{"id":3279,"date":"2009-09-28T09:52:47","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T13:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=3279"},"modified":"2009-09-28T09:52:47","modified_gmt":"2009-09-28T13:52:47","slug":"mervyn-nicholson-frye-was-different-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/09\/28\/mervyn-nicholson-frye-was-different-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mervyn Nicholson: Frye Was Different (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fables\"<\/p>\n

Frye was different in many ways.\u00a0 In this respect, he was like his mentor, William Blake, who has always presented problems, even anxieties, to literary scholars.\u00a0 Somehow Blake was outside the main current, and Frye sort of is, too.<\/p>\n

Frye was different, to begin with, in the fact that he validated human desire.\u00a0 I noted before that he believed desire was good.\u00a0 In this, Frye was in opposition to most traditions and unlike most intellectuals.\u00a0 This difference in attitude has profound significance and profound effects on his thinking generally, but the validation of desire was not the only difference that sets Frye apart.\u00a0 Another important difference is that he thought a good deal about the question what is the social function of literature.<\/p>\n

This is not a question that attracts literary scholars.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t easy to think of any conference on the topic or anybody who got a SSHRC grant to investigate the question, what is the social function of literature? even though it seems to be a rather obvious question and one of considerable, again obvious, importance.\u00a0 Frye was different \u2014 he thought about this throughout his career.\u00a0 The question in true Frye fashion points to a prior question, which is: does<\/em> literature has a social function?\u00a0 Frye insisted that it does have a social function, and then went on to investigate what that function was.<\/p>\n

It is interesting that literary critics have not bothered with either of these questions much.\u00a0 Critics did talk about this before Frye (a bit, anyway), but after Frye \u2014 after his reputation collapsed in the 1970s \u2014 no one seems to even notice that it is a question.\u00a0 Poststructuralism<\/a> was hardly interested.\u00a0 Poststructuralism is essentially a denial of value or function to literature \u2014 this neutralization is a basic theme of Paul de Man<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n

The logic of the New Historicism<\/a> is to deny the existence of a category called \u201dliterature\u201d altogether; there are just texts, and what is called \u201cliterature\u201d is just an elitist preference for one text over another.\u00a0 Since there is no such thing as literature, the whole question of whether it has a function or not is superfluous, even meaningless.\u00a0 What has been called literature is primarily a display of the preoccupations, prejudices, and anxieties of the author, exactly like any other text<\/p>\n

The social function of literature is a difficult topic because it implies the further question, why study literature? (and then, why have English departments?).\u00a0 In the past, there were theorists who asked what the value of literature is \u2014 \u201cvalue\u201d in the sense of some inherent importance that is realized by the individual reader-consumer of literature, some private benefit.\u00a0 \u201cSocial function\u201d is a different concept, and refers to some purpose in societal terms, not just for the individual.\u00a0 For Frye, literature has both \u201cvalue\u201d and \u201csocial function,\u201d too.<\/p>\n

Early theorists, say Plato, saw literature as a function of delusional desires or as an instrument of instruction or indoctrination.\u00a0 Aristotle\u2019s Poetics<\/em> assigns a psychological value to literature in his conception of catharsis: drama resolves difficult emotions by purging them (I. A. Richards <\/a>and Kenneth Burke <\/a>are in this \u201cpsychological\u201d line before Frye).\u00a0 Literature may also furnish enjoyment for those with leisure to enjoy such things.\u00a0 But the standard attitude is that literature, like works of art generally, belongs to an owning elite who control such works, enjoy them, and pay the artists who produce them.\u00a0 Special people consume the work of art and benefit from it, as well as determining its content.\u00a0 Literature is a kind of tribute to the owner, an elite gratification.<\/p>\n

Out of this model comes the view of literature as an object \u2014 an object of consumption \u2014 a notion preserved in the tradition that literary criticism is a form of evaluation.\u00a0 \u201cCritic\u201d after all means \u201cjudge.\u201d\u00a0 The connoisseur-judge consumes the work of art and decides its value, like a wine expert sampling a particular vintage and pronouncing its value, or to use Frye\u2019s wonderful derisive metaphor, like a judge awarding ribbons at a cat show.<\/p>\n

What makes Frye so interesting in this context is that he insisted that literature is a social power: it is a power with a social function.\u00a0 He struggled to formulate or theorize this conviction, that literature participates in the construction of society, above all the construction of a better<\/em> society.<\/p>\n

Thus literature is part of a democratic and emancipatory struggle.\u00a0 It is inevitably involved in the question, what would a better society be like? and so brings us back to the prior concern, in Frye, the concern of desire, of what we desire\u2014and do not desire.<\/p>\n

Again, Frye was different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frye was different in many ways.\u00a0 In this respect, he was like his mentor, William Blake, who has always presented problems, even anxieties, to literary scholars.\u00a0 Somehow Blake was outside the main current, and Frye sort of is, too. Frye was different, to begin with, in the fact that he validated human desire.\u00a0 I noted […]<\/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":[75,80,92,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","category-imagination","category-literary-criticism","category-secular-society"],"yoast_head":"\nMervyn Nicholson: Frye Was Different (2) - 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\/28\/mervyn-nicholson-frye-was-different-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mervyn Nicholson: Frye Was Different (2) - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Frye was different in many ways.\u00a0 In this respect, he was like his mentor, William Blake, who has always presented problems, even anxieties, to literary scholars.\u00a0 Somehow Blake was outside the main current, and Frye sort of is, too. 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