Words with Power

Northrop Frye is probably the smartest literary critic from last century. In a previous class, Dr. Sexson assigned this book, Words with Power, and it has wowed me ever since. I was very surprised to read out a random quote in class and find it not immediately relevant. Here are some better quotes which are more applicable to our class.

• Words can never directly transmit to our minds anything that is not verbal.
• Literature is an art of words.
• Anything that sounds anti-intellectual always becomes popular.
• Ideologies, like other human organisms, are mortal: they come to birth, decay and die, or are metamorphosed into other forms.
• Those in power, and perhaps a large part of society also, regard flexibility and tolerance as dangerous social forces. The twentieth century has seen many poets and novelists exiled, silenced, isolated, imprisoned, murdered, or driven to suicide by ideology-obsessed governments.
• It is a function of poetry to keep the metaphorical habit of thought alive.

Words with Power is quote riddled and loaded with shockingly well worded "ahh hahs!" It basically reads as a cliffs notes on biblical and classical metaphor and imagery. Interesting but not surprisingly, Frye touches on Eliot's Four Quartets. Frye mentions Eliot's use of intersecting the ordinary with the divine and many other authors with similar fascinations are also touched upon. Frye says that the importance isn't this same group of images which the poets are interested in which is important. What's important is why the poets were all interested in the same images.

In answer to that, Frye makes an argument, which seems to appear a few times through different representations, that religious metaphor is tied to illogical belief of the real where as classical metaphor can be used as a highlight or accent to a story without the unnecessary and problematic concern of being truthful. It is unfortunate that religion argues it's own position as real and "the truth" because this ultimately weakens it and prevents a more expanded use of it's imagery (compared to classical imagery and it's diverse use). Believe me when I say that there are a great many more points which Frye makes and the book is totally worth looking at for reference if you are writing anything to do with myth, identity and metaphor, or the metaphors of the mountain, garden, cave, or furnace.