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Bevat de naam: Robert Foulke

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The Sea Voyage Narrative (1997) 11 exemplaren
An anatomy of literature (1972) 10 exemplaren

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Foulke, Robert
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male
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USA

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I have kept a couple of boxes of old textbooks - strictly for sentimental reasons. They take me all the way from second grade (one of those basal readers) through sixth- and eighth-grade history books (great favorites!) through my first years of teaching and graduate school (those weighty literature anthologies which I studied and from which I taught). I don't even make space for them on my library shelves, but keep them stored away in boxes at the back of a basement closet. Among them are a few textbooks that I always wanted to teach but never had a chance to. One of those is an anthology edited by professors who once taught together at Trinity. College.

It was designed to be used in an introductory college literature course. At the time (1972) most such courses were either historical surveys of British and American literature or New Critical approaches to the analysis of fiction, poetry, and/or drama. These were taken to fulfil general humanities credit or as introductions to an English major, maybe both. These editors were convinced that neither of them was appropriate. The latter simply repeated work that most students had had in high school. The former emphasized the history of literature and the historical backgrounds of literary works rather than the nature of literature itself.

The course they devised - the Anatomy of Literature - and the textbook they created to use within it were based on the mythic or archetypal criticism of Northrop Frye. Frye's first fame as a critic resulted from his seminal work on the visionary poetry of William Blake, Fearful Symmetry. Stemming from his work with Blake, which quite naturally involved him in the mythic and biblical backgrounds of Blake’s visions, Frye’s next major publication was his Anatomy of Criticism, surveyed the universe of literature, finding patterns that were repeated over and over again: e.g., comedy and tragedy, romance and irony; high mimetic and low mimetic modes; mythic structures of plot, and archetypal clusters of images; and the like. This book, Anatomy of Literature, was derived from Frye’s schemata; it is organized around Frye’s four basic patterns, from romance to irony, each divided into narrative (epic, fiction, drama) and thematic ( lyric poetry). In their preface, the editors state one of their aims quite clearly, “We have tried to describe, analyze, and illustrate with a wide range of selections the narrative patterns of romance, tragedy, comedy, and irony and their thematic analogues in lyric poetry.”

Though the book as a whole and each section have challenging introductions developing the critical theory and defining classes adapted from Frye, the heart of the book consists of collections of works illustrating each pattern. In their preface, Foulke and Smith recommend “that students begin with the selections rather than the critical introductions.” (pxi) I would concur with this wholeheartedly. Reading the selections, first for enjoyment, then inferring what they have in common. This inductive method of seeking and identifying the patterns would be more interesting than the rather dull, abstruse introductions; furthermore, this method will involve students in the direct experience of literature, in independent personal response, and then in the sort of critical thinking that informs good reading, rather than simply applying foregone literary theories.

So the core of the book is in its selections. Adumbrating Frye somewhat, they limit themselves to three phases in each pattern, rather than Frye’s six, and they adapt, limit, and redefine each phase in order to facilitate movement through the course. For example, the three phases of narrative romance are (1) advent and initiation (the medieval Havlock the Dane, Keats’ “Eve of St. Agnes,” the beginning of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, a John Updike short story “Pigeon Feathers”); the quest (“Sir Galahad” from Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Wife of Bath’s tale from Chaucer, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and a William Butler Yeats poem); descent and recognition (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “The Passing of Arthur” from Tennyson’s Idylls, and a D.H. Lawrence short story, “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”). In the thematic part of this section (lyric poetry), three themes are demonstrated: the vision of the heroic, the ideal world of the imagination, and the oracular role. The vision of the heroic, for example, includes an Anglo-Saxon poem “A Dream of the Rood,” and works by Richard Crashaw, John Milton, Walt Whitman, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

