Architectural Structure of Memory Palaces

After class on Monday, I met up with Autumn to explain the origins of her new name as I was the one who came up with it. However, I felt the need to explain to everyone so no one thought she was named Autumn of the Tragedies as a reflection of her personality. As I am sure any of you who have taken a Sexson class before is aware, he loves to assign Frye as one of the reading assignments. I have previously blogged about this particular author in different classes, both in complaint and in admiration. After the first time reading Frye, it was almost always in complete admiration. In fact my love of this author has gone so far as that I have bough several of his books to read in my spare time. My family finds this to be a little excessive! My litter brother especially made fun of me for reading Literary Criticism during my winter break! However, I digress. That is not the point of this blog. The facts that I am trying to convey is the significance of Autumn as a season and how it is incorporated into Frye's conception of the literary world. Autumn signifies the tragedies to that wonderful wonderful man. Each season has a significant meaning that creates archetypes in literature. I believe that this relates to the Oral Traditions because archetypes are just a form of repetition that allow the oral stories to perpetuate in their entirety.

Phases of Tragedy

1. Complete innocence: The hero who is dignified because of her innocence and courage is toppled; the hero is often a female in this phase

2. Youthful innocence of inexperience: The heroes and heroines are often young people first encountering the realities of adulthood; frequently a central character will survive so that the action closes with an adjustment to mature experience

3. Completion of an ideal: The success or completion of hero’s achievement is essential despite his tragic end, and a sense of serenity or peace often exists after his death because of his final accomplishment; these tragedies are commonly a sequel to a previous tragic event

4. Individual’s faults: The hero moves from innocence to experience with his fall occurring as a result of hybris and hamartia

5. Natural law: Natural law becomes prominent in these stories, overshadowing the hero and allowing the audience to look down on the action; this phase includes any of the existential and fatalistic tragedies that deal more with metaphysical and theological questions rather than social or moral ones

6. World of shock and horror: These stories possess a strong element of demonic ritual in public punishments and depict a hero in such deep agony or humiliation that they cannot achieve a heroic pose; cannibalism, mutilation, and torture are frequently present in this phase

 

 

If anyone wants more information on the archetypes that Frye has given us for the genres of literature, here is a link: http://edweb.tusd.k12.az.us/dherring/ap/consider/frye/indexfryeov.htm

As you can see, the tools that we use to understand literature will also help us remember it. If we go by the list that I have included above, it can help reinforce the structure of our memory palaces. This is vital because as anyone knows, if a building is not properly reinforced it will collapse and be unsafe. The same can be said of all memory palaces when dealing with literature and not just the memorization of lists and the like. We need to have the background in literary tools to completely build our palaces to last for a long time.