Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 13:54:45 -0600
From: cmalle@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Christene Malley)
Subject: micro-essay #2


In chapter 3, "Structuralism and Semiotics" Northop Frye's theory on new criticism was interesting to read. He has many interesting theories about literature. For example, Frye's theory keeps literature "untainted by history in New Critical fashion, viewing it as an enclosed ecological recycling of texts, by unlike New Criticism finds in literature a substitute history, with all the global span and collective structures of history itself"(80). The New Critics believe that literature was in some significant cognitive, yielding a sort of knowledge of the world; while Frye insists that literature is an "autonomous verbal structure" that is cut off from any reference other than itself, "a sealed and inward-looking realm which contains life and reality in a system of verbal relationships"(80).

Frye's definiton of literature is very interesting, he sees it as "not a way of knowing reality but a kind of collective utopian dreaming which has gone on throughout history. It is an expression of human desires which have given rise to civilization itself, but which are never fully satisfied there". He believes that we should not look at literature as a self-expression of the author or authors, but of the entire human race, in which it history was originally expressed. This definition is interesting because I did not look at it that way. I did look at it as a form of history, but not all types of literature in general. When Frye states that we should not look at literature as a self-expression of the author, but as of the human race and history, it broadened my perspectives on literature. In the first micro-essay, I stated that literature- to me- was any type of reading material that you can learn a type of knowledge, whether it be a valuable lesson, factual knowledge, or anything that you learned from a specific source that you did not know before you read it. This ranges from any type of reading source from children's books, magazine articles, to encyclopedias. However, most literature does exist from some type of historical views, or knowledge,