Literature Linkage

What I love about English, or more specifically, literature, is that all things are connected. I'll see or hear something and I swear it's "from something." "What's that from?" I'll ask, curious of my familiarity. Something from a book or a movie or a TV show that rings in my ears, begging I recognize where I first heard it. I will notice underlying, hidden levels of subtle humor by recognizing instances of parody that I would not have gotten had I not seen the work they are parodying. I can recall similar stories or ways to relate a story to another one in similar event, character or theme. I see displaced myth everywhere I look for it, it seems. Be it in cliche archetypes (Oh, look--another sit-com with an overweight idiot husband and an unusually attractive, well-meaning wife) or making connections between seemingly unrelated texts. Everything must be displaced myth, after all, as I can seem to make these connections on multiple levels or through multiple works. One of my favorite is the set of connections I wrote for a British Literate I extra credit essay comparing the villains of Othello and Paradise Lost, noting the likability of the main antagonists, their similar situations and motivation (military or rank-based ascension and denial), their weaknesses, traits, etc. The number of similarities were of no little amount, and served to remind me that all pieces of literature are inevitably linked, especially if one looks hard enough.

Anagogy, Nature and Human Thought

If the human mind is the circumference, that is, the thing in which all things are contained, as we begin to deal with the anagogical nature of phases, we see that human action may move from being imitative of nature to being the thing in which nature itself is contained. This works in the literal sense that the human mind is an organic product made by nature itself, and in that the possibilities of nature are contained within the collective human subconscious or within the expanse of human imagination. Like The Idea of Order at Key West, we see an ambigious transition from nature producing and containing the human mind, containing it within the confines of nature, and the mind attempting mimicry of said nature, to a newer phase, the phase of anagogy where nature's breadth is within the infinite of human mind, with nature being the lower entity, all nature becoming intrinsicly imitative of human thought. It would seem that once we examine things in the ultimate, in the broad general "underthought" of anagogical collective unconscious, that we may find the way of things, the natural idea of order, as in the poem, becomes displaced and flipped on its head, reversing the roles that nature and the human imagination play. We see, as we do in Wallace Stephen's poem, that nature goes from being human inspiration or the way of things to a concept percieved within the limits of human imaginative potential, a universal theme, a mere singularity of possibility within the infinite confines of our minds as poets.

Apocalyptic Imagination

Frye's conceptualization of apocalypse intrigued me. Apocalypse not as desolate Gothic aftermath of an absolute destruction of humanity (The Last Man, etc), but as a re-imagining of reality as perceived by man. Not a total destruction of the world as we know it, but literally a destruction of the world as we know it. We do not generally develop or coin positive connections with "apocalypse" and so Frye's unusual denotation of it startled me. To put such positivity into the word, and redefining it to suit his purpose (as he did with "poet," etc.) is a refreshing spin on a tired concept. He does not see the changing perception of man to his imagination as a damning thing by any means, though, only that the revamped concept of man's view of expanse of mind or of self requires a resetting by man, a destruction of the old to allow renewed fervor to be exploited by the newer concept.

Infinity and Nature

On page 119, as discussed in class today, Frye cites Hooker on man's apocalyptic ability, or mankind's capacities for infinite reality or being. The anagogic phase "imitates the total dream of man." Hooker claims that the desire man has for the infinite is a system inherent of nature. Man's dream of the infinite is both an imitation and a product of nature. Man sees the vastness of the cosmos and the intangible, untamable breadth of things. He seeks to attain such vastness, such unconquerable mass, that is found in the natural world, but Hooker argues that man tends to strive for intellectual and sensual perfection that seems to occur so mathematically perfect in the known avenues of nature, and in that man is born with such interests naturally instilled in them through commonly occuring thoughts, the product of nature. The observable universe is infinite in its solitude and something we wish to solve the complexeties of, but it is a natural event for humans to desire to do so. In our lust to be something further than is permitable for humanity, we are experiencing a natural sequence of nature: the passionate impulses for infinity and perfection.

I Wish I Was Don Quixote

I wish I was Don Quixote. I live in this bland world, but like the ambitious poet, I long for more than what I've seen around me. I want to live in the ideal world, the golden possibilities of the romantic or heroic life. Being more than my environment and more than simply the product of said environment. I don't want the low-mimetic, I long and desire and lust for the unstoppable torrent of excitement and adventure that tend to go hand-in-hand with such copious amount of beloved myth. I don't want this world of schools and jobs, though I find I fit within it rather well.
That is the difference between he and I. I settle. I accept my apparent fate, willing to go with the flow, brushed along the dregs of the river of life, while Don rejects the world, fights it. He cannot and does not accept his lot in life and forces himself into a golden world, even if it may be only within his perceived reality. He then, is perhaps a high-mimetic character in that he forces his will onto others. He is a high-mimetic character living a delusional romantic reality, born out of his rebellious nature against his bored life in the low-mimetic. One would think we would have a larger amount of people ill-content with their position in this world of the low-mimetic.

Literal Phase?

With the phases of symbols that Fry remarks on, he allows us to see the significance of each of the different types. I don't, however, understand how the phase of the literal is significant. It is itself an important phase in that it serves to categorize ways of immediate interpretation of the overall purpose of symbols to convey possible interpretation, and I understand that the literal phase serves as the denotative mirror of the descriptive phase's connotative nature. I don't, however understand the importance of understanding the literal phase in terms of literary criticism. What purpose does understanding the base, literal "letteral" value of a piece of literary work serve? I can't understand when a poet would desire his/her audience to take a poem at its literal value as forms and shapes. Other than taking poetry to some obscure level of post-modernist art form, I don't see a situation where interpreting the work through literal phase would accurately represent the poet's intentions.

How I now understand literal symbols...

To understand the true nature of symbols, or rather, of the literal phase of symbols, one must disconnect oneself entirely from language as a form of immediate communication. We read the word “banana” and, of course, imagine a banana, but to recognize the literal meanings of symbols, we have to learn to disassociate the connotation of an image of a yellow, elongated fruit; to take true grasp of literal symbols, one has to take words at the basest of values, that is, as nothing but words. The sound of the words must be separated from their implied meanings. A good example would be to try and understand what a song is trying to convey in the same way that words convey meaning, that is, that they ultimately fail in communicating the actual intent of the words, and one can only take the written word as form of lines, with spoken word being nothing but the meaning of sound. One example I fathomed was listening to a song or poem or any spoken or written word from a language one does not know, such as kanji or spoken word French, etc. and take it as is: the sound and the form of words on the page.