The Language of Expression

"No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature." pg 19

Frye who suggests there are 3 main attitudes of our minds says that the language of literature belongs to our imaginative attitude, "a vision or model of the world as you could imagine it and would like it to be" pg 17. Literature uses association to connect humans to the outer world. It uses human shape and meaning. Literature does not only come in the form of great novels or pieces of writing. Where imagination is involved and where human connections are made literature can be present. Frye calls this primitive literature which isn't in itself distinguished specificaly as literature. Religion, magic, and social ceremonies are all examples givin but only a few of a list of many possibilities. The human mind is what forms and shapes literature. This can be linked back to my first post in the sense that literature is a result of the homes we build and our worlds that result. Not only does it produce results but it also is used in the opposite sense to shape and build these worlds. With this Frye in a way contradicts himself in this chapter because he before stated that "literature doesn't evolve or improve or progress" pg 9. Clearly however there has been evolution and progression from the more primitive times thoughout history. Although, it would be unfair to say that literature has improved because what makes one form of literature better than the other. There really is no way to measure the quality of a form or piece of literature, there is no grading scale. Literature is what we construct and allows us to build; the extent of form that can be associated with literature is only an extent of "human meaning [and] human shape" pg 3.

Literature is the expression of the imaginative language.