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Hamilton Arts & Letters
Robert D. Denham
I begin with two quotations from Frye’s The Modern Century:
In Eliot’s The Waste Land the scenes, episodes, and quoted lines are stuck into the reader’s mind somewhat as the slogans and illustrations of advertising are. . . . But, once there, the reader is compelled to a creative act of putting the fragments together. The continuity of the poem, in short, has been handed over to him (CW 11: 36).
Valéry remarks that “inspiration” is a state of mind in the reader, not in the writer—another example of the modern tendency to turn as much activity as possible over to the reader. . . . the modern artist is actually in an immediate personal relation with his reader or viewer: he throws the ball to him, so to speak, and his art depends on its being caught at the other end. (CW 11: 38)
One thing we notice about both quotations is the status that Frye affords to the reader in the modern world: the ball throwing and handing over, Frye implies, was not a game that was played very much in earlier times. The thesis I want to put forward is that the kind of criticism Frye engaged in changed over the years, and I want to come at this matter by way of M.H. Abrams’ idea of the ways in which critical theories are oriented.
[Distillate © HA&L + Robert D. Denham {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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