Tuesdays with Northrop

Every Tuesday, I sit down to read Northrop Frye. I understand little, am frustrated much, but it's always an enlightening experience. The most amazing part is when I connect to his words and actually understand what he is saying. I feel like he somehow gave me the key to unlock his golden city, and it was only me that stopped me from getting it sooner. Like he has been impatiently waiting for me to finally understand so he can move on to do the things that he has been neglecting while he waited. I picture him scowling, tapping his foot annoyingly then dancing and rejoicing when I finally get it. So thank you Northrop, I will miss our Tuesdays when they are through.

the Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

The water never formed to mind or voice,

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.

The song and water were not medleyed sound

Even if what she sang was what she heard,

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred

The grinding water and the gasping wind;

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew

It was the spirit that we sought and knew

That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea

That rose, or even colored by many waves;

If it was only the outer voice of sky

And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,

However clear, it would have been deep air,

The heaving speech of air, a summer sound

Repeated in a summer without end

And sound alone. But it was more than that,

More even than her voice, and ours, among

The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,

Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped

On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres

Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made

The sky acutest at its vanishing.

She measured to the hour its solitude.

She was the single artificer of the world

In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,

Whatever self it had, became the self

That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,

As we beheld her striding there alone,

Knew that there never was a world for her

Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,

Why, when the singing ended and we turned

Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,

The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,

As the night descended, tilting in the air,

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,

Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,

Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,

The maker's rage to order words of the sea,

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

My book and heart review

When I first left the theater after viewing this movie, I must admit that I was disappointed. I didn't feel like I learned anything at all, and I was frustrated by the fact that we had already discussed all of the main points. What I didn't realize, until after we discussed it is class, was that there was not fault in the movie, but within myself. I was blinded by my aforementioned feelings and didn't take the time to realize how great the film really was. Although we had learned the information, the presentation of it was much different. Through narration, pictures, and props, the creators got their point across in a way that was fascinating and visually stimulating. This film was funny, serious and educational all at the same time, which is rare. The beauty of the words and pictures helped to show the viewers not only the importance of the little forgotten books, but the importance of reading. When you read you are taken to a magical place all your own, for no two people read the same story the same. The first book that I remember reading over and over again is 'Quest For a Maid' by Frances Mary Hendry. It's about a little girl named Meg, whose sister Inge is a witch. One dark and stormy night she sneaks into her sister's store-room and watches her kill a king with her powers. Inge leaves the next day to become a lady in waiting, and Meg struggles with all that she had seen and heard. The tale is exciting, beautifully written and sad but it has and always will be my favorite. Even now, 15 years later, I still read it every year. I have given tons as gifts and still talk about it to anyone who will listen. The film reminded me of how truly magical it is to read your favorite book for the first time. No matter how many times you read it, inspite of all the new information that you get from it each time, you can never have that first time back. It reminded me to treasure books because you never know when you will read your next favorite book for the first time.

Monday, October 13

"The muse is a dominatrix" ~Dr. Sexson

Shelley:

• Romantic view of the world
• imagination trumps reason VS Sidney's belief that reason trumps imagination
• "A poet is a Nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why"
• Yeat's "how can you know the dancer from the dance?"
• The Painted Veil -film
• neoplatonism
• Plato and his evil twin: kind to poetry bec he is a poet VS mean because he banished them from the Republic
• 'Sailing to Byzantium' by Yeats
• idealist (DQ) vs realist (PP) but switch so you are confused as to whom is whom at the end
• they rewire each others brains until they almost switch roles
• the tragedy of the poet is that they write about life, instead of experiencing it
• this reminded me of the song 'goodbye love' from Rent

Friday, October 10

"Willy Wonka is one of my heroes..." ~Dr. Sexson

rhapsodic: out of their mind


"Put out the light and then put out the light" ~Othello


"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." ~Shelley

"The end all and be all" ~Macbeth

climactic metaphor: for info on culture, politics and religion always turn to the poets

polysemus: having to do with the sea


literally=> letterally from Ben's blog OR as a poem moving together => letters moving together


"with the wonderful ambiguity of the scientist..." ~Nabokov

books on gardening must be clear, but poetry can be ambiguous and murky

"A work of art should do nothing..." Daedalus from JJ's Portrait

Is Don Quixote realistic? Obviously not. So should it be read as realism? nope.


reality: reality tv- not real


american idol















survivor



















fear factor

the hills
















project runway

America's next top model

the amazing race

John McCain: "My fellow prisoners..."

