{"id":4784,"date":"2009-10-28T22:02:19","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T02:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=4784"},"modified":"2009-10-28T22:02:19","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T02:02:19","slug":"anagogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/10\/28\/anagogy\/","title":{"rendered":"Anagogy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dante_alighieri\"<\/p>\n

Frye, of course, pilfered the word \u201canagogy\u201d from Dante, where it\u2019s the highest or spiritual level of meaning. The anagogical meaning of the verse in Psalm 144<\/a>, which Dante uses to illustrate his four levels, is, he says, \u201cthe leave taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.\u201d In his notebooks for the Anatomy<\/em> Frye writes that in the anagogic habit of mind \u201cwe recognize oneness rather than a unity of varieties,\u201d which is another version of Joe\u2019s point about radical metaphor: identification. It\u2019s true that in writing about anagogy Frye often sounds like a shaman or a symbolist poet. At the anagogic level, he says, for example, \u201cNature is now inside the mind of an infinite man who builds his cities out of the Milky Way.\u201d Such prose might tempt us to exclaim with Pound, \u201cAnagogical? Hell\u2019s bells, \u2018nobody\u2019 knows what THAT is<\/a>.\u201d Some of the reviewers of the Anatomy<\/em> poked fun at such explanations. Robert Martin Adams wrote, \u201cI do not, by any means, think it wrong to believe in \u2018the whole of nature as the content of an infinite and eternal body which, if not human, is closer to being human than to being inanimate\u2019; but I think it wrong to make such a belief prerequisite to the understanding of literature. My own conviction is that the world rests on the back of a very large tortoise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnagogy<\/a>\u201d comes from the Greek, meaning \u201cmystical\u201d or “elevation” (literally \u201ca leading up\u201d). As a medieval level of interpretation, it signified ultimate truth, belonging outside both space and time. In the Convivio<\/a><\/em> Dante refers to it as \u201cbeyond the senses\u201d and as concerned with \u201chigher matters belonging to eternal glory.\u201d Aquinas had defined the \u201canagogical sense\u201d in similar terms (Summa Theologica<\/a><\/em>, pt. 1, Q1, art. 10).<\/p>\n

As the final phase of symbolism, Frye introduces us to anagogy in the Second Essay of the Anatomy<\/em>, but then he more or less drops it, Essays Three and Four descending from the fourth level (mythical and archetypal). The last half of Frye\u2019s career, however, is devoted to the dialectic of Word and Spirit, which is to say, to anagogy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frye, of course, pilfered the word \u201canagogy\u201d from Dante, where it\u2019s the highest or spiritual level of meaning. The anagogical meaning of the verse in Psalm 144, which Dante uses to illustrate his four levels, is, he says, \u201cthe leave taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to the freedom of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"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":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anagogy","category-bob-denham"],"yoast_head":"\nAnagogy - 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\/10\/28\/anagogy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anagogy - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Frye, of course, pilfered the word \u201canagogy\u201d from Dante, where it\u2019s the highest or spiritual level of meaning. 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