Northop Frye writes: "Catharsis implies the detachment of the spectator, both from the work of art itself and from the author. The phrase 'aesthetic distance' is generally accepted now in criticism... the emotions are purged by being attached to objects; where they are involved with the response they are unattached and remain prior conditions in the mind."
We talked briefly in class about the question of if one truly can disconnect oneself from any work of literature and look at it in an entirely cathartic sense. I don't think it really is a possibility, now that we've read Frye's Theory of Symbols, for we derive very specific connotations from all words, be they universal, in relation to other pre-established notions about the symbols from other texts, or even through the direct imagery evoked by such symbols. It seems to me that it would be impossible to distance oneself entirely from any piece of text without written knowlege on behalf of the author that the work was written to be taken as literal word. Maybe there is some miscommunication between Frye and myself, but it seems as though I would have to place all my emotional connections that I had coming into a certain reading aside, and be able to get through the whole thing without reading the words "dead baby" and instantly connecting it to pain, death, suffering, etc.
Perhaps he means to disconnect one's initial reaction to emotion-rousing words and placing them towards objects, ignoring the ethos and focus on "objects," as he put it. I'm often dumbfounded at his esoteric rhetoric, either reading too into his words or delude myself by not paying enough attention to what he's saying, but I think he's talking about having our only emotional attachment to the text be through the words themselves and not the symbols the words represent? Or is he talking about attaching our emotions to inanimate objects, such as in the animated feature The Brave Little Toaster?
We talked briefly in class about the question of if one truly can disconnect oneself from any work of literature and look at it in an entirely cathartic sense. I don't think it really is a possibility, now that we've read Frye's Theory of Symbols, for we derive very specific connotations from all words, be they universal, in relation to other pre-established notions about the symbols from other texts, or even through the direct imagery evoked by such symbols. It seems to me that it would be impossible to distance oneself entirely from any piece of text without written knowlege on behalf of the author that the work was written to be taken as literal word. Maybe there is some miscommunication between Frye and myself, but it seems as though I would have to place all my emotional connections that I had coming into a certain reading aside, and be able to get through the whole thing without reading the words "dead baby" and instantly connecting it to pain, death, suffering, etc.
Perhaps he means to disconnect one's initial reaction to emotion-rousing words and placing them towards objects, ignoring the ethos and focus on "objects," as he put it. I'm often dumbfounded at his esoteric rhetoric, either reading too into his words or delude myself by not paying enough attention to what he's saying, but I think he's talking about having our only emotional attachment to the text be through the words themselves and not the symbols the words represent? Or is he talking about attaching our emotions to inanimate objects, such as in the animated feature The Brave Little Toaster?
No comments:
Post a Comment