Final Paper

The Naïve and Mature Genre

“The romance in people mostly goes unsaid. People think about what they're going to say—to someone they really like or think is awful cute—but people hardly ever say what they think. We give what we want to say a lot of thought, but because people have so much trouble saying what they think we can’t quite be defined as romantics. Not if you don't speak it."

I’m not going to waste any time; this topic’s spectrum is far too vast to explore in entirety, thus this paper’s ultimate goal is to end as the perfect romance would, where there is silence. This imminent moment of silence is only temporary, and at the end of every story there is presence of “the end of speech, not the stopping of it.” Northrop Frye, in his book The Secular Scripture: The Study of the Structure of Romance, expounds that “in a much misunderstood aphorism, in such an act of possession there are no more words, only the silence that marks the possession of words. A good deal has been said since then about the relation of language and silence,” (Frye, 188) but real silence comes about when there is nothing left to say.

“Yet ourselves, every day, do we not, each of us, receive from the unknown beggar an apparently unimportant fruit, only to disregard it and cast it heedlessly aside?” (Zimmer, 218)

Early on in class when we were told the story of The King and the Corpse (i.e. King&Corpse) I became fascinated with two concepts: 1) Silence 2) Stories within stories. In the story the king comes to a “great funeral ground” where a sorcerer tells him to enter the grounds and cut down a corpse hanging from a tree then to bring it to the sorcerer. Without any issues the king finds the corpse but to his surprise the body is inhabited by specter in disguise who is cackling. The king demands “What are you laughing at?” but the instant he speaks the corpse returns to the limb of the tree (204). The king retrieves the corpse many times over who would say empathetically “O King, let me shorten the way for you with a tale” (Zimmer, 204), its specialty being storytelling. Then at the end of each story the specter would have a riddle evoking the king to answer it, and each time the king would speak the body would disappear, returning to the noose hanging from the tree. He may only succeed the deed by sustaining silence and simply keeping his mouth shut. The king thinks after each story and riddle “that he knew the answer, but suspected that if he uttered a word the corpse would go flying back to the tree” (Zimmer, 206) and yet he would still have an answer for each inquiry. It would seem that the king by always talking must have some longing to remain within the realm of his impossible task even if he felt the urge to refrain from speaking. He knew to some extent that he would be stuck in time whenever breaking the silence. With this knowledge the king stayed a member within inescapable world becoming “something subintelligent and subarticulate” (Frye, 116) where his human form is reduced and transubstantiates in space freezing his consciousness in time. Sure, the king didn’t actually metamorphose and, paradoxically, the king’s articulation, symbolizing his subarticulation, was his very base problem. The specter’s message is, even if you absolutely know the right answer, don’t answer. Just listen…“or your head will explode.”

“…where the recognition has been visible throughout.” (Frye, 131)

