CHAT: Northrop Frye

Patrick Dunn wrote:

> Yes, particularly divorced from context -- like, for example, he's
> complaining that it's proper for the minority to criticize the majority,
> but the majority cannot criticize the minority.
I don't read it (in context) as a complaint at all.  In any event,
ethnic slurs are not a matter of a group criticizing another group,
but of an individual criticizing another individual *because of*
group membership, a very different matter.

> This is like complaining
> that it's immoral to rape twelve year old girls -- matters of hierarchal
> power structure come into play.
I think this example is severely overblown.  It would be just as immoral
to rape people at an equal level in the hierarchy.

> Really?  Did you read [Anatomy of Criticism]?
Many times.

> Okay, just kidding.  I slogged my weary way
> through it and got sick of the circles within circles, wheels within
> wheels, and interlocking cycles within interlocking cycles -- all
> essentially useless in actually *analyzing* literature.
Well, I'm not a professional literature-analyzer, but it seemed
to me an excellent existence proof for the notion that there
is, in fact, a total order of words.

> In fact, Frye
> didn't use it himself, even in _Fearful Symmetry_,
Umm, FS predated AC.

> which *was* brilliant
> (first time someone was able to explain Blake without shrugging and
> saying, "as for Blake, he was just nuts").
Agreed.

--

John Cowan      http://www.reutershealth.com            jcowan@reutershealth.com
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! / Schliess eurer Aug vor heiliger Schau
Den er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
                -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)