{"id":1947,"date":"2009-09-07T18:24:43","date_gmt":"2009-09-07T22:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2009-09-07T18:24:43","modified_gmt":"2009-09-07T22:24:43","slug":"michael-sinding-frye-and-the-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/09\/07\/michael-sinding-frye-and-the-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Sinding: Frye and the Curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1957\"<\/p>\n

Michael Sinding responds to Russell Perkin.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Russell Perkins\u2019 question<\/a> \u201cHow do Frye\u2019s ideas relate to the state of literary studies today?\u201d is an excellent one, and deserves some airing out.<\/p>\n

One\u2019s initial impression of the answer may be, \u201cnot at all.\u201d But Bob Denham has done plenty of work to show how Frye\u2019s ideas continue to inform research and teaching in all kinds of ways. So why do we get that impression?<\/p>\n

What I find striking is that when you look at the history of specific topics and questions in literary studies, it\u2019s not unusual to find that Frye has made a major and permanent contribution. As a fr\u2019instance, I\u2019ve been going through studies of satire. In a recent anthology, Ruben Quintero\u2019s Companion to Satire<\/em><\/a> (Blackwell, 2007), Frye is still pretty prominent, though not so prominent as Bakhtin. Paul Simpson\u2019s On the Discourse of Satire<\/em> <\/a>(John Benjamins, 2003) says that Frye\u2019s study shaped much criticism, and that his definition of satire seems to be more widely referenced than any other. And Frye makes a respectable showing in John Frow\u2019s Genre<\/em><\/a> (Routledge, 2006), along with Aristotle, Bakhtin, Derrida, Todorov<\/a>. These are pretty different kinds of books, too. The Companion is fairly introductory, Simpson\u2019s is mainly a linguistic study, Frow is more poststructuralist, especially Foucauldian (it\u2019s in the New Critical Idiom <\/a>series). I think you\u2019d find this is true with many other topics, though no doubt some (genre, structure & form generally) more than others.<\/p>\n

And yet for all of our interest, there is not (yet?) a strong momentum continuing to develop his ideas, as there is with, say, Bakhtin. Something about Frye\u2019s assumptions and style seems uncongenial to the sea-changes literary studies underwent with post-structuralism and afterwards. So even though Hayden White and Fredric Jameson greatly admired Frye, their followers don\u2019t seem to share the interest, and you don\u2019t see Frye talked about much in e.g. PMLA. Perhaps it\u2019s that he never did engage much with those sea-changes. He continued to work with his own assumptions and system, despite occasional references to Derrida, Foucault<\/a>, Barthes<\/a>, et al. Bakhtin didn\u2019t engage with them at all, of course, but his ideas were simply better suited to poststructuralism\u2019s impulses and directions.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t think we want a defensive \/ defiant celebration of Frye\u2019s supposed old-fashioned-ness, or unfashionable-ness. In short, Frye\u2019s connections with current literary studies seem peripheral, not central, or in the background rather than the foreground.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to see Frye have more of the kind of continuing reconsideration that Bakhtin does: putting his main ideas into play with current movements, themes, and questions, and tested and developed accordingly. Think of how much he has to say about culture, including popular culture, worldview and ideology, the social contexts of literature and criticism, as well as all the brilliant structural studies \u2026 . There\u2019s a lot that is untapped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Sinding responds to Russell Perkin. Russell Perkins\u2019 question \u201cHow do Frye\u2019s ideas relate to the state of literary studies today?\u201d is an excellent one, and deserves some airing out. One\u2019s initial impression of the answer may be, \u201cnot at all.\u201d But Bob Denham has done plenty of work to show how Frye\u2019s ideas continue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[75,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","category-literary-criticism"],"yoast_head":"\nMichael Sinding: Frye and the Curriculum - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/09\/07\/michael-sinding-frye-and-the-curriculum\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Michael Sinding: Frye and the Curriculum - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michael Sinding responds to Russell Perkin. 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