{"id":31309,"date":"2013-02-05T11:05:51","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T16:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=31309"},"modified":"2013-02-05T11:05:51","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T16:05:51","slug":"the-paradisal-pole-a-frygean-perspective-on-european-irony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2013\/02\/05\/the-paradisal-pole-a-frygean-perspective-on-european-irony\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paradisal Pole: A Frygean Perspective on European Irony"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Ugolino and his sons in their cell, William Blake, circa 1826]<\/p>\n

The following paper, by S\u00e1ra T\u00f3th, was presented at the international Frye conference in Budapest (“Northrop Frye: 100 — A Danubian Perspective,” September 7-8, 2012, Budapest).<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Paradisal Pole: a Frygean Perspective on European Irony: <\/strong><\/em>
\n The Example of the Danish Film Green Butchers<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

S\u00e1ra T\u00f3th<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In this paper I will attempt to apply what I believe is Northrop Frye\u2019s perspective on one significant feature of European \u00e9lite culture. I do not use the term European in a geographical but in a sociological sense, having in mind the culture of the secularised \u00e9lite all over the world, which, according to Peter Berger, constitutes, as it were, a European island even in America (Berger 11). This feature happens to be an attitude of extreme irony, more precisely, the tendency of interpreters to overlook textual data which may counterpoint or call into question the predominance of the ironical vision of alienation. The concept of irony is thus brought into play not simply in the traditional sense of a rhetorical trope, but in a philosophical or existential sense, first theorised by Romantic philosophers, and afterwards by thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Paul de Man or Frye himself.<\/p>\n

1<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is well known for readers of Anatomy of Criticism<\/em> that irony, coupled with satire, is a very important point of orientation in Frye\u2019s literary universe. In his circle of the four pregeneric plots or mythoi<\/em> (comedy, romance, tragedy, irony\/satire), or in his U shaped quest irony is the lowest point. Whereas tragedy, associated with autumn, implies the downward movement of a hero of great power of action, irony implies the lack of action. Characters are not traveling downward because they are already down, totally paralysed as it were. This scheme corresponds to Frye\u2019s historical modes which proceed from myth through romance, through the high and low mimetic to the ironic mode. Whereas in the mythic mode the \u201chero\u201d is superior to us, normal beings in degree and kind, at its opposite, in the ironic mode he or she is worse than us and has the least power of action. Whereas in Frye\u2019s polarized world of imagery the apocalyptic group of images belongs to the mythic mode and presents a world of fulfilled desire, its opposite, demonic imagery belongs to the ironic mode, a repudiated world of unfulfilled desire, of unrelieved suffering and alienation.<\/p>\n

In short, Frye in the Anatomy of Criticism<\/em> suggests that irony has a demonic quality to it, and later in Words with Power<\/em> he calls the pole of irony quite consistently \u201chell world\u201d and its opposite \u2013 referred to in Anatomy<\/em> as the mythic and apocalyptic \u2013 the paradisal pole. Quite logically, Frye\u2019s world of irony and satire, being the mythos<\/em> of winter, is a cold hell, a frozen and motionless sphere. (Not quite accidentally, the film I am about to discuss to has some important scenes in the meat freezer of a butcher shop.) The positive energy in Frye\u2019s universe is human desire, which transforms nature into a home, helping us achieve oneness with other people, with the exterior world and with God, and thus finding true identity. At the other pole action and motion are absent, no transformation takes place, which leaves us in the hell world of alienation: from nature, from other people, from God, and from ourselves. As opposed to identification with who and whatever is other, in the hellish state of irony we experience extreme detachment and objectivity to the point of being overpowered by the objective world we cannot change, even being turned into objects ourselves.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