In appealing to logical analogy; if the King symbolizes silence then the Corpse represents a device facilitating stories that work within themselves or stories within stories. How fitting that the stories the specter would tell are romances. As for King&Corpse in full I’d categorize it as irony, not romance. With that said we must examine the essence the ‘knowledge of the sea of stories’ which is referenced most explicitly in our first novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I didn’t think this book was a romance either—although that’s not the case now, but we’ll get to that later. Early on, around when Dr. Sexson presented King&Corpse and I finished Rushdie’s novel, I began rethinking my understanding of genre altogether after considering the concept of the perfect romance, “the structural core of all fiction: being directly descended from folktale” (Frye, 15). Romance is the foundational genre and catalyst of all genres henceforth and it must be differentiated from what this class calls the other primary genres being comedy, tragedy, and irony in this very order, with romance first, each associated with a season; romance represents spring, comedy is to summer, tragedy to fall, leaving irony for winter. Winter encapsulates irony because that is when the world’s at its harshest, but when the going gets tough the tough get going. I mean, can it possibly get any worse if, as the Shakespearean saying goes, ‘the worst returns to laughter’? Laughter is what I conceive as being the final and primal image of irony. Let me explain before our eyes feast upon the meat of the matter, romance specifically. It was now, just recently in another class someone commented that “Irony is very adult concept,” which struck me. ‘That’s it! Irony is the most mature genre, not tragedy,’ I thought. Therefore, irony must be connected with the most aged of understandings and naturally the winter season when the days are darkest and where the only place to go next is up or to the beginning, naturally bringing us back to spring obviously with its recreation, rejuvenation, rebirth and other similar, synonymous motifs. Early on I held a simplistic idea of genre, that there were only two primary categories being comedy and tragedy, but now what comes to mind is one particularly poignant and analogously analytic Frye line which has interrogated my idea of genre saying, “The ambiguity of the oracle becomes the ambiguity of wit, something addressed to the verbal understanding that shakes the mind free. This point is also marked by generic changes from the tragic and ironic to the comic and satiric” (130). All four genres are accounted, the satiric signifies romance. Also, there’s a fine line between the purpose of an oracle, a senex, a beggar, a corpse, a pirate, and a magician because typically these—we’ll call them—side characters withholds some form of wisdom, knowledge pertinent to the main players. Each role is incredibly similar to the jester type who is “clearly of some structural significance…speaking for the audience’s desire to be entertained” (Frye, 107). It was just mentioned how the oracle’s prophesying tends to carry imbedded undertones of humor in and of the ambiguity of wit, and the King&Corpse has both a sorcerer or magician and a corpse or beggar who know the tricks of the task from the beginning. By assisting the king these two roles portray quite the sense of humor and wit.

 “…romance, as a whole, provides a parallel epic in which the themes of shipwreck, pirates, enchanted islands, magic, recognition, the loss and regaining of identity, occur constantly, as they go in the last four romances of Shakespeare.” (Frye, 15)

The Story of Sinbad the Sailor is the prime example for further exploring these several romantic necessities. The structure is reminiscent of the King&Corpse because Sinbad tells each of his seven voyages on as many separate occasions to the same crowd, beginning and ending each story in an equivocal fashion. In every voyage Sinbad’s ship wrecks leaving him lost at sea until he is washed ashore a fruitful island where he explores and must pass tasks before he is permitted to return home or even recognize a place to call home. After each tale Sinbad would tell his audience to leave and then come back at the same time the following day. As for the stories themselves, Sinbad’s fourth voyage stuck out for me specifically. Sinbad avoided eating the delirium-inducing food and escaped from the barbarous aborigines off the island only to tell his tale to a king who wished for Sinbad to marry his daughter. Sinbad acquiesced embarrassingly and loved his new wife until she became sick. He also realized that in this culture they take the vows and obligations in marriage quite seriously, and when his wife would die of illness he would be buried alive with his wife quite literally ‘till death do us part.’ In the cavern Sinbad survives because he kills all others who enter and uses their rations to live on until he finds a fissure in the rock and escapes the darkness. This voyage didn’t strike me as a romance because a couple reasons, first our hero gets married and two his wife dies. Both of these are romantic supplements, their necessity debatable.

"…in a life that is a pure continuum, beginning with a birth that is a random beginning, ending with a death that is a random ending, nothing is more absurd than telling stories that do begin and end." (Frye, 125)

