Definitions
A reference to another piece of literature.
What is "allusion"?
Unlike the historian, the poet's job is not to tell you what happened, but this.
What is "to tell you the kind of thing that always happens"?
Chesterton's poem is one of these, to Palm Sunday.
What is "an allusion / parody"?
According to Frye, reality doesn't truly shape literature, but literature shapes this.
What is "reality"?
A work that’s created by imitating an existing work to comment on an aspect of the original.
what is "parody"?
The more a writer becomes this, the more apt they are to become ironic. Homer's Achilles takes the opposite approach. However, with the story of a superhuman part god facing something he can't understand, there is also an ironic perspective.
What is "realistic"?
Yeats thought that this improved his poem, The Sorrow of Love.
What is "allusion / specificity"?
According to Frye, one of the uses of studying a world of imagination where anything is possible and anything can be assumed is the encouragement of this.
What is "tolerance"?
Usage of visually descriptive language.
What is "imagery"?
What we meet in literature is neither real nor unreal. It is not imaginary, meaning unreal, but this, meaning what the writer produces.
What is "imaginative"?
A field of flowers is never just a field of flowers. As soon as it enters literature, it becomes this.
What is "a symbol"?
According to Frye, there can never be any beliefs founded on this, because belief is founded on questions of truth and reality, while this is founded on imagination.
What is "literature"?
A thing that represents or stands for something else.
What is a "symbol"?
Frye talks about the possibility of the existence of Amleth, Fastolf, or this person, in order to make the point that when someone gets put into literature, whoever they were in real life ceases to matter.
Who is "Achilles"?
It isn't just the historical figure who gets taken over by literature. This person gets taken over too.
Who is "the poet"?
According to Frye, this is the most and feared of all tyrants, the enemy of all living things.
What is "time"?
A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning
What is "allegory"?
When you meet a character such as Micawber in Dickens, you feel that there's a bit of Micawber in almost everybody you know. Aristotle refers to the phenomenon of typical or recurring tropes in literature as this event.
What is "universal event / universal human event"?
Reading Blake's A Sick Rose requires the acceptance of a world that is not allegorical, but completely this.
What is "symbolic"?
Proust's experiences allow him to see men not as living from moment to disappearing moment, but as this.
What are "giants immersed in time"?