The critics presented in class today were Giambattista Vico(the "truth is constructed guy again), Eric Auerbach(who greatly influenced the perception of realism), Coleridge(who, among other things, coined the phrase "willing suspension of disbelief)and Hayden White(who was influenced by Vico, and dealt in master tropes).

There was a discussion of the by now some-what stereotypical view of the artist as a raging ego-maniac who desires primarily to live forever through literary fame, but how this can be thrown together with the Keatsian notion of negative capability, whereby the creation of authentic art dissolves the individual ego. Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials(of which I am a big fan), apparently digs negative capabilty, which actually doesn't suprise me that much. He writes some of the best fantasy literature to come along in ages, and has been quoted elsewhere that he himself isn't a big fantasy fan.

The Freudian idea of the fight between the pleasure principle(what we want to do) and the reality principle(what we know we ought to do), and how it relates to Don Quixote was brought up, as was the two big things that are necessary components of myth for Frye: the Apocolyptic and the Demonic. One of which is positve and the other of which is negative. We also talked about the displacement principle, which for Frye is what characterizes Romance; striving for things the way they ought to be rather than the way they actually are.

And to conclude, two interesting words: kenosis, which means emptying out and plerosis, which meand filling up.