"The whole point of the poem is not to get your point across, the point is that it is besides the point." ~Dr. Sexson

Monday, October 6

"Sidney wrote his Defense because of some ass named Stephan Gosson..." ~ Dr. Sexson

"I am I..." from Don Q. mirror "I am the I am"

everything in the newspaper is literature- archetypes are everywhere

'comedy'

'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'

"The close resemblance between the conceptions of anagogic criticism and those of religion has led many to assume that they can only be related by making one supreme and the other subordinate." pg 126-7 of Frye

liberate: to free, autonomous structure of numbers and letters...

betrayal of intellectuals (Sir Philip Sidney)

historian is bound to facts, while the philosopher is interested in how something is represented, and it is the artists job to present it differently than it really is to give us both the precepts and the example

bread is a troupe: 'our daily bread' = sustenance and all nutrition that sustains us

synecdoche: disconnected from everything else but themselves

metonymy: a word that means something else

~both are troupes substitutes a part for the whole

"literature is to teach, that is its purpose" ~Sidney (Frye disagrees with this)

poesis: Greek for poet

"When we pass into anagogy, nature becomes, not the container, but the thing contained, and the archetypal universal symbols, the city, the garden, the quest, the marriage, are no longer the desirable forms that man constructs inside nature, but are themselves the forms of nature." ~Frye pg 119

"Only the poet disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cvclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit." ~Sidney

nature: brazen; poet: golden

pleasure principle

story vs reality: the story of a picnic can be the perfect day, but the reality may have ants- art does not simply show you the nature of good things, they make you see the reality and plan to learn from it and avoid it

Terrible things in lit:

• King Lear
• Titus Andronicus
• Procne, Tereus and Philomela
• Oedipus

If we didn't have poets, and we die, who will write our epitaphs

STUDY GUIDE

NEED TO KNOW:

• Don Quixote discussed in class
• Idea of Order
• Frye's essays: 1) Archetypes of Literature, and 2) Symbols
• Aristotle's Poetics
• Plato's Republic book 10
• Sidney's Defense
• Dante's 4 levels
• Shelley's Defense

Questions:

1. trust the _________ not the _______. A- tale/ teller
2. centripetal vs centrifugal and formal phase A- goes in/ goes out
3. In which box is does the pharmakos belong? A- ironic comedy
4. baseball umpire A- scapegoat
5. all literature is displaced _________. A- myth
6. Aristotle's definition of tragedy: A- imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude
7. Greek word for something gone: A- dromenon
8. On page 427 of DQ- What does the canon believe about literature? A- that it should be didactic
9. didactic means: A- teach us something
10. definition of logos (which is the myth operating in Idea) A- the power to create through the agency of the word
11. the sense of ___________ is stronger in tragedy than comedy A- reality
12. all comedy is directed at who? A- and inflexible person
13. 'Nature only gives us a _________ world, while the poet gives us a _______ world." ~ Sidney A- brazen/ golden
14. 4 elements of Abram's grid: A- word, audience, world, art
15. According to Frye all structures of words are partly ________ and hence _________. pg 350 A- rhetorical/ literary
16. Plato's ________ in book 10 banished the poets, why? A- Republic, they are all deranged useless liars
17. Pathos belongs in which Frye box? A- low mimetic
18. mythos, ethos and dianoia are? A- plot (story)/ character/ theme
19. repeat the last line of Shelley's Defense A- 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world"
20. Frye's _______ phrase corresponds to the low mimetic? A- descriptive
21. According to Sidney the poet never affirms anything therefore_______? A- they never lie
22. polysemous: A- meanings on a variety of levels
23. Literally speaking, what the poet means is... A- the poem its self
24. define tautology: A- it is what it is
25. In Shelley's opinion, imagination is superior to ___________. A- logic, reason
26. epiphany: A- a sudden manifestation of the divine or a light bulb
27. pg 100 of Frye- archetypal criticism phase of symbols, Lycidas A- an entire liberal education by reading one poem
28. The Alazon: A- an impostor 1) soldier, 2) professor
29. metonymy/ synecdoche is defined as: A- a part of something that stands for something else

