Fryeian State of Mind

I am still working my way through Frye's Words with Power. I have been trying to read this book for over a week and am 10 pages in. I do not know about everyone else but I really like this book. It is dense, hard to read, and incredibly insightful. Mr. Frye would be an amazing person to meet because of how intelligent of a person he must be. When reading his work, I am constantly forced to look up new words or to look up references that he makes to other pieces of great literature. So I challenged myself to try and think like Frye for one reading of the section I am currently working on. I was reading page 150 when trying to see if I could think in a Fryeian State of Mind. I found that I could somewhat think like him but after clmpleting this challenge and looking back at my notes, I felt that I was often stretching between what I was reading and what I was relating the readings to. In particular, I was considering, the cyclical process of all myth. The heroes' journey, the way that the same stories are often repeated, and the way that most stories never seem to have a complete ending (authors seems to leave a tiny loophole in every story in case they want to add to it at a later time). Frye often comments on the cyclical aspect of ladders, myths, and stories. Why are circles and cyclical aspects so important to mythology? I believe that they are important because they allow a person to always be able to find a new moral, a new ending, or a new purpose to the stories in myth. If myths were not cyclical, we would  not be able to adapt them as time goes on so that they relate to the people reading the stories. If we were not able to adapt the story of Joseph, we would not still be telling it to our children in Sunday school thus it has to have a cyclical structure  or else the story would have died eons ago.
It was discussed in class on Thursday that the Bible does not have a cyclical structure but the individual stories within the Bible have cyclical structures. I am forced to disagree and agree with this comment with some stipulations. I agree that all stories within the Bible have a cyclical structure. I disagree in the aspect that the Bible is not cyclical in the sense of foreshadowing how the Isralites will continue to exist. It is not a normal cyclical myth but parts of the Bible just seem to be on repeat, like being slaves in Egypt, but that when it does end it will not start over again. So the image that I get from the Bible is that it is a sprial. It just goes round and round but that it will eventually end. Once Revelation does happen and the world ends, it will all be over for humans but until that unlucky day happens we are on a repetitive spiral of the rest of the Bible.
I do not know if this blog will make sense to anyone else as it hardly makes sense to me but maybe that is the point. When doing my Frye imitation, I realized that to make some things make sense, we have to stretch their meaning to something that we already understand. I understand what a cyclical object and a spiral looks like, so it makes sense to relate somehting I do not understand, such as the Bible, to these objects. This is not a perfect system but Frye quotes Bertrand Russell saying "Every philosopher, in addition to the formal system which he offers to the world, has another, much simpler, of which he may be quite unaware. If he is aware of it, he probably realizes that it won't quite do". The above theory is my simple thoery wich I know is imperfect and probably makes no sense to anyone besides me. However, I hope it helps others to realize their own imperfect theories of hte bible.

Moral of Joshua 7: Make sure your family does not sin or else you will be punished for their sins!

In  my journey throughout the Bible, I have reached Joshua. Throughout my readings, I have found many many inconsistencies of what the bible says is appropriate behaviour and how to treat others. However, I have found things that have reassured me. I grew up in a Christian household where  the ideals and sayings from the Bible are often told as morals. About mid-Exodus, I was becoming very discouraged that I would ever finish with my goal to read all the of the Bible. I had grown up hearing about this great God who saved people and tried to do his best at making everyone safe and provide for them everlasting life. Through my readings of the Bible thus far, I found that this God did not exist. This god was jealous, lost his temper easily, and often went back on his word. However, I found the passage that says that one shall not be judged for the sins of the father (or any family member). This was very reassuring for me because I definitely do not want to be judged because of some of my crazy relatives! Everyone has those crazy relatives that you only claim as relatives at family reunions just because your mom makes you! Deuteronomy 25:16 says "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.". As I continued my readings of the Bible and of the Good Book, I finally finished with Exodus and started with Joshua. In Joshua, I came upon the story of the battle of Ai. This story made sense until I reached the part about the thief's family being killed for his actions. This goes completely against what God and the Bible had earlier stated about the sins of the father! How is this fair that one person does the wrong thing but an entire family is punished for it?!? It is not fair, right, or just, which are three of the various titles that God claims for himself. This single passage has managed to make me question why the Bible has been revered as a spiritual book for the last couple thousand of years. I completely see the literary value of the book but am losing sight of the spiritual value. In the past few weeks, we have often discussed how the morals of Biblical stories are very ambiguous if they exist at all, God is a fickle being, and the Israelites are complete idiots in the way they behave! Why do we look up to this book and to this group of people for guidance. In the first few books of the Bible, the Israelite's are often told not to do horrible things, which leads me to think that they are committing these atrocious acts! Why tell someone not to do something if they are not already doing it?
The literary value of the Bible is implicitly clear in every page that one reads whether it has been written by the J or P writer. Every page helps set the stage for future writers by giving them examples of correct procedures to set up repetitive parallel or how to tell an awesome story. I always thought that reading the Bible in its entirety would help me with my spiritual understanding but instead it is strengthening my literary understanding since every piece of literature owes at least a piece of its existence to the Bible.