                Let’s digress briefly before drawing any conclusions because a couple years back for a mythologies group presentation we rewrote and presented an adaptation of Oedipus, one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever read, but what genre does it belong to? I believe that it’s all of them, but above all it is pure irony because of the plot’s maturity and the quote aforementioned—because the story starts from his birth and I’ve read nothing more absurd (but King Lear is up there too. Ah! What a coincidence, and my do these two playwrights have eye-popping similarities). Oedipus is hard to classify because its content contains vital elements of every primary genre. It could be a tragedy, but Oedipus doesn’t die; his wife and mother does, though. It could be a comedy because of, well, all the irony. Unfortunately Sophocles’ masterpiece may indeed be the perfect romance, the story indisputably having remnants of each and every conceivable element, both necessary and peripheral. But, I suppose my argument here goes back to irony because of Oedipus and Jocasta’s unimaginably naïve relationship! It’s tragic to the point of hilarity. It’s the oracle, the beholder of [fore]knowledge and wit, who knows where this is going from the beginning. Jocasta’s child is cursed from birth and has a “sharp descent in social status, from riches to poverty, from privilege to a struggle to survive” (Frye, 104). Much time passes, the apparently dead boy grows into a man, and then he must quest to find his true identity. Then after the deadly crossroads incident the concept of doppelganger motif emerges and he must find the king’s killer. From here pieces of knowledge are unveiled and we know how the story unfolds. Frye says eloquently, "we are often reminded of this type of descent by the imagery of the hunt...in the pursuit of an animal, and as he disappears the dream atmosphere closes around him...seeking a false identity which is the same thing as his own destruction" (Frye, 104-105).

“William Blake once said 'imagination has nothing to do with memory.'” (Frye, 175)

All imaginative tales collect and converge in a mythological sea. The sea’s tributaries gather imagination from higher worldly sources rendezvousing at the mouth of the river. Here is where perspectives are set, where people see straight or otherwise where they’ll sea level. Since early childhood our parents have told us their stories, sharing their knowledge of the sea. Some stories stick and are stowed away while others sift out of memory. From a psychological standpoint Frye contends that with "’transactional’ therapy, we are told that we take over ‘scripts’ from our parents which it is our normal tendency to act out as prescribed and invariable rituals, and that all possible forms of such scripts can be found in any good collection of folktales." (57) Over the years the good stories stick best in our memories, and as we age we hear innumerable amounts of stories on a daily basis which suppress other stories and memories. In other words, “all memory is selective, and the fact that it is selective is the starting point of creation” (Frye, 175). Every day stories are on display, the same ones we heard as kids, and we’re constantly re-remembering how the story goes because our memories mimicking the original are augmented, displaced, and redeveloped. We may remember a story poorly, but “the worst plays [or stories] are no worse than the best ‘if imagination amend them’” (Frye, 187). I may not agree exactly with Blake, but what I do understand is that imagination is far more potent than memory, granting stories unrecalled reinvigoration.

"Nineteenth century writers of romance, or of fiction which is close to romance in its technique, sometimes speak in their prefaces and elsewhere of the greater ‘liberty’ that they feel entitled to take. By liberty I they mean a greater designing power, especially in their plot structures." (Frye, 46).

Rushdie's novel is a "censorship allegory" and he's liberating against those who control, litigate, and police our freedom of speech and honest opinions. One of his aims is to properly allegorize larger orders in the world in utilizing secondary romance motifs. For example, he implements pirates who poison the stream of stories, and this summons Haroun to elevate himself and become the hero he was set out to be by saving the world from being stripped of stories. As for the pirate roles themselves, they are a supplemental requirement in the idyll spectacle of romance [as is marriage, sex, violence, death, rape, misogyny, cross-dressing, birth, over-exposed infants, intoxication and hypnotism, senex or oracle, amnesia. Got most of ‘em I think.] but they’re a necessary complication in this narrative having infected the stream of stories in attempt to permanently censor the knowledge-rich story waters with a permanent polluting solution. It doesn’t happen of course; this is a romance. Early on I thought ‘this is no romance, this is a coming-of-age tale.’ Now I think ‘those are the same thing!’ after grappling with the ideal structure and primary elements of romance [including naïve lovers, quest, apparent death and substitution, revelation or recognition of identity, happy ending]. Although Haroun’s girl is secretly absent for most of the story, having apparently been caught when her ploy is exposed, but at the end she’s accepted by all and kisses her hero. Aside from their rather underwhelming romance all of the elements play vital parts in Rushdie’s novel.

“Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu

All our dream-worlds may come true

Fairly lands are fearsome too

As I wander far from view

Read, and bring me home to you” (Salman Rushdie)

And finally we’ve come together down the home stretch, a romