I thoroughly enjoyed reading Northrop Frye's Theory of Symbols chapter in Anatomy of Criticism. I could not seem to put it down, even though I had a very difficult time trying to understand it! I found myself highlighting a lot of passages from Frye. I continuously found passages that I felt were interesting, intriguing and of course unknown material to me.
One of the passages in the symbols chapter that I actually seemed to understand:
"...the criticism of literature can hardly be a simple or one- level activity." (page 71)
This seemed very clear to me, of ocurse criticism is difficult and complex because it must be done with respect to what it is critiquing (in my opinion), while also paying close attention to not contradict itself. Criticism of literature should also look at the work of literature as a whole, yet it seems that it may also be appropriate for a critic to pick apart the work piece by piece so as to assure the work as a whole has been evaluated.
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I love that chapter too. It is using Dante's 4 level medieval method of biblical exegesis AND is the method that the Roget Thesaurus (not the dictionary version but indexed version) groups words..rising from level 1 the physical world to level 2 the conceptual to level 3 human will and action to level 4 the ideal world on earth...or to use the terms the literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogic...which I teach students as plot, theme, moral and revelation...
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