September 21, 2010 Class Notes

Everyone is to blog in response to someone else's blog. Choose a blog that makes you think in a different way or from a new point of view. 
Class Notetakers: Kate, Jennifer, Myan, Ashley

Frye: page 121: Alexa's Blog

• most important part of book
• polysemis
• many meanings
• inspired by Dante
• Variety of different levels of literature
• Descriptive:  lowest level
• example given: reporters
• Rhetorical: higher
• language
• Poetic/Metaphoric
• Charismatic
• Bible
• Loss & regaining of identity
• U-shaped Curve
• Center of biblical narrative
• lost & found

Frye: page 149

• Displacement
• Condensation
• "All lit is displaced myth!" Sentence to know from Frye
• readers' job is to un-displace it

Spencer's Blog

• P-attitude
• rules & regulations
• want to know how to live
• geneology, rituals, rules
• J-attitude
• story
• morals are complicated
• example: Joseph and his Brothers
• Moral of story is the story
• Finding moral compromises integrity of story
• moral 
• is not detachable from story
• is ambiguous
• is experienced by the experience of reading

Constitution is the American secular gospel

Hidden Book in Bible by Eliot Friedman

• leaves only J-writer
• grey pages- J writer
• white pages- commentary
• says the J-writer writes until Samuel

Raiders of lost Ark: Biblical commentary on Ark of Covenant

Book of Enoch

• not included in the Bible
• apocryphal but not part of the accepted apocrypha
• According to book
• Enoch went to Heaven
• based on 1 line in the Bible
• "He walked with God" Genesis 5:24
• Also talks about Rebel Angels falling to Earth and having children with humans
• creating giants
• taken out of Genesis 6
• Milton did the same thing in Paradise Lost

Isaiah: Morning Star

• Lilith
• Sucubus=Eve

Redactors: editors of the Bible

Harold Bloom: The Book J

• commentary
• J does not go further than Deuteronomy

Room: Emma Donoghue

• room becomes sacred
• forbidden fruit

Etiology

• explanation of how things got to be the way they are
• examples
• Rainbow as a covenant tells why rainbows exist
• Tower of Babel explains why people speak different languages

Finnigan's Wake is inspired by Isaac

Russell's Blog

• Oral tradition
• when something is spoken it can never be retracted

Joshua and Jesus: pronounced the same just spelled differently

Bible can be seen as a book of military strategy

Judges

• Levites' concubine
• Story of Jeptha
• Inspired Hamlet

Ruth

• Sweet stories
• benign
• wedding ceremonies
• last lines lead into 1 Samuel

1 Samuel

• Election of Saul as King
• Replaced by David as King

The "New" Definitions of Displacement & Condensation

In the past week, I have tried to read Words with Power by Northrop Frye several different times. However, each time I would not get very far without getting completely confounded by what I was reading. After two or three tries, I decided to change my reading strategy. I have always been of the mentality to read through everything and then go back and reread the parts that I do not understand. This way of thinking does not work with Northrop Frye! You cannot read one part of the book without first understanding the parts that were written before it. I have now started rereading it again for the third or fourth time. However, this time I am actually understanding what Frye is talking about. This I believe is an accomplishment within itself because of how dense and full of references Frye's work is. As I sit here reading Words with Power, I keep my dictionary, highlighter, notepad, and computer search engine on hand. I am making a list and looking up every word I do not recognize and every reference I do not know. This may take me  longer to get through Frye but I will get through  it understanding exactly what I read. Upon my close perusal of Words with Power I found a few definitions that I did not previously know and was able to see how they related to the Bible as a literary work and then how they go on to relate to modern culture.
The first new definition that I found intriguing was displacement. There are multiple definitions of displacement. The first being "the state of being displace or the amount or degree to which something is displaced". However, this is not the type of displacement that Frye refers to. He says that displacement in a literary context is "the alteration of a mythical structure in the direction of greater plausibility and accommodation to ordinary experience" (Word with Power page 149 if anyone wants to read it for themselves). This is often thought of in context with the Bible as I have heard people change stories as to make them more believable. One such example is how people were able to live to such great ages. Instead of believing that Abraham really did live to be 175 years old, I have heard people say that years were not measured correctly, global warming has changed the yearly cycle, and etc... This is an example of how people displace literature. This type of displacement takes place today as well. When people hear amazing stories instead of believing the unbelievable with faith, they make up "scientific" reasons, which just a few hundreds years ago would have been unbelievable. This leads me to question why does something have to have greater plausibility and be an ordinary experience to be believed? I do not expect anyone to be able to answer this question. It is just something that I have been pondering since reading this new definition of displacement.
The second definition that Frye discusses is the literary definition of Condensations which "means  the opposite movement, where the similarities and association of ordinary experience become metaphorical identities" (149). This idea was harder for me to grasp than displacement. However, once I was able to fully comprehend the definition and its implications, I was able to think of many many examples of condensation. I think that Frye gave a wonderful example of showing how Blake condensed "Sick Rose". All of aspects of this poem became somehow mythical and had metaphorical identities. A rose was able to represent and the worm represented Genesis Serpent that corrupted the world. The idea of condensation is very intriguing because often I do not look for how ordinary things represent mythological or abstract ideas such as love or Genesis' serpent, unless I am prompted to look for such metaphors or they are obnoxiously obvious. Which according to Frye is the purpose of condensation. "It regularly has the function of reminding us that we are still within a literary orbit" and thus need to be aware of how the orbit of one thing always affects the orbit of another piece of literature, which leads back again to intertextuality.