Friday, October 3

"It's not about who is right or wrong, but about the metaphors you use" ~Dr. Sexson

your mission: to find a light bulb moment in Frye

• in the symbol's chapter
• something new that you are better for knowing now

pathos: tear-jerking



there is a point in which you repeat something too much (even if it's sad) that it become comedic

sometimes repetition is key to getting a point across


Exercises-

McCain Blinks:

• he backed down
• he actually blinkes a lot
• literal vs metaphorical

Picture:

~3 shapes in an inclosed space:

1. triangle
2. rectangle
3. circle
4. all inside a square

but it's actually this:

assignment:

highlight 3 passages from Sidney that are important to you

metaphor---> myth---> declining ages: this is all we do in this class

Dante's levels:

1. literal
2. allegorical
3. moral
4. anagogical

"there is so much time and so little to do" ~ Willy Wonka

Wednesday, October 1

"Shakespeare created the most, next to God" ~ STC

helpful tips to memorizing poetry:

1. listen to it
   
2. break it down: stanza by stanza
   
3. repetition

Antony and Cleopatra and Frye: "The tonality of Antony and Cleopatra is high mimetic, the story of the fall of a great leader. But it is easy to look at Mark Antony ironically, as a man enslaved by passion; it is easy to recognize his common humanity with ourselves; it is easy to see in him a romantic adventurer of prodigious courage and endurance betrayed by a witch ; there are even hints of a superhuman being whose legs bestrid the ocean and whose downfall is a conspiracy of fate, explicable only to a soothsayer. To leave our any of these would oversimplify and belittle the play. Through such an analysis we may come to realize that they two essential facts about a work of art, that it is contemporary with its own time and that it is contemporary with ours, are not opposed but complementary facts." pg 51

TS Eliot: "Time past and time present are both contained in time future, and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present all time is unredeemable."

• poetry is not descriptive, it doesn't matter if it's true.
• centripetally- inwardly
• Shakespeare's tragedy is high mimetic
• 'by reading Shakespeare, you understand it all'

"Truly, Senor Priest, it seems to me that the books called novels of chivalry are prejudicial to the nation, and though I, moved by a false and idle taste, have read the beginning of almost every one that has ever been published, I have never been able to read any from beginning to end, because it seems to me they are all essentially the same, and one is no different from another. In my opinion, this kind of writing and composition belongs to the genre called Milesian tales, which are foolish stories meant only to delight and not to teach, unlike moral tales, which delight and teach at the same time. Although the principal aim of these books is to delight, I do not know how they can, being so full of so many excessively foolish elements; for delight conceived in the soul must arise from the beauty and harmony it sees to contemplates in the things that the eyes of the imagination place before it, an nothing that possesses ugliness and disorder can please us. What beauty, what proportion between parts and the whole, or the whole and its parts, can there be in a book or tale in which a boy of sixteen, with one thrust of his sword, fells a giant as big as a tower and splits him in tow as if he were marzipan, and, when a battle is depicted, after saying that there are more than a million combatants on the side of the enemy, if the hero of the book fights them, whether we like it or not, of necessity we must believe that this knight achieves victory only though the valor of his mighty arm?" Don Quixote pg 411-2

Literature that entertains us vs literature that has a good moral and teaches us

all literature that is didactic: pedagogical

Superheroes:

x-men

• 
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  

superman

batman

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  
  
  

aquaman

• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  

spiderman

spoonful of sugar- Mary Poppins

Cartoons that water things down:

