Bravo, Matthew. In my experience, many people struggle with what I take to be the cornerstone insight of all of Frye’s theorizing and criticism: namely, that there is a total order of words that is as real as is what we call the natural order. Indeed, after Blake, Frye imagined that the order of words and the imagination itself are interpenetrating forms of reality in which reality itself—reality with a big R—is created and continually recreated. All other expressions of reality find their form in the dialect or dialogue of the imagination and the Word.
Expressed as I have expressed it here, no wonder no one understands Frye’s first axiom, as it were. And yet, what I am getting at, the ontological primacy of verbal symbols and the imagination, is, if my understanding of Frye is vital, the insight on which all of his other insights ultimately depends and the consummate meaning to which they lead.
I don't think we approach literature as literature. I think we necessarily start with assumptions. Everything else that's unaltered I agree with. I especially think the idea about any analysis having to be able to determine the book, in theme or whichever, as a floor for what counts as analysis. I think his point about value in literature leading in depth and breadth is ambiguous but I think something more concrete about that is a helpful minimum.
Bravo, Matthew. In my experience, many people struggle with what I take to be the cornerstone insight of all of Frye’s theorizing and criticism: namely, that there is a total order of words that is as real as is what we call the natural order. Indeed, after Blake, Frye imagined that the order of words and the imagination itself are interpenetrating forms of reality in which reality itself—reality with a big R—is created and continually recreated. All other expressions of reality find their form in the dialect or dialogue of the imagination and the Word.
Expressed as I have expressed it here, no wonder no one understands Frye’s first axiom, as it were. And yet, what I am getting at, the ontological primacy of verbal symbols and the imagination, is, if my understanding of Frye is vital, the insight on which all of his other insights ultimately depends and the consummate meaning to which they lead.
I don't think we approach literature as literature. I think we necessarily start with assumptions. Everything else that's unaltered I agree with. I especially think the idea about any analysis having to be able to determine the book, in theme or whichever, as a floor for what counts as analysis. I think his point about value in literature leading in depth and breadth is ambiguous but I think something more concrete about that is a helpful minimum.
How do you define "literature?"