“I said that there was a language for each attitude, and that these languages appear in our society as the languages of ordinary conversation, the language of practical skills, and the language of literature.” (pg 17)
This quotation synthesizes one of Frye’s main objectives in this chapter “The Singing School.” Before this opinionated judgement Frye refers back to his “shipwrecked island” situation of which he spoke about in the first chapter. This quotation is simply a reminder of what he had previously stated. I find this quote rather odd and different, possibly because I’ve never thought about it before. The three attitudes to which Northrop Frye refers to are: a state of awareness in which you notice that you may be alone, an attitude in which you begin to create a “human way” of living in an isolated situation and finally an attitude of imagination, one in which you generate your own world. As Frye adds meaning to this, he labels each attitude with a language, and that is the quotation that I chose. At first glance I think I may attempt to comprehend what his main message may be, but the more I read it over I realize that I’m not sure how to distinguish between these languages. For instance, when someone speaks to you, you don’t say “oh that’s the language of practical skills!” Possibly I just think too rationally to understand this. Though I don’t’ understand the true meaning behind this, I doubtfully have few assumptions. Maybe when Frye differentiates between these languages he means how you say things or write them, or maybe the tone used in the context, maybe I’m totally wrong, or maybe I’m completely right. Any thoughts?????
I agree with you that we never really think about these three different attitudes. I haven't thought of these attitudes towards literature, I actually don't think anybody really thinks about these attitudes but I think he's trying to get us to recognize these attitudes in our time and how we should consider them in literature now a days. Frye, I think is just trying to let us know the different ways that we express language in our time and the areas of where it is expressed. Each of those three ways of applying language is related to all of us in someway i think. There just labels as you said.
ReplyDelete