• disney movies
• leaf of death
• school house rock
• sex-ed videos

"Things that you extract from the text, not the text its self" ~Frye

reality is descriptive, art is something else

"Whenever we read anything, we find our attention moving in two directions at once. One direction is outward or centrifugal, in which we keep going outside our reading, from the individual words to the things they mean, or, in practice, to our memory of the conventional association between them. The other direction is inward or centripetal, in which we try to develop from the words a sense of the larger verbal pattern they make. In both cases we deal with symbols, but when we attach an external meaning to a word we have, in addition to the verbal symbol, the thing represented or symbolized by it." ~Frye pg 73

centripetal vs centrifugal

"protecting us from the horror of the specifics"

stream of consciousness

talking animals:

• Dr. Doolittle
• Balaam's Donkey
• snake in the garden
• Caterpillar in Alice
• anyone in a folk story

"You should always read with a 'willing suspension of disbelief'" ~STC

you should read literature as an Evangelist read the bible, as it is truth

words are symbols, not the real thing

general semantics

Monday, September 29

"You cannot go back and read as an idiot, you must move forward and read like an idiot" ~Dr. Sexson

"The poem means the poem"

tautalogical: anagogical phase

from the bible: "I am who I am" the burning bush from Exodus 3:14

"God said to Moses, "I am who I am . [b] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "

literal

anagogical descriptive

archetypal formal

literal: 'motif'

descriptive: 'sign'

formal: 'image'

archetypal: 'myth'

anagogical: 'monad'

everything loops in tautology- all are similar

a poem can only mean one thing: "the poem can only mean the poem"

R. Frost: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the village though.

He will not see me stopping here,

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,

To stop without a farmhouse near,

Between the woods and frozen lake,

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep,

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

When someone asked him what it meant, he repeated the poem. The poem means what the poem says

"everyday is groundhogs day" ~ Dr. Sexson

Batman: he is more realistic than other heroes.

• Who over does it?
• don quixote 'they are fake, but they become real to me'
• revenge motivated batman to become who he was
• archetype of the hero: Joseph Taylor

• Aristotle's layers: powers of the heroes. who is stronger than batman? Many people are stronger. Then why is he so popular?

Sidney's apology: "That imitation whereof Poetry is, hath the most conveniency to Nature of all other, insomuch that, as Aristotle saith, those things which in themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural monsters, are made in poetical imitation delightful. Truly, I have known men, that even with reading Amadis de Gaule (which God knoweth wanteth much of a perfect poesy) have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage."

imitation: all that is better than we

"It nothing is real, then wouldn't Batman be as real as everything else that isn't?" ~Chelsey

santa reality---> devestating---> existentialism---> everything is actually real

ARISTOTLE AND PLATO:

• recording reality, not actually reality
• imitate imitations
• if this is true, then nothing is true, making it true?
• verbal arts, then dramatic arts
• tragedy/ comedy came from phallic rites
• poetry
• 'In the name of the rose'~ S. Connery shows Aristotle's views of comedy
• recording vs imitation vs selector of most important things to imitate
• 'tragedy is an imitation of an action which is serious complete and of a certain magnitude." ~Aristotle
• not a crude lie, but an insight into the truth of things- Shakespeare's tellers of truth
• history deals in fact
• philosophers can only give abstractions
• poets give you the truth- sir p. sidney
• it is incite, not lying: instead of drying the actions, it makes you soak them up

In reality:

• 'Gone in 60 seconds' - stealing cars
• 'V for Vendetta' - v signs on church
• 'Jackass' - stupid things people do
• 'don quixote' - imitates art

would you rather have reality or Romantic fiction?

• Oedipus Rex is the best example of literature- can we copy it?
• how to deal with these passions and urges to behave this way?
• Aristotle says: they did it in lit, so we don't have to do it in reality

Aristotle:

• imitation is a significant human action
• catharsis provided
• they did it so that we don't have to
• same with video games

~it doesn't matter if they don't know what a cow is, facts aren't important, accuracy is not important, history doesn't matter