Six Degrees

"In short, we can get a whole liberal education simply by picking up one conventional poem and following its archetypes as they stretch out in the rest of literature." Anatomy of Criticism By Northrop Frye pg. 100

When I read this passage in the book it really hurt my head at first because I was thinking of how that could be possible. Then after thinking about it for a long time I almost gave up. Then I came upon a picture of an old roomate who introduced me to the game six degrees to Kevin Bacon. He was a total movie nut and seriously had over one-thousand movies! I not being a huge movie buff, totally stink at the game! It did help me to conceptualize how you can achieve an entire education from one poem.

For those of you who are not familiar with the game of six degrees the purpose is to connect one actor or actress to Kevin Bacon in six movies or less using other actors who were in movies with him. If you don't know how to play you can ask me... or here's the same concept except it is called the theory of six degrees of separation. http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/sixdeg.html

So this whole Frye idea is easy to conceptualize if you use this concept... at least it is for me.


Terms

Parasite- Lives off of a host and sometimes ends up killing the host.

Gauntlet- An armored glove used to challenge someone to a duel.

Ecstasy- (ec means outside, stasy means to stand)- out of body experience. We are not talking about the drug!

Monad- simplified it means a single unit or entity but can be used differently in different subjects. Here is a better definition from dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monad

Savant- This is a person who has severe mental handicap yet still has profound mental abilities. To learn more about savants here is a website. http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/

Tropes- This is a figure of speech with unexpected meaning or a twist.