This account is very similar to Paul de Man\u2019s ironic vision of language and of the human condition, with the substantial difference that for de Man irony is not one pole but it is the only authentic interpretation of existence. For de Man words do not have the power to unite subject and object, self and world, language being a network of signs referring endlessly to other signs and never achieving oneness with something other and real. Neither can the self achieve oneness with the non-self or with itself for that matter. In an endless series of acts of consciousness attempting to grasp its own reality, the self is doubled, multiplied and is finally dissolved in the \u201cnarrowing spiral of a linguistic sign \u2026 more and more remote from its meaning\u201d (De Man 222). De Man picks up Baudelaire\u2019s example of a stumbling and falling man laughing at himself falling, and invests this scene with a philosophical significance, turning it into a symbolical Fall, in the course of which the divided or split self comes to view himself as object, treated by Nature “as if he were a thing \u2026 whereas he is quite powerless to turn the smallest particle of nature into something human.\u201d (214)<\/p>\n

Decisive thinkers of the last century such as Paul de Man tend to absolutize or essentialize the hell world of irony and satire, the state of alienation and split. To mention another towering figure, Jacques Lacan\u2019s vision of the self and its relation to the world, is dominated, as Frye would say, by the archetype of satire which is sparagmos<\/em>: fragmentation or tearing to pieces. The self or ego as seen by Lacan is always already fragmented, in bits and pieces, the integrated imago<\/em> being the deceptive result of an imposition of a rigid and artificial unity on this chaotic turbulence (see Lacan 97). According to one of his critics, Joel Whitebook, in Lacan\u2019s work synthesis and integration are suspected as inauthentic, and contrary evidence tends to be overlooked. Lacan, Whitebook argues, tendentiously misrepresents Freud by placing almost sole emphasis on the death drive as opposed to the integrating Eros (see Whitebook 122\u2013128).<\/p>\n

Of course the onset of an age of extreme irony with the post war era is understandable. Europe has been through the most horrible times humankind ever experienced, with our societies coming as close as possible to experience the \u201chell world\u201d Frye describes in such a chillingly precise manner as \u201ca world of power without words, where the predominant impulse is to tyrannize over others\u201d (WP 88). The tendency to interpret existence in terms of irony and irony only and to suspect discourses of integration and synthesis is also understandable. What is less understandable is when interpretive practices begin to turn into a futile enjoyment of irony for its own sake. The most precise account of this attitude I have found comes from Hungarian writer Mih\u00e1ly Kornis, who uses images of cold and frost to describe the extreme ironic mode: “In its final stage, irony turns into a sort of Satanism. It rejoices in being free, free to do anything, but its joy lacks serenity. Rather, it is frozen and shrunken; it has become lucid, but it is only capable of wit. The warm serenity of humour shines with the ability to suffer, the \u2018serenity\u2019 of irony shines only with the inability to suffer\u201d (137).<\/p>\n

Northrop Frye, on the other hand, is known to be a critic with a preference for comedy and romance over tragedy and irony. The reason for this, I believe, is not the lack of understanding of the latter, but his sharp vision of the ultimately hellish nature of it. And to see hell for what it is, it is necessary to see it in context. Without something else to compare it with, without an opposite to measure it up to, absurdity would cease to be absurd because it would be all there is. In his vision of the whole of literature Frye relativizes the mythos<\/em> of irony and satire by turning it into one of the four pregeneric narratives and by contrasting its demonic imagery with the apocalyptic or paradisal group of images. His strongest statement about the relativity of irony comes, however, from Words with Power<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u2026 in proportion as we try to approach literature with a sense of personal involvement or commitment, one pole of it begins to look like the revelation of a paradisal state, a lunatic, loving, poetic world where all primary concerns are fulfilled. It is a world of individuals but not of egos, and a world where nature is no longer alien but seems to be, in the medieval phrase, our \u201cnatural place.\u201d It is one pole only: the other pole is the imaginative hell explored in tragedy, irony, and satire. The hell world may be described as the world of power without words, where the predominant impulse is to tyrannize over others so far as one\u2019s ability to do so extends. But it is the paradisal pole that gives us a perspective on the hell world, or, in our previous figure, provides the norm that makes irony ironic. <\/em>(WP<\/em> 88, emphasis mine)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, Frye does not only relativize irony structurally, but also historically. In his essay on the successive historical modes of literature he describes how in our own age the ironic mode as the last one in the series of modes follows the low mimetic mode (the age of realism), showing also signs of a return to the mythic. He says that \u201cduring the last hundred years, most serious fiction has tended increasingly to be ironic in mode\u201d (AC<\/em> 34\u201335). Although he does not spell this out explicitly, one aspect of the irony in modernity seems to be the split between high and low culture, between educated, ironical readers and mass consumers. Thus the interpreting habits of cultivated readers or receivers (the \u00e9lite), even when applied to popular culture, may sharply differ from the approach of its regular audience. In contrast, the description of irony in the earlier, low mimetic phase actually sounds like what Wayne Booth calls \u201cstable irony\u201d (see Booth 1\u201332). As Frye explains, \u201cthe reader is invited to share in the irony, because certain standards of normality common to author and reader are assumed. Such assumptions are a mark of a relatively popular mode: as the example of Dickens indicates, the gap between serious and popular fiction is narrower in low mimetic than in ironic writing\u201d (AC<\/em> 49), [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

