Frye: The Critical Path
"As long as the meaning of a poem, let us say for short, is sought primarily within the context of intentional discourse, it becomes a document, to be related to some verbal area of study outside literature" (Frye 281)
This section amazed me...why would anyone think that because a poet is a great poet, that means they must have been a great person. That's as crazy as saying that because a person can do math in their head, they must be rich. It makes no sense, just absolutely no sense at all. Can anyone explain this too me?
I'm not so sure what this quote is trying to get at either. To me, it seems like Frye is trying to say that if a poem has the "right" topic it becomes concrete history. Sometimes I think that critics need to come out and say what they mean, not cloak their ideas with bombastic words and sentence structures.