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...
No comments:
Post a Comment