romeo and Juliet(which I have always had a real thing for), since it is what Harold Bloom called(if I remember rightly) "a high song of the erotic", and a tragedy. I realize that its considered minor Shakespeare and not even an authentic tragedy by some critics, but still... I think there sex is throughout the text in both obscene and transcendant fashion. So did obscene win out with the young lovers deaths? This is all probably a topic best suited for another time and place.

Instead, I will deal with my Frye box(or try to)...
Low-mimetic thematic , which is concerned with the individual writers perceptions and feelings of creation. This is where the Romantic poets and Jane Austen come onto the scene. They are of course very different but that is the point. Individuals don't create or percieve the same.

If any erroneous notions are spied, I'd be grateful to have them pointed out.

Today came the discussion of the Frye grids, which lead into a discussion of the real purpose of sports, which is to purge or displace the desire to kill or practice ritual sacrifice(it isn't often that one actually sees the umpire get killed). The notion of the purging of a scapegoat(pharmakos) from the community as atonement for the community's sins. Whether or not the scapegoat is deserving of expulsion is typically irrevelant; he/she may be expelled or done away with because they can be. It's a very terrifying thing, this instinct to mob violence. It brings up certain things that one feels might be beyond the scope of literature to explain or deal with. Things that are distressingly real and cruel and horrible. Now Northrop Frye has said that if a book is depressing there's either something wrong with you, or something wrong with the book. Having encountered a few books that have made me depressed due to their handling of their subject matter and/or how the subject matter was dealt with(Joyce Carol Oates' Foxfire is an example), and having read books with equally cruel content but somehow managing to pull through without feeling despaired about the state of the human race(Toni Morrison's Beloved could be an exampe here), I think there is some validity to what Frye says. But it is a troubling question: at what point is something impossible to be dealt with artistically, and still be genuine art? This is not a question I have any pretentions to knowing the answer to.

On a somewhat lighter note, we where presented with MA Abrams schema for how literary criticsim has evolved through time.

Ancient world which is focused on Nature and with the mimetic prinicple

Neo-Classical which is focused on Audience and with the pragamatic principle

Romantics who were focused on the Artist and with the expression principle

Modern which is focused on the text and with the objective principle

I also think it might be worthwhile to check out what Vladimir Nabokov has to say about Don Quixote.

We've been told what the topic for the class term paper will be: an apolgy for literature, subtitled : What's the Point of Stories That Aren't True?" This shall prove doubtless to be a challenging, intriguing paper. Doubtless one will pick up some of the quatations from Northrop Frye that are availble online.

We were also presented with a quote from DH Lawrence that is rather pertinent to the class: "Trust the tale, not the teller." Yet again this assertion that the work be judged by itself, not for the author or what the author intended. But if one is a teller of good tales, people do end up being more inclined to trust you, in addition and because of, the tales. Oddly paradoxical it seems to me, like a great many other things in this world.

We also discussed Idea of Order at Key West, and its relation to myths of cosmogony, or the birth of the world. In particular the creation myth contained in the very beginning of the Bible , wherein the act of speaking brings about creation(the almighty Logos is wielded, and then there was light). This lead to an interesting comment about how metaphors can be applied to nature, by logic. The sea, or sun or moon or whatever other natural entity that one can think of, doesn't really stand for might or pain or limiltess possibilty or whatever else is being applied to it. No; it is one's imagination and language construction that makes it have this meaning. And when the singer stops singing, the sea-waves continue to go in and out continuously, as they always have and how they will ever afterward.

Really quite a fascinating notion.

We have been assinged the authors we will appear as to teach others the gist of their theory and/or approach. I've gotten Longinus. I'll confess I was secretly hoping to get Virginia Woolf(the truth is I have a massive intellectual crush on her), but perhaps it will prove to be more advantagous to do a writer whom I am deeply familiar with.

I learned today that Northrop Frye was a fan of the radio show "20 Questions", which often involved the question "Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?" Frye obviously picked up on this for the diagramming at the conclusion of "The Archetypes of Literature."

And also the figure of the alazon, which means "imposter" and of which there are two types: the braggart soldier and the pedant(profesor type). And from the revealtion that both Presidential candiates could be described as both types came the other revelation that we are all characters in literature. This automatically made me wonder what kind of character I would be, but then I wondered if perhaps we can't truly be aware of what literary stamp we fall under, because then we might become something other then we were by false design or affectation and then where woud we be?

Or I could just be rambling.

I knew nothing about this Vico character(an 18th century Italian philosopher) who apparently was instrumental to the forming of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. He apparently felt that civilization arose from a clap of thunder, and had a poetic view of human history which went, in order:

1. Age of Gods(when there was no language, only pictures)
2. Age of Heroes(when there was the language of epics)
3. Age of Men(when there is the langauge of commerce)
4. Age of Chaos(when there is/will be nothing but gibberish)

His is a myth of declination, just like Frye's theory of modes is. I find it rather intriguing that the worst state there could be(the Ironic for Frye, and presumably the Age of Chaos for Vico)is the age one is currently in. This is just so fascinating, how throughout the ages, people always long for the past rather than the time they are in. I think I can understand why, but it still just seems very intruging to me.

And on this note, we will stop.

The following is from the first part of Northrop Frye's "The Archetypes of Literature".

