Lost In A Good Book
Earlier I forgot my copy of Dianetics at Vivian's place, so I hadn't much of a chance to read it tonight. Besides, to pass the time while taking public transit to my fiancé's apartment yesterday, before leaving Hubbard's book there, I started perusing Frye's The Great Code. Now it sounds like I carry a thousand and one books on the bus with me, always prepared to pass the time with one of countless titles. However, I had the Frye book with me because I was toting it, among many other Frye and McLuhan books over to Vivian's to let her start reading them in advance. I like to appear to be a studious bookworm chiefly because the average rider on the bus will see what I'm reading, stereotype me as a learned, stuck-up intellectual, and thus won't bother me. Truly it is a win-win situation as I get to read something I enjoy, read it in peace, and it follows that the bus ride is bearable. Even if I try hard to curb unwanted attention, trust me it will find me if it must.
Later, following a side-trip to a Canada Post pick-up centre to pay for one of my Frye books ordered used from the US of A on my way back home, I ended up with two books at the end of the day. One of these books, which had come with our daily mail was The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye, while the other book I claimed at the post office was his Anatomy of Criticism. The former book looked like something I could read in one evening, wishful thinker that I was, so I started reading it. In fact, it was the initial reason I started this post - to quote a passage (among countless many) I thought worth posting.
Without further ado:
This story of the loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature. Inside it comes the story of the hero with a thousand faces, as one critic [Campbell] calls him, whose adventures, death, disappearance and marriage or resurrection are the focal points of what later become romance and tragedy and satire and comedy in fiction, and the emotional moods that take their place in such forms as the lyric, which normally doesn't tell a story. (21)
posted by Davyth | 1:42 AM
3 Comments:
Strange you should post this the day after Frye's birthday. I had meant to write something on my blog to commemorate the occasion, but alas did not. I suspect it hardly needs iteration that I think NF one of the most relevant critics of the past century, but I'd also suggest you be a bit wary of the passage you quote from him, largely because it is the same sort quote that got NF pigeon-holed as a myth-critic when he was significantly more than that. I'd recommend for you (to dispel some of the assumptions you might otherwise accidentally digest) any of NF's books on Shakespeare (A Natural Perspective, Fools of Time and such) or Spiritus Mundi or The Well-Termpered Critic. And if you can actually find a copy of The Stubborn Structure, grab it and read it. Thoroughly.
So far I've tackled The Educated Imagination and half of Fearful Symmetry to prepare for Powe's class on Frye and McLuhan. Still, I can tell Frye has a wit to reckon - his books are filled with countless profound, clever things I could only wish to match in a lifetime. I'd never shoehorn him as a myth-critic, simply because I understand EI was originally a radio program for the CBC to understand patterns in literature; or the use of literature.
However, I find Frye's book, The Educated Imagination to be particularly useful for studying modernist texts like Kazantzakis' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, or Joyce's Ulysses.
Post a Comment
<< Home