From these few selections alone, you will see how rich and challenging the literature is. In each section the parallel patterns will be easily discerned by first-time readers, though subtle variations will become apparent within discussions, critical questioning, and further reflection. The important thing would be to enjoy the selections first and share initial responses. I personally would recommend that students be encouraged to mention modern counterparts, in movies, popular music, children’s books, current literature, even news stories. You will notice how the selections in each phase cover a broad range of time, from medieval to 20th century in these examples. Students will also notice how the same authors may write in each of the modes; e.g., Chaucer, Wife of Bath’s Tale (romance), Pardoner’s Tale (tragedy), Millers’ Tale and Nun’s Priest Tale (comedy) or William Butler Yeats “The Wanderings of Odin” (narrative romance), “Sailing to Byzantium” (thematic romance), “Easter 1916” (thematic tragedy), “Under Ben Bulben” (thematic comedy), “Nineteen Hundred Nineteen” (thematic irony). In their preface, the editors calculate the variety of these works: “There are 168 selections by 88 authors: 10 plays, 27 works of fiction, 32 narrative poems, including 12 ballads and dramatic poems, and 99 lyric poems.”

Unfortunately the introductions are weighty and unwieldy; however, if they are read only after the selections, they will confirm and perhaps expand upon patterns students will have inferred on their own. One of the most important concepts developed in the introduction to the book has to do with what Frye called “displacement.” The basic mythic or archetypal patterns are more or less timeless and constant; the same basic patterns are developed at different times and places within our Western culture. However, each writer’s works and unique and personal. Displacement, according to Foulke and Smith, refers to writers’ adaptation or modification of patterns to fit their own visions. Adapted from Freud’s psychological term, “displacement in a novel or poem may be read as evidence for the ways in which the writer’s imagination has transformed and revised his most profound desires and experiences into forms that meet his or his culture’s sense of what is appropriate or significant.” Modes are displacements from mythic patterns: in the romantic mode, magic is still possible and heroes tend to be legendary figures, perhaps the offspring of the gods; in the high mimetic mode, heroes tend to be nobles, representatives of their orderly society, and they deal with extraordinary circumstances; in the low mimetic mode, the protagonists (we are less likely to use the term heroes) are common, ordinary folk, dealing with conflicts in their natural communities or families; in the ironic mode, heroes are less than human or are extremely limited or broken in their efforts to deal with basic chaos and disorder around them. Examples of the romantic mode would be Greek and Roman epics or Arthurian romances; of the high mimetic would be Shakespearean dramas or idyllic poems; of the low mimetic, novels like Tom Jones, Pride and Prejudice,or Dickens’ works; of the ironic mode, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Camus’s The Stranger., James Joyce’s fiction, T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland,, or Edward Albee’s plays. The displacement of recent literature (that is, the last two centuries or so) has to do with what we often call realism, Modern writers use more material details and more stylistic devices to develop plots similar to early mythic and romantic patterns.

From the medieval romance Sir Orfeo and D.H. Lawrence’s story, “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter,” we can abstract a common narrative pattern. A hero descends into a lower region associated with death (in the first a Celtic otherworld, in the second the dead, black water of a pond) from which he rescues a woman with whom he is later reunited in love. Each story is related to the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice but rendered with a more fortunate conclusion. . . . [Some differences between the two stories] are factors of mode, like the ease and frequency with which the Orfeo poet introduces the magical and prophetic. Within the romantic mode he can say that “the Queen was taken from their midst by magic.” Lawrence must rely on metaphor for the mysterious tone: the doctor watches the woman “as if spell-bound,” her memory remains “distinct in the consciousness, like a vision.” He must italicize his point - “It was portentous, her face. It seem to mesmerize him” - for Lawrence writes under the constraints of the mode.”

If the book were to be revised to my satisfaction, a few adjustments would be required. The editors mention that a year-long course based on Anatomy of Literature, some novels or other longer works would be added. I think there text should include lists of such work. What would be even more helpful, would be an extensive lists of supplementary works of various types from various periods, including modern films and other media. Works written after 1950 should be included in such lists. Copyright restrictions would limit the number that could be included in the anthology, but to list them would be very helpful. The footnotes in this text do an excellent job of making them accessible, particularly foreign terms, obsolete expressions, and the like. The date of each work is provided to help put the reader into a correct frame of mind. I don’t think it would betray their archetypal approach to included headnotes putting the work into an historical or biographical context when such would be illuminating to the reader.

But Anatomy of Literature should not be relegated to the refuse of the publishers’ world. A lot of clear thinking and provocative approaches are represented in it - ones that are not out-dated and that should not be neglected.
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bfrank | Nov 13, 2015 |

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