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.