September 16, 2010 Class Notes

Everyone is supposed to post a random line from Frazer at the top of every blog. Please start putting visuals on blogs
Parable of Good Samaritan

• Not confirmation of what is expected
• the non-expected person helps another

"mysterious mental maneuver"- Sarah's Blog

Jane Eyre

• Villian
• redactor P
• Jane Eyre
• revolts
• more into the J writer
• narrative parts of the Bible 

Northrop Frye's Bible- look @ webpage

• Inspired by 
• Milton
• Blake

Odysseus' Scar

• Mitchell: READ!
• literary style of Bible as represented in Genesis 22
• everything in background in Bible
• everything in foreground in Homer
• tells all details
• Homer vs. Genesis

The Lamb

• book that fills in gaps of Jesus' childhood

Foreskins

• hot topic in class 
• seen as a sort of trophy
• Hill of foreskins
• circumscion 
• sign of covenant between God and Israel

Groom of Blood

Myth

• "to tell the truth which can not be explained in any other way"
• highest from of truth
• mythos=truth
• history=false

Isaac means to laugh

Blood Meridian

• McCarthy
• Sodom/Gomora modernized
• The City of the Plain
• Genesis

September 14, 2010 Class Notes

Groups*
 Mountain 1: Roberto, Kaleb, Bobby, Ben, Angel, Zach S. Mayan
 Garden 1: Kinsey, Aronda, Alexa, Alicia, Spencer, Lisa
 Cave: Julia, George, Nate, Cameron, Laura, Tyler
 Furnace: John Serto, Emily, Katrina, Katelyn, John Orsie, Brittani
 Mountain 2: Jennifer, Rachel, Katie, Debra, Justin, Russel, Leanne
 Garden 2: Ashley, Kyle Crawford, Dan Goodman, Sara, Trish, Zach, Sam
*Sorry if I did not get someone's name or misspelled someone's name!

Frye-
 Themes of ascent-

•      Mountain/Garden
• Going Up
• Example: Jacob's ladders

Themes of descent

• Cave/Furnace
• underworld

Story of Martha and Mary: Needful things: "Only 1 thing is needed"

Falkner: Absolon Absolon

Intertexuality

• Ecclesiastics
• Hemmingway
• Isaiah 63 & Revelation 14:17
• Origins of Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
• "Do to the enemy as we do to the grapes"
• influenced by Julia   Battle Hymn of the Republic

Infinity of Lists

• Umberto Eco
• lists of everything
• literary imagination drawn towards lists b/c rhythm, incantation, chanting, mantra

Need to know:

•  God
• Adam & Eve
• Serpent
• Cain
• Grain
• J-writer
• Able
• Sheep
• J-writer
• Lamick
• P-writer

Shrek=Balak

"In later times Jewish fancy tricked out the story of the flood with many new and often extravagant details designed apparently to satisfy the curiosity or tickle the taste of a degenerate age, which could not rest satisfied with the noble simplicity of the narrative in Genesis."
In the past few weeks, we have often talked about intertexuality between the Bible and literary works that have been influenced by the Bible. Ever since this topic was first discussed in class, I am always subconsciously looking for hidden references to the Bible in my everyday life. And guess what...I find them all over the place. Looking for these hidden meaning, references, or parallels has made reading Plotz, Frye, and the Bible more interesting because it conveys relevance to my everyday life.
One of the funniest examples of intertexuality that I have found so far is from the story of Balak and his donkey. This funny duo seems to be a predecessor to Shrek and Donkey. It seems to me that Balak and his donkey have the same type of bantering wit that Donkey and Shrek have. They also have the same bantering and unwilling relationship with each other. The "masters" Balak and Shrek want nothing to do with their respective donkey except to use them as a tool. Balak uses his "tool" as means of transportation and Shrek uses Donkey as a sort of sidekick during his first adventure. But both donkeys save their counterpart at least one time, if not more times. When reading what Balak's donkey to Balak "Am not I thy ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine  unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee", can't use just imagine modernize that sentence and putting it to Eddie Murphy's voice speaking to Shrek? It is definitely something that Donkey would say after Shrek was being a jerk about something, which did happen quite a bit during all of the movies. I had heard this story several times before reading it myself for this class but never had I connected it to Shrek and Donkey. It makes me wonder what other references to the Bible that I am missing because of my ignorance in actually reading the Bible myself. I often thought of myself as both averagely well versed in Biblical matters, as I attended a private Christian boarding academy for several years. However, I am definitely learning that I may know the stories of the Bible but I do not know how they have affected my life in the literature that I read, the saying that I say, the movies that I watch, and in many more facets of my life.