Symbols

We talked about the "cat" in Frye's book on page 73 today. It basically said that there is nothing except the thing that is the thing... everything beyond that is a symbol for a symbol. They are representations of things.



We also talked about truth. Truth cannot be found in literature because it is just that literature... a story. There are fictional elements to any sort of writing. Who is to say that one person's truth is the same as another person's. I'm pretty sure that slaves did not view the Civil War the same way that the Rebel soldiers did, even from a historical point of view. We also cannot pigeonhole one piece of work into just one single box on our chart. Antony and Cleopatra was a play Frye talked about that fits into many aspects of our chart. This was on page 51 in Frye's book.



Literature is didactic or multipurpose. It can tell a story to entertain as well as to teach morals or values.