#northrop frye

[titusandronicusonice]

The natural cycles of myth and literature (according to Northrop Frye)

Northrop Frye, 'The Archetypes of Literature' (1951)

(jstor link)

[agoodhandwriting]

From Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism

This also arguably exists in Summer with the Lawyer Royall/Charity Royall/Lucius Harney and Charity Royall/Lucius Harney/Annabelle Balch triangles @umbilicallove

[vulnerasti-cor-meum]

I watched Inherent Vice starring Joaquin Phoenix before reading the book and then am reviewing my Northrop Frye (basically my Bible for literary interpretation) and his analysis of comedy makes Inherent Vice make so much more sense at least on a very preliminary surface level:

The action of comedy in moving from one social center to another is not unlike the action of a lawsuit, . . . A little pamphlet called the Tractatus Coislinianus, . . . dividies the dianoia [=thematic content] of comedy into two parts, opinion (pistis) and proof (gnosis). These correspond roughly to the usurping and the desirable societies respectively. Proofs (i.e., the means of bringing about the happier society) are subdivided into oaths, compacts, witnesses, ordeals (or tortures), and laws -- in other words the five forms of material proof in law cases listed in the Rhetoric.

We notice how often the action of a Shakespearean comedy begins with some absurd, cruel, or irrational law: . . . Compacts are as a rule the conspiracies formed by the hero's society; witnesses, such as overhearers of conversations or people with special knowledge (like the hero's old nurse with her retentive memory for birthmarks), are the commonest devices for bringing about the comic discovery. Ordeals (basanoi) are usually tests or touchstones of the hero's character: . . . .

In a narrative that begins with a hero's (Sportello) search for his heroine (Sportello's ex-gf Shasta, but really the object of the quest here isn't Shasta herself but Micky Wolfmann, who's still literarily/metaphorically of the same unit as Shasta as her lover) [Frye says that the individual-level structure of comedy is the struggle for a hero to unite with the maiden and is faced with paternal-figure obstacles]; is dogged by Bigfoot who represents Law and The Man that's out to get hippies and dopers like Sportello [the Irrational Law]; and slowly encounters the huge conspiracy of a cartel that sells people heroin and then sells the same clients dental services to fix their heroin-teeth [Secret Compacts, an ambiguous variable here since it's someone antagonistic to Sportello]; and knowing that Sportello does get back together kind of with Shasta in the end (comedies must have a happy, reintegrative ending), it seems like Inherent Vice is really a classical [not classic] comedy structurally. I'm still reading through the original novel, though, so these are only just preliminary thoughts

[edwordsmyth]

Northrop Frye

[ominouspositivity-or-else]

has jorge rivera-herrans ever read northrop frye because i'm foaming at the mouth climbing the walls eating drywall about comic and tragic archetype in Epic

[odettecarotte]

'As far as Nelson is concerned, the issue is one of expectation and conventionality. “For people who don’t necessarily read what [her friend the artist and poet] Wayne Koestenbaum calls ‘philosophically smeared literature about the body’ – which is what I generally perceive myself as having been involved with for the past 30-plus years – this may come as a shock or a revelation, or I may seem brave. But this wasn’t something new to me.”

As she’s keen to remind me, there’s a whole canon of this work out there, and they’re the writers and artists who’ve shaped her thinking. Like Love is bookended by interviews with two of the most important: the aforementioned Koestenbaum, and the poet Eileen Myles. But it’s also a subject on which Nelson touches in an essay about the work of the French writer Hervé Guibert, a pioneer of auto­fiction who wrote about the ravages of Aids. “People read him,” she says, “and they say, ‘Wow! You really wrote to shock the bourgeoisie!’ No – he’s telling you about a culture that’s his life. You think it’s this other thing because that’s the only way you can see it.”'

--Lucy Scholes interview with Maggie Nelson

I'm rereading The Argonauts in preparation for moving in with the love of my life.

Looking up reviews of the book, I'm disappointed to see people with septum rings say that Nelson is trying to shock the readers by starting her book with a scene of anal sex. This isn't a cheap attention grab; it's clearly Nelson's way of making sense of the world.

To me, her descriptions of sex, shit, blood and colostrum are matter of fact.

Love the phrase "philosophically smeared literature about the body." I'm very taken with Northrop Frye's notion of "anatomical fiction" and this is part of that lineage.

Pics of me wearing various extravagant outfits for the fun of it

One of my FAVORITE parts of Femme culture is playing dress up. I love that our gatherings are places where we can wear our most silly, risky, extravagant outfits, safe in the expectation that we'll be seen and appreciated but not harassed. I want the ability to wear a carefully constructed, aesthetically BOMB slutty outfit and have queers coo "your tits look amazing!" and perhaps also notice how my choice of perfume enhances the vibe. And I want to appreciate and ask questions about what they're wearing in turn.

Wearing clothing is a social exercise! This is my desired relation.

My clothing has a lot of meaning to me. Unfortunately strangers who are straight men erase the complexity into "see boobs, must dominate so other men will know I have power." Instead of appreciating, they immediately take ACTION, a stupid wolf whistle, the same action they'd do for any creature with curves.

I want my body to be a matter of fact, that other people can engage with, not a singular call to action.

There's something similar to me in Maggie's self-exposé. IMHO she's writing to and for a queer community so we can all better know our full selves. There is so much deep and complex social and philosophical meaning to what people do with our bodies. We should be opening these actions up, and asking more questions. It disappoints me when readers ignore the complexity and defensively assert that they're being manipulated into giving the author "attention."

[filmcentury]

A teacher who is not a scholar will soon be out of touch with his own subject; a scholar who is not a teacher will soon lose touch with the world.

Northrop Frye (1912 – 1991), Canadian ordained United Church minister, literary critic, and literary theorist

[marlocandeea]

As myth is based on the contrast between the sacred and the profane, romance is based on a contrast between a sense of wonder and what we might call the disenchantment of ordinary life. Like the sacred, the sense of wonder imparts to anything it touches a kind of numinous otherness, which can be mysterious, fearful, and fascinating all at once.

Northrop Frye's notebooks on Romance, ed. by Michael Dolzani