I've been reading through Frye's chapter on Myth(which is proving easier to comprehend then the previous material in Anatomy of Criticism, or at least it seems to me), with its discussion of the distinction between Comedy, Romance, Tragedy and Irony and the archetypes that make up each of these states. And I've also seen a film recently entitled Robin and Marian(I've been on an Audrey Hepburn binge lately. And she's lovely in the film incidentally), and it actually got me to thinking about how Fryes' mythic archetypes and mythos can(or perhaps don't) blend together.

We have a hero from the world of Romance, Robin Hood(played in this film by Sean Connery), but we find him and the other characters from the story--which most of us are at least cursorily familar with-- having to confront, in a low-mimetic world, the consequences and implications of his own legend. And, while there are a great many elements in the film that are comic in nature or representation, the film also moves between the Romantic archetypes(a brave hero who will defend the poor and helpless), to the low-mimetic reality of the situation(he and his men have gotten older, and he will probably end up losing the woman he loves), and then, at the conclusion moving to high-mimetic tragedy(I won't disclose exactly what occurs, but it involves the necessary passing of Romantic legend from the low-mimetic world).

I found that almost all of the original critical reivews of this film when it was released (1976) were almost all negative in their assesment. Uh-huh. They apparently didn't see a comment on mythic/Romantic/low-mimetic mythos. I for one thought it was wonderful, which I may have thought even if I hadn't been reading Northrup Frye. But since I had been, it added that much more to my appreciation of it.