" ...I say only that the principles by which one can distinguish a significant from a meaningless statement in criticism are not clearly defined. Our first step, therefore, is to recognize and get rid of meaningless criticism: that is, talking about literature in a way that cannot help to build up a systemic structure of knowledge. Casual value judgements belong not to criticism but to the history of taste, and reflect, at best only the social and psychological compulsions which prompted their utterance. All judgements in which the values are not based on literary experiance but are sentimental or derived from religous or political predjudice may be regarded as casual. Sentimental judgements are usually based on nonexistent categories or antitheses( "Shakespeare studied life, Milton books") or on a visceral reaction to the writer's personality. The literary chitchat which makes the reputations of poets boom and crash in an imaginary stock exchange is pseudo-criticism."

Dedicated as Frye is to lay out criticism's scientific method, he bluntly rules out appraisals of a book that do not spring from a knowledge of literature but from the reviewers personal likes or dislikes( "casual value judgements" again). If this, which a great many of us probably associate with the critical profession, is indeed pseudo-criticism as Frye asserts, then criticism is in need of a serious re-vamp.

Perhaps I'm too engrained in the notion of typical criticism(I read lot's of film reviews, which are positivley soaking in pseudo-criticism), but I find it a bit difficult to wrap my head around completely doing in with value judgements(Harold Bloom evidently feels the same, judging from portions of his Anatomy of Criticism). Undoubtedly this is for the best, since they are ultimately futile. But does that reduce the critic to merely tracing patterns and similarities and dissimliarties? And I can just imagine Northrop Frye protesting "And what's wrong with that?!"

At some later time perhaps I will look into this a bit more, but I think I've run out of stamina right now.

Today we learned the archaic use of the word "apology", such as Sidney's An Apology for Poetry. In this sense it means a persuasion or an argument for the validity of something. Such as poetry. Or criticism as a profession, which is what the Anatomy of Criticism could probably be described as. An Apology for Criticism.

We were also broken up into our groups, each of which will focus upon a certain school of criticism. I am in group 6, the School of Pyschoanalysis. This will probably prove very amusing, provided we can supply more than the notion that if it's a straight line it's a phallic symbol(after all, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar).

And we also know how to encapsulate Northrop Frye in a nutshell: All literature is displaced myth. And things work down gradually from there in like fashion:

1. Myth
2. Romance
3. high-memitic mode
4. low-mimetic mode
5.Ironic

Frye feels that this is the study of literature, working from mythic modes on downward, and keeping the question of whether or not something is any good or not on the side. Such things are a question of taste and we really don't go anywhere with taste, accept for arguing about why so-and-so is dumber for venerating such-and-such, or vice-a-versa, or both or neither.

Shorly to follow will be a discussion of a passage from Frye which one actually does understand. I'll see what I am able to do. Not much probably, but it will be something.

I learned today in class the definition of the word "flyting", which is insulting others, but in ways that are very entertaining. Shakespeare is considred the premier literary example of this, along with most everything else.

We also ended up discussing the merit(or lack thereof) of many high school English teachers, who simply put forward to you what they thought the author intended. This approach operates under what Northrop Frye would call intentional fallacy. He would say that what it means is what it has in it, which can be discerned by the patterns to be found within a text. Basically what this means is that what an author "meant" or "intended" ultimately doesn't really matter. Rather, it is the piece of work and what it contains within it that speaks.

This probably will have a great deal of relation to another question that the class will be dealing with: what is the difference between rhetoric and poetics? This is probably too soon to be putting out ideas for a reply but, judging from what Frye says and various peoples' interaction with folk who like to consider themselves English teachers, this is somethig: Perhaps rhetoric has an underlying point of persuasion beneath it, while poetics is concerned with the structure of art which considers persuasion or a particular grinding ax irrelevant.

Or I could be off-base. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

I'll say it wasn't my intention to throw down the gauntlet(tropologically speaking), but if that's what I've done... way for the class to start.

Northrop Frye is(to use the venerable, knowlegadable and oh so egotistical Harold Bloom's phrasing) an ecstatic critic, who seeks to stand outside of literature as literature makes him stand outside himself. Just like it made Don Quixote stand outside himself, and set up a paradigm for what he could make of himself: No longer an impoversished gentleman, but a knight errant battling cruelty and injustice.

Frye also was inspired by Dante's levels of perception.
1. the literal
2. the ontological
3. the moral
4. the anagogical

This fourth and most hallowed level(recognition that comes when everything comes together) was represented for Dante by a rose.

All of this seems to suggest a possiblty for what healthy, authentic criticism could be. Not the petty things Northrop Frye would refer to as "value judgements", but intermidearies between art and those who come to it, like the sea and the singer in Idea of Order at Key West.

Or something like that.

The blogging decorum is rusty, but I'll probably fall in with it again here. Isn't much to say for this first day of class, but I can say that I think I know what to say when people complain that something is boring(no, YOU are boring).

I confess I hold a somewhat hard-to-shake the idea (coined by paraphrase my brother in-law of all people) that a critic is someone who wanted to be an artist but couldn't draw. i'm reminded also of a great couple of lines from a song by my beloved Rufus Wainwright called As in Happy : "Maybe the critic was right/And my work is just sterile pee/ Or maybe the critic was wrong/Now stretched on the rack feeling slightly icky".
I'd be most intrigued to see if this notion will be corrected in the course of this class or not.