By implication, in the ironic mode proper irony becomes \u201cunstable,\u201d and in its extreme infinite, or, as we have seen in de Man\u2019s more philosopical account, \u201cthe dialectic of the self-destruction and self-invention which characterizes the ironic mind is an endless process that leads to no synthesis\u201d (De Man 220). In infinite ironies, Booth says, \u201cthe clear implication is that since the universe (or at least the universe of discourse) is inherently absurd, all statements are subject to ironic undermining. No statement can really \u2019mean what it says\u2019\u201d (Booth 240\u2013241). Unlike de Man however, Booth and Frye make a distinction between stable and unstable ironies, and Frye does this by pointing out the difference between \u201cthe ironic tone that we may find in low mimetic or earlier modes and the ironic structure of the ironic mode itself\u201d (AC<\/em> 49). The ironic structure does produce endless, hellish irony for Frye, yet, as we have seen, not only is it confined to one phase of history, ultimately it is also only one pole of a polarized vision. Not even the most unrelenting poststructuralist ever experiences existence as permanently and absolutely alienated, and except for geniuses as intensive as William Blake not many of us can claim to be \u201cin God\u2019s presence night and day.\u201d The polarized vision of an ideal world of fulfilled desire and its opposite, a hell world repudiated and rejected by people is not reality in the ordinary sense, but in an intensive sense: the kind of reality T. S. Eliot believes humankind cannot bear much of. It is a vision of the world in imaginatively sharpened contours. None of us lives in either world, but we need both as points of orientation.<\/p>\n

The implication seems to be that in Frye\u2019s vision the bleakest and darkest ironical work contains in itself the totality of the literary universe. A narrative of the most extreme tragical or ironical descent can conjure up its opposite, the comic ascent, and thus echo the entire U shaped story of loss and recovery, of alienation and redemption. In the ironical mode, in the world of experience the vision of innocence has been lost. Yet this vision, called by Frye \u201ca permanent integration or unity of being\u201d in an essay on Paul de Man, is something \u201cwe can neither attain nor leave alone\u201d (Frye, \u201cIn the Earth\u201d 224). This is exactly what Frye goes on to say to conclude the previously quoted passage about the ironical and the paradisal pole:<\/p>\n

\u2026 while there is no human society where we do not find all the horrors of psychotic humanity, we seldom fail to find something in the culture <\/em>of a society that is congenial. The sense of the congenial, of a genuine human communication through words, pictures, textiles, ceramics or whatever, comes from the innocent vision at the heart of all human creation and the response to it. Such a vision is a presence created by an absence, a life that remains alive because the death that was also in it has gone.\u201d (WP<\/em> 88)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the following brief discussion of the Danish film Green Butchers<\/em><\/a> I will be looking for hints of what Frye calls the innocent or paradisal vision, an aspect of the film almost entirely overlooked by reviews.<\/p>\n

