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the literary, and the formal are involved again
In
that "time-bound
ego," and with "rhetorical decorations,"· and the archetypal · and
anagogic contexts of analysis are involved with ·"the inner form of
history," which transcends the process of history.
Some critics seem to think that Archetypal Criticism is all that
Frye wanted to develop; this is, in the light of all we have been saying,
wrong. Archetypal Criticism is only one phase, albeit a very important
one, of a system which seeks to embrace all cognitively respectable
criticism.
Frye's distinguished hook on Blake makes it quite plain that for
Blake the sun is the emblem of a deeply benevolent, passionate poetic
genius at work; and Yeats's useful writings on Shelley make it plain
that for Shelley the sun is a quite different emblem; in Yeats's words
it is "the being and the source of all tyrannies." Now many problems,
or rather puzzles with no clues for their solution, suggest themselves.
Which one of these poets is using the sun archetypally? And if both
are, how does the archetypal critic discern
the
archetype as far as the
sun is concerned "in" both of these poets' works? Or to get to the
bottom of the puzzles: how does one defend a particular way of
stripping away the "rhetorical decorations" or products of the "time–
bound ego" from the archetypal images themselves? Frye writes a great
deal about the recurrence or repetition of images, but arbitrarily leaves
out the all-important differences between uses of a given image.
The claim that two images are, or are not, instances of the same
archetype requires that one insert gingerly that all-important phrase
mutatis mutandis.
This pithy little phrase and its equivalents have
sobered many a potentially progressive scientist; but Frye does not
bother with it or any of its equivalents. The only hint I can find
about how to strip off the particulars from a universal is in the "stand
back" metaphor which he uses in both the
Anatomy
and the
Fables.
According to this, we see the archetype by standing back far enough
from the w.ork of art so that we cannot see the brush-strokes or the
vestiges of "displacement." Aside from the possibility that if you step
far enough back from a Shakespearean play you may fall back into
your own prejudices instead of into a "structure of knowledge," one
finds this spatial metaphor not only useless but question-begging.
When you step back from a painting, the dropping-out that occurs is
automatic and unimpeachable-the laws of physiology and psychology
are doing the dropping-out for you, s.o to speak. But when you
generalize, you are doing something neither automatic nor unimpeach–
able. Two questions occur when you generalize or find universals in