7. For example, Dante's Beatrice in the Divine Comedy would represent the bride of Christ, i.e, the Catholic Church. The lyrical rhythm is very clearly seen in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, a work based almost entirely on associative babbles and dream utterance. The fact is, however, that Frye gives naive and sentimental examples for each of the ten modes (see Figure 1). [1], Frye's four essays are sandwiched between a "Polemical Introduction" and a "Tentative Conclusion." That would be a shame. He contends that the common usage of the term is inaccurate for purposes of criticism, drawn from analogy with harmony, a stable relationship. In the high-mimetic mode, he is seen principally as the courtier or counselor, the preacher or orator, functioning in some relation to the theme of leadership. In writers like Kafka and Joyce, tragic irony moves toward the emergence once more of the mythical mode. Mythic comedy refers to “Apollonian” stories about the community of gods, including Hercules. Frye makes the argument that not only is there a lateral connection of archetypes through intertextuality, but that there is a transcendent almost spiritual unity within the body of literature. Hirsch convincingly argued, essential to interpretation. 48–55. In doing so, it should serve to make us more sympathetic and open to the varieties of fiction, old and new. Tim Ellison is an Advisory Editor for fiction and poetry at Strangelet. 315–24). “All fictional works,” he says, “are reducible to three primary shades. On functional outcomes (EORTC QLQ-C30), only 32%-41% reported not being affected in the various facets of emotional function. For an analysis and critique of Todorov’s own theory of literary types, see David H. Richter, “Pandora’s Box Revisited,” Critical Inquiry 1 (December 1974): 471–74. Frye’s own view of history is founded upon an organic and rhythmic metaphor of cultural aging. Mythic tragedy deals with the death of gods. A fourth function of modal analysis, according to Frye, is that it helps us to realize both the traditional and the contemporary aspects of a work of art. 68, 526-531. In criticism, the study of the archetypal phase of a symbol is akin to the "nature" perspective in the psychological debate over nature versus nurture. The two poles of tragic irony, the archetypes of Adam and Christ, become the two poles of comic irony, or the internal and external social enemies. The project to read and blog about Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays continues. Although some of his principles are more important than others, he can without warning change the categories which underlie his definitions. The objection has been that Frye is highly selective in deducing the number of modes which logically follow from his categories of superiority, inferiority, and equality. As with most books about deceased Canadian academics, you might not even crack the spine. On the one extr It's dark in here. “Towards a Poetics of Fiction,” p. 109. 103–49, and Elder Olson, “The Dialectical Foundations of Critical Pluralism,” in “On Value Judgments in the Arts” and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. It’s easy to see that there’s something spring-like about the progress of a comedic protagonist from a bad (cold) state to a better (warmer) one, and the converse is true of autumn and tragedy. In opposition to the sign stands the motif which is a symbol taken in the literal phase. The Journals Division publishes 85 journals in the arts and humanities, technology and medicine, higher education, history, political science, and library science. The theory of modes classifies literature "by the hero's power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same." The dianoia actually projected in thematic works like The Faerie Queene and Faust, for example, is not the personal beliefs of Spenser and Goethe but two forms of “as if” thought, one “a quasi-Platonic philosophy of ideal forms” and the other “a philosophy of genesis and organicism” (AC, 64, 65). The “First Essay” of the Anatomy of Criticism is titled, “Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes.” Frye derives his definition of “mode” from the second paragraph of Aristotle’s Poetics, in which Aristotle seems to classify kinds of fiction according to how powerful the hero of the story is. Modes, we have seen, are about power, and because each mode belongs to a different time in history, they also refer to a particular epoch. Frye's systemization of literature begins with three aspects of poetry given by Aristotle in his Poetics: mythos (plot), ethos (characterization/setting), and dianoia (theme/idea). We become part of that audience contemporary with the writer to the extent that we understand and for the moment assent to his assumptions about what men can do or think that they can do. Such a distinction then permits him to set up a series of dialectical opposites which he sees as corresponding in a general way with his two modal categories: literature as product versus literature as process, artifact versus quality, catharsis versus ecstasis, detachment versus absorption (AC, 66–67). In the Introduction, Frye argued that genre criticism has not progressed since Aristotle. All Rights Reserved. Robert D. Denham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. The point for Frye is that categories provide a set of keywords and ideas for understanding a text, but a work of literature doesn’t have to belong exclusively to one category in order to benefit from those tools. In the first three essays, Frye deals mainly with the first three elements of Aristotle's elements of poetry (i.e. Mythic episodic forms, therefore, are prophesies, because this combines the mythic sense of the divine with the individualistic and thematic sense of the episodic. Frye calls upon Aristotle’s distinction between spoudaios and phaulos to provide the basis for his classification of fictional modes. Frye’s discussion of the various thematic modes follows a pattern similar to that of his analysis of the fictional modes. Anatomy of Criticism study guide contains a biography of Horatio Alger, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Frye suggests that Classical civilizations progressed historically through the development of these modes, and that something similar happened in Western civilization during medieval and modern times. R.S. They are important also because of the ways in which they enter and inform his own critical theory. Rather than viewing the symbol as a unique achievement of the author or some inherent quality of the text, the archetypal phase situates the symbol in its society of literary kindred as a product of its conventional forebears. In Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes, we have a classification system that categorizes literature according to the protagonist's power of action. Some examples of this include tales of. “Towards a Theory of Cultural History,” University of Toronto Quarterly 22 (July 1953): 341. Frye’s syncretic tendency is seen clearly in a passage from the end of the First Essay: Just as catharsis is the central conception of the Aristotelian approach to literature, so ecstasis or absorption is the central conception of the Longinian approach. We say reader, because the Longinian conception is primarily that of a thematic or individualized response: it is more useful for lyrics, just as the Aristotelian one is more useful for plays. That point of intersection is, of course, the literary work, where we witness the effects of its historical environment and its modal heredity.”33. Go to Table In fact, Frye’s discussion of both tragic romance and tragic high and low mimesis dwells more upon principles relating to affective response than upon any other principle. And Christine Brooke-Rose, agreeing with Todorov that thirteen is the proper number, charts the possibilities for us in binary code (“Historical Genres/Theoretical Genres,” New Literary History 8 [Autumn 1976]: 147). What Frye is saying is that some works are best approached by using the assumptions and method of Aristotle, and some by using those of Longinus. 24. Like the New Critics, Frye levels the playing field, bringing all works of literature into a single conversation. The following examples will illustrate the differences. Here, the intellectual content is more important than the plot, so these modes are organized by what is considered more authoritative or educational at the time. lyric - Audience is "hidden" from author; that is, the speaker is "overheard" by hearers. The bracketed numbers in the passage above indicate that Frye bases his distinction on three principles: first, the role of the poet (personal versus social); second, examples of the kinds of works he produces (lyrics, essays, etc., versus artificial epics, didactic works, compilations of myth, etc.
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