In Anders Thomas Jensen\u2019s macabre satire two frustrated, freakish young men open their own butcher shop in a small Danish village. Haunted by a past history of emotional injury and loss, insecure in several ways, they both hunger after social recognition and psychological fulfillment. Bjarne lost his wife and parents in a car accident caused by his mentally handicapped twin brother who tried to avoid a deer while driving. Bjarne is now obsessed with killing animals and collecting skeletons, and he is trying to pull his comatose brother off the life support system in order to raise money for the butcher shop. Initially, no one seems interested in the new shop, which only confirms a pattern of rejection in the life of the uptight and weird looking Svend, abused by his parents as a child and predictably not very successful with the other sex as an adult. One night he accidentally locks up an electrician in the freezer room only to find him frozen to death the following morning. Panicking, he slices up the man\u2019s thigh and sells it in a special marinade as \u201cchicky-wickies.\u201d News of the exquisite meat product spread, and locals line up in front of the shop. For the first time in his life, he feels loved and respected by the community. To supply the growing demand, Svend gets entangled, with Bjarne\u2019s reluctant help, in a series of grisly murders, trapping and butchering people in the freezer. Bjarne, however, is not only a helper, as the life-supporting machine he turns off to lay hold of his brother\u2019s money appears as a visual parallel to the Svend\u2019s freezer.<\/p>\n

Having looked through more than thirty online reviews[3]<\/a> in English, Spanish, Hungarian and French, my impression is that besides complaining about the fairly high gore quotient and warning sensitive vegetarians, the majority of reviewers do not see much more in the film than one other exploitation of the hackneyed theme of cannibalism. Interestingly, few try to interpret the Danish director\u2019s work in term of its genre, satire, although the motif of cannibalism is strongly related to what I have already mentioned as the core archetype of satire and irony in Frye\u2019s vision: sparagmos<\/em> (tearing to pieces). In Frye\u2019s archetypal perspective satire shocks us into seeing \u201cthe world as it is before the imagination begins to work on it\u201d (AC<\/em> 147). It is the world of one diseased ego feeding upon the other to repair the loss that cannot be repaired, to fill up the gaping hole in one\u2019s existence. To put it in a Lacanian manner, it is a world where the metonymic sliding of desire is endless, the killing cannot stop. There is also a strong sense of arbitrariness Frye generally associates with tragic irony (AC<\/em> 41): the deeply injured Svend is totally deprived of the power of action, the first murder, as it were, happens to him accidentally, both murderer and victim being playthings of circumstance, reduced to the status of helpless, driven objects.<\/p>\n

My contention, however, is that while the majority of online reviews essentialize the murderously dark satire of the two cannibal butchers who sacrifice others to feed themselves, they overlook certain visual and narrative hints of the opposite, paradisal pole, a eucharistic vision of love nurtured by sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Several reviews mention the so-called Romantic subplot, Bjarne\u2019s slowly blossoming love affair with the lovely orphaned Astrid, but the good-hearted local priest who raised her and gives her a job, is only mentioned in passing, and only once or twice in a positive sense. No importance is attributed to the strong counterpointing relation between the priest and his surroundings and the world of the butcher shop. In sharp contrast with the cold, grey colours of the butcher shop and the frozen atmosphere of the freezer full of chopped up motionless corpses, the old priest has a hothouse in which he cultivates a garden teeming with green life. It turns out that the old man was sole survivor of an airplane-crash by eating from the flesh of his dead wife whose memory he has not ceased to cherish. The slight morbidity of the priest\u2019s story functions to establish a link with the narrative of the butchers. The common motif is sacrifice: the cannibal butchers sacrifice others to feed themselves, but a truly loving relationship also involves sacrifice in that the partners give away part of themselves to nurture the other. The priest in the film, quite simply, stands for love. Whereas the butchers spread death, the priest has been nurtured and enlivened by the love he and his wife had for each other, so now he himself can spread life by taking care of Astrid and growing a garden. In this perspective the story of the priest has unmistakably Eucharistic overtones.<\/p>\n

