Friday, May 4, 2012

An Excerpt From Mr. Frye

"Romance is the structural core of all fiction: being directly descended from folktale, it brings us closer than any other aspect of literature to the sense of fiction, considered as a whole, as the epic of the creature, man's vision of his own life as a quest."

                                       Northrop Frye

When reading this quote an entirely new train of thought came crashing into my head. It became obvious to me that I have never viewed romance in such a way. Since romance calls upon the reader to create a world within their mind and follow the guidance of the Mythos. The quest, we have talked about being obsessed in class before but being on a quest is exactly the same thing. You are set on a goal and the adventure doesn't end until the quest or obsession has been completed. The other aspect of this quote that caught me by surprise, is relating romance to folklore and fiction. Can you have a romance that is purely factual, or is it just being expressed in the fictional sense. Either way it reminds me that telling stories all start out the same way, verbally. When reading Haroun, An Ephesian Tale, or Abu Kasim's slipper, you get the notion that all of these stories were rich in oral tradition. I mean seriously what is the purpose of a story? A story has to be told, because if it is not told, does it really exist?

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