Monthly Archives: August 2010

H. G. Wells

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdghSMTXsU

Orson Welles in conversation with H. G. Wells

On this day in 1946 H. G. Wells (born 1866) died.

Frye in “Varieties of Literary Utopias”:

The implication seems clear that the ideal state to More, as to Plato, is not a future  ideal but a hypothetical one, an informing power and not a goal of action.  For More, as for Plato, Utopia is the kind of model of justice and common sense, which, once established in the mind, clarifies its standards and values.  It does not lead to a desire to abolish sixteenth-century Europe and replace it with Utopia, but it enables one to see Europe, and to work within it, more clearly.  As H. G. Wells says of his Utopia, it is a good discipline to enter it occasionally.  (CW 27, 202)

Frye Newsletter: Vote for the Frye Sculpture!

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47PGGjiLd54

The latest Frye Festival newsletter can be found here.

But here is what you urgently need to know:

The Frye Festival is currently 5th in the national competition presented by Pepsi Canada, a contest which could give the Festival $25,000 in order to create a bronze, life-sized sculpture of Moncton’s most famous son. The Festival must finish first or second to win the money.

The winner will be chosen only by the number of votes received. Until Tuesday, August 31, everyone is invited to vote daily at www.refresheverything.ca/fryefestival for “Feed your imagination” in Arts and Culture, under the $25,000 category. You have to be signed in before clicking “Vote for this idea” for your vote to count.

“We still have three weeks to be in first or second position and ensure that we can create a beautiful piece of public art that will inspire all citizens, young and old,” says Dawn Arnold, Chair of the Frye Festival. Arnold indicates that the project is already creating waves since the Festival is in fifth place among 50 proposals in the $25,000 category. “We know we can win this with everyone’s help! Vote every day-every vote counts!” encourages Dawn.

The contest is being presented by Pepsi Canada, who will distribute $1,000,000 over one year. If the Festival wins, the statue of Northrop Frye, who grew up in Moncton, will be placed in front of the Moncton Public Library.

Quote of the Day: Mark Twain

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leYj–P4CgQ

Mark Twain filmed at his home by Thomas Edison

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”  Mark Twain

Frye on Twain in the notebooks:

I read somewhere that Twain planned a story in which Tom sells Huck into slavery, which shows, if true, that he realized what an utter creep Tom Sawyer was. (Northrop Frye Unbuttoned, 131)

Cleopatra

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqUHh9poo6M

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, act II, scene 2.  Enobarbus’ famous speech (“The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water”) begins at 7.30

On this date in 30 B.C. Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, committed suicide.

Frye on Shakespeare’s Cleopatra in The Return of Eden:

Cleopatra in Shakespeare is all the things that the critics of Milton say Eve is.  She is vain and frivolous and light-minded and capricious and extravagant and irresponsible and a very bad influence on Antony, who ought to be out chasing Parthians instead of wasting his time with her.  She is morally a most despicable character, yet there is something about her which is good: we cannot feel that Cleopatra is evil in the way that Goneril and Regan are evil.  For one thing, Cleopatra can always be unpredictable, and as long as she can be that she is human.  Goneril and Regan are much closer to what is meant in religion by lost souls, and what that means dramatically is that they can no longer be predictable . . . At the same time Cleopatra is part of something far more sinister than herself: this comes out in the imagery attached to Egypt, if not in the characterization attached to her.  Putting the two together, what we see is the human contained by the demonic, a fascinating creature of infinite variety who is still, from another point of view, sprung from the equivocal generation of the Nile.  (CW 16, 52)

Margaret Atwood: “Both counterintuitive and shortsighted”

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margaret-atwood

Atwood’s letter to U of T president David Naylor protesting the closing of the Centre for Comparative Literature.  (First posted at the Save Comparative Literature website here.)

Margaret Atwood
c/o McClelland & Stewart
75 Sherbourne St., 5th Floor
Toronto, ON
M5A 2P9

President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto, ON
M5S 1A1

CC. Provost Cheryl Misak, Dean Meric Gertler, Professor Neil ten Kortenaar,

Re. Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto

July 27, 2010

Dear President Naylor,

I am writing to express my disappointment and frustration with the recommendation of the University of Toronto’s Strategic Planning Committee to disestablish the Centre of Comparative Literature in 2011. As you may know, I was a student at Victoria College and studied under Northrop Frye. My admiration for his scholarship, and the work done at the centre he founded, is longstanding.

But the reasons I urge for a reconsideration of this decision are not simply nostalgic. This is a time in which cross-cultural trends are increasing exponentially; interdisciplinary study is booming, and globalization is the watchword of the day. To shunt students off to various linguistic departments instead of permitting conversation and collaboration in a central space is both counterintuitive and short-sighted. This is precisely the wrong time to make a decision of this kind, and would indeed reflect very poorly on the university overall. The University of Toronto, I know, prides itself on being able to dialogue with many of the top universities across our southern border and around the world. The Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto is the only one of its kind in our country. While I understand the temptation to save a few bucks with this closure, I urge you instead to heed the loud reminders (available to read at www.savecomplit.ca) that the costs of closing the Centre might be greater than the University of Toronto can afford.

Sincerely,

Margaret Atwood

Cardinal Newman

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JHNewman

On this date in 1890 Cardinal John Henry Newman (born 1801) died.

Frye in The Secular Scripture:

As with Plato, the Christian has to pass through this doctrinal system before he can understand the myths of the Bible.  In the nineteenth century Cardinal Newman remarked that the function of scripture was not to teach doctrine but to prove it: this axiom shows how completely the structure of the Bible had been translated into a conceptual system which both replaced and enclosed it.  Even the fact that the original data were for the most part stories, as far as their structure is concerned, often came to be resented or even denied.  Whatever resisted the translating operation had to be bracketed as a mystery of faith, into which it was as well not to look too closely.  (20)

Video of the Day: Stephen Colbert Pwns Laura Ingraham [Updated with Frye Quote]

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LAURA-INGRAHAM-large

Laura Ingraham in the seconds before being hoist with her own petard

Colbert’s interview of Laura Ingraham is a week old but is so artful that it’s worth taking another look.  Colbert, without calling Ingraham a racist who cannot write, demonstrates that she’s a racist who cannot write by using his persona as a pompous know-nothing to play out the pretense that her book The Obama Diaries is actually written by Obama.  The look on her face as the trap closes says it all.  Ingraham thinks she’s produced satire, but Colbert easily outmaneuvers her to show that she hasn’t.  Satire requires more than just a sarcastic attitude and is considerably more subtle than providing an excuse to say nasty things about people that have no demonstrable relation to them. With Ingraham, Colbert demonstrates, the only recognizable issue is race and is expressed in terms of ugly racist cliches.  Ingraham, evidently mortified to be shown up so, provides no rationale; she merely tries to bluff her way through the remainder of the interview.  That’s why this video is being widely linked.  (Ingraham: “I think we had a moment here.”  Colbert: “No, I think you had a moment there.)

See the relevant portion of the interview here.

[Update] Frye in “The Nature of Satire”:

For satire needs both pleasure in conflict and determination to win; both the heat of battle and the coolness of calculation.  To have too much hatred and too little gaiety will upset the balance of tone.  Man is a precocious monkey, and he wins his battles by the sort of cunning that is never far from a sense of mockery.  All over the world people have delighted in stories of how some strong but stupid monster was irritated by a tiny human hero into a blind, stampeding fury, and how the hero, by biding his time and keeping cool, polished off his Blunderbore or Polyphemus at leisure.  (CW 21, 41)