I know of no better interpretive tool in order to make sense of this weird connection between cannibalism and Eucharist than Northrop Frye\u2019s notion of demonic parody. To quote Frye, \u201cthe Eucharist symbolism of the apocalyptic world, the metaphorical identification of vegetable, animal, human, and divine bodies, should have the imagery of cannibalism for its demonic parody\u201d (AC<\/em> 148). No one would take the Lord\u2019s supper to be cannibalism. No one would call it cannibalistic when we nurture and support one another by giving from ourselves. Cannibalism, however, with its images of torture and mutilation, is a demonic parody of the Lord\u2019s supper. And reading the Bible in Frye\u2019s spirit, the Lord\u2019s supper appears as the type of the apocalyptic feast at the end of times.<\/p>\n

The apocalyptic world is a world of union, and union brings life and fertility. \u201cFertility,\u201d Frye says, \u201cmeans food and drink, bread and wine, body and blood, the union of male and female\u201d (AC<\/em> 193). Eucharist symbolism is apocalyptic because alongside sexuality, eating is the most ancient and the most intensive expression of union both literally and symbolically. In the priest\u2019s story both of these aspects of union are present, and in Bjarne\u2019s approach to Astrid the hope of a redemptive love relationship appears. Furthermore, a strong desire for a harmonious relationship with animals also surfaces. Most of these positive motifs center around the church which stands on a hill above the village, thus providing a perspective, a vantage point both visually and in terms of interpretation. Approached this way, I find it significant that it is the priest who exposes the crime of the butchers because he recognizes the special flavour of the meat. The term \u201cdemonic parody\u201d does suggest a connection between the apocalyptic image and its demonic counterpart, but it also implies that it is the apocalyptic which provides the norm. The linking motif, as we have seen, is sacrifice. Love always has a cost. Even in the garden of Eden love meant giving up something of oneself for the sake of the other. In a fallen world of demonic parody this giving, this sacrifice turns into destructive butchering. Yet we know it is only a parody and not the real thing: this is why satire provokes such a nervous laughter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Appendix<\/strong><\/p>\n

On-line reviews of Green Butchers<\/em><\/p>\n

Old priest and his garden not even mentioned (25 reviews)<\/p>\n

In English (15)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0342492\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.filmcritic.com\/reviews\/2003\/the-green-butchers\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/c\/a\/2005\/01\/14\/DDG6UAPOJK1.DTL#green<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.slantmagazine.com\/dvd\/review\/the-green-butchers\/626<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/jam.canoe.ca\/Movies\/Reviews\/G\/Green_Butchers\/2005\/02\/11\/928118.html<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/movies\/2002155862_green21.html<\/a>http:\/\/www.reelfilm.com\/mini43.htm#green<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.combustiblecelluloid.com\/2005\/greenbutch.shtml<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.flixster.com\/movie\/green-butchers<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/movies2.nytimes.com\/2005\/01\/07\/movies\/07butc.html<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.variety.com\/review\/VE1117922606\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/movies.amctv.com\/movie\/2003\/The+Green+Butchers<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.eyeforfilm.co.uk\/review\/the-green-butchers-film-review-by-paz-newis<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.flickeringmyth.com\/2009\/09\/world-cinema-green-butchers-2003.html<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.subtitledonline.com\/reviews\/the-green-butchers<\/a><\/p>\n

In Spanish (1)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.filmaffinity.com\/es\/reviews\/1\/925061.html<\/a><\/p>\n

In Hungarian (7)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/magyarnarancs.hu\/zene2\/film_-_zold_hentesek-69624<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/port.hu\/article\/9623<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.mozinet.hu\/index.nof?filmid=2963&nyelvid=1&k1=1&k2=43<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/magyar.film.hu\/filmhu\/magazin\/anders-thomas-jensen-filmjei-jensen-von-trier-gengszterek-fogadoja.html<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/regenytar.hu\/film.php?id=1996<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/filmvilag.hu\/xereses_aktcikk_c.php?&cikk_id=9519&gyors_szo=%7C%7C%7C%7CMozi%7CMozi%7CMozi%7CMozi&start=0<\/a><\/p>\n

