Hmmm......

In The Archetypes of Literature it states, "It is therefore impossible to learn literature: one learns about it in a certain way, but what one learns, transitively, is the criticism of literature."

Reading this line makes me think about how backwards the world views literature. I have heard from teachers who have said, when asked what they do, "I teach literature." Hmmm....in order to be under one who "teaches literature" you have to technically be "learning literature" don't you? Not so according to Frye. In fact, because literature is what it is regardless of what people call it, we can do nothing more than systematically study as we attempt to attach meaning to it---or in other words, criticize it. This is an interesting, yet true, notion! When I took English my Freshman year of college, I distinctively remember my teacher standing up in front of our class "teaching" us about Shakespear's Hamlet----now that I think about it, however, all she was doing was giving her interpretation of the play, as well as asking for ours. In reality then, what she was transitevely passing on to us was not about the literature itself, but more about how to criticize it and get out of it what WE want- regardless of what Shakespeare intended.



Within the same paragraph as the line quoted above, Frye goes onto say that criticism, then, can basically be considered a science...........more on this to come!