Notable class 14 February

"A poem is a dream that you work around until it is a poem."

According to Frye (p 100), we have to read into things. As Sexson points out, one thing leads to all things through the dendrites of interconnection. I would like to point out that dendrites comes from the Greek word "dendron" which means tree. (It's everywhere!)

Wayne presented on Animal imagery:
Often our image of animals is colored by Christian and psychiatric lenses. The focus should be on animals as gos or familiars - things that lead us into the underworld. They are the totem carriers of our soul. Little birds=souls, big birds=death, snakes=chthonic, horses=horses of Hades, spider=weaver of confusion, seduces puer spirit.
The appearance of animals returns us to Adam.

Analogical Imagery:
Romantic - analogy of innocence, magic & chastity. Divine presence is expressed in wise, old men but humans are children. Fire as purifying symbol and as separation. Other symbols: unicron, ass, tower, castle, fountains, pools, fertilizing rains.
High mimetic - central characters are above our own level of power & authority, though within the order of nature and subject to social criticism. Focus is on metaphysical/archetypal: "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Inferno". Celebrate love, form, and reason through anthropomorphic projection of logical ideals (divine king).
Low mimetic - demonic, irony of human experience. Symbols of ape and tiger.

Comedy:
Characterized by movement from one society to another and those who try to prevent it.
Old Comedy - hero attempting to do something to join gods
New Comedy - move from soceity of law (unreasonable) to society of freedom.
Characters: senex, gets in the way, buffoon (bomolochoi), imposters (alazons), self-deprecators (eirons), braggert (miles gloriosus), rustic (agroikos)
Driven by concern for/about the community where scapegoat is expunged through sympathy or ridicule.

Romance:
Nearest literary form to wish-fulfillment dream.
Protagonist is from the upper world and antagonist from lower world but all action takes place on earth.
Quest myth follows four stages: agon-conflict, pathos-death, sparagmos, anagnorisis-reappearance of hero

Water - Jamie:
Bypassing the traditional imagery, Hillman insists on images of death and revery - looking back. From Heraclitus: "to souls, it is death to become water."