In French (2)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cineaster.net\/index.php\/2012\/03\/28\/bouchers-verts-gronne-slagtere-anders-thomas-jensen\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.leblogducinema.com\/critiques\/critique-comedie\/critique-les-bouchers-verts\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Old priest mentioned, but not his garden, or not as a positive contrast (4)<\/p>\n

In English (3)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.boston.com\/ae\/movies\/articles\/2005\/01\/21\/witty_butchers_takes_stab_at_cannibalism\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/movies.tvguide.com\/the-green-butchers\/review\/137782<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A53803-2004Dec9.html<\/a><\/p>\n

In Hungarian (1)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.kikotoonline.hu\/karc\/mozi\/filmkritika\/szabad-a-meszar-a-zold-hentesek<\/a><\/p>\n

Priest\u2019s story is mentioned and related to both sacrifice and satire in one Hungarian review written by G\u00e1bor Toldi, aesthete at the Roman Catholic University in Hungary:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/kuk.btk.ppke.hu\/hu\/content\/z%C3%B6ld-hentesek<\/a><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Berger, Peter. \u201cThe Desecularization of the World: a Global Overview.\u201d The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics.<\/em> Grand Rapids Michigan: Eerdman Publishing Company, 1999.<\/p>\n

Booth, Wayne. A Rhetoric of Irony<\/em>. University of Chicago Press, 1975.<\/p>\n

de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight. Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism<\/em>. Routhledge, 1983.<\/p>\n

Dubois, Diane. \u201cThe Absurd Imagination: Northrop Frye and Waiting for Godot.\u201d English Studies in Canada<\/em> 2 (2011): 111\u2013130.<\/p>\n

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays.<\/em> Princeton University Press, 1957.<\/p>\n

____________. \u201cIn the Earth or in the Air?\u201d Northrop Frye\u2019s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.<\/em> Ed. Imre Salusinszky. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. 219 \u2013228.<\/p>\n

____________. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of \u201cThe Bible and Literature.\u201d<\/em> New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.<\/p>\n

Kornis, Mih\u00e1ly. A f\u00e9lelem dics\u00e9rete<\/em>. [The Praise of Fear.] Budapest, Sz\u00e9pirodalmi, 1989.<\/p>\n

Lacan, Jacques. \u00c9crits.<\/em> A Selection.<\/em> Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1977.<\/p>\n

Whitebook, Joel. Perversion and Utopia: a Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory<\/em>. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cThe descent<\/em> of the visionary ladder would take us into a world where subject and object grow steadily further apart, and end by the subject\u2019s becoming an object too.\u201d (WP 87) Analysing Waiting for Godot<\/em> in a Frygian perspective, Diane Dubois claims that the extreme ironic mode of the play is a result of the characters being trapped by the objectively real and unable to use the transformative power of their imagination to give sense and meaning to the chaos of external reality (Dubois 116, 119, 121).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2]<\/a> Advertisement and propaganda, the major arts of our ironic age, says Frye in the 50s, build on an exaggeration of this gap, pretending \u201cto address themselves seriously to a subliminal audience of cretins, an audience that may not even exist, but which is assumed to be simple-minded enough to accept at their face value the statements made about the purity of a soap or a government\u2019s motives. The rest of us, realizing that irony never says precisely what it means, take these arts ironically, or, at least, regard them as a kind of ironic game\u201d (AC<\/em> 47)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[3]<\/a> See the Appendix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Ugolino and his sons in their cell, William Blake, circa 1826] The following paper, by S\u00e1ra T\u00f3th, was presented at the international Frye conference in Budapest (“Northrop Frye: 100 — A Danubian Perspective,” September 7-8, 2012, Budapest). 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