Re: CHAT: Northrop Frye

On Thu, 18 Nov 1999, John Cowan wrote:

> 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.
Well, never read it in context.  But I can't iimagine it as anything other
than a complaint -- unless he's rejoicing in the fact.

> > 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.
*shrugs*  The fault of reasoning by analogy, of course.

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

> 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.
Except, of course, much of it is completely arbitrary -- if llinguists
(his model) did what he did we'd have linguistic theories based off
astrology and the cabala.

> > In fact, Frye
> > didn't use it himself, even in _Fearful Symmetry_,
>
> Umm, FS predated AC.
That doesn't mean the ideas in AC didn't exist previously.  My point was,
even in his most important work, he didn't show an inkling of anything in
AC.  Nor did he in his least important works, or any other damned work in
the world.  In fact, I have a theory that the Anatomy is actually an
elaborate prose poem joke -- look up his definition of "anatomy" in the
glossary some time.