A couple quick thoughts

Well alright then. Its been tough to try and get into the habit of doing this thing, but I hope to get my updates done more frequently. This post is really just about two things that've been niggling the back of my brain for a bit.

Firstly, Vico, from whom Frye artfully stole his little modal hierarchy. Vico himself ended his own description of the descent of society with the thought that culture was presently in a chaotic mode characterized by discourse in the "gibberish of the vulgate." What bothers me is the fact that this was in the 1800s, if I heard Dr. Sexson correctly. And Frye then uses the same categorization for his present, i.e., 1990. It started me to thinking that most philosophers, or critics, or what-have-you, we'll say societal thinkers, who observe a descent into the plebian have characterized their own age as common, vulgar. And, granted necessarily, they see their own age as a terminus from which no further descent is possible. So has Frye just reconfigured the timeline on which the change from kerygmatic to descriptive discourse has progressed? Perhaps I'll find out this evening as I read the second chapter.

Next then, are the antics of Dionysus in chapter two of Colosso. Notwithstanding the disdain I hold for forced intercourse in general, I thought his behavior with Aura really ran completely counter to the desire which drove him to it. Colosso sets up the whole bound and drunk conquest of Aura by relating first the story of Pallene, whom Dionysus was enthralled with due to the fact that she could wrassle, for lack of a better term. And who could fault him for that, for enjoying an erotic tussle with "a woman he desired, but could not dominate." The problem being that he, as is wont to happen when you're a god apparently, eventually did dominate her and thus reduced her from an object of desire based on semi-equality to a mere vulgar follower. After the domination he loses interest, of course, as is the case in that sort of catch and release loveplay. Then, he sets his sights on an even more unattainable women, Aura, a woman "as capable of hurting him as he was of hurting her." But instead of confronting her on equal footing, as he had with Pallene, he tricks her into getting hammered, hides her weapons, ties her up, does his business, and goes about his day. So he has her, sure, but in a way that completely destroys his reason for having wanted her in the first place. Robbing her of those very qualities which were the entire reason for the attraction. Raping a bound, drunk Aura, it seems to me, is no different than just commanding one of the Bacchants to give him some loving. Either way is basically taking the choice away from his object, and it was that choice, and the will to physically deny him, that was the appeal of Pallene and of Aura in the first place. Anyway, I'm rambling now but it just king of annoyed me.

So, as I said, I'll try to hit this a bit more often and am planning an update with all the up-to-the-moment required thing either Monday or Tuesday evening, depending on the whims of fate.

In Illo Tempore

Right then, just a brief post to begin this. So far I've enjoyed Frye's book (though I've forgotten to bring it, and my notes on it, with me), and am just wondering whether we're supposed to have read the first part or the first chapter. Not being overly prone to being gung-ho, I've done the latter. Fairly straightforward I thought, and dug also his moving from exclusive to inclusive modes of writing. I remember somewhere Aristotle actually giving a guide to rhetoric as needing Ethos (being the regard in which the speaker is held by his audience), Pathos (playing on the emotions of the audience), and Logos (being the quality of reasoning within the speech), and can't help but notice how in each successive mode one aspect is culled (or at least the attempt to cull is made). From rhetoric we move to dialectic, where we lose Ethos, and the argument made is supposed as standing as a complete entity in itself, divorced from the arguer. From dialectic to descriptive and Pathos falls by the wayside, leaving us with a text solely based on Logos, with no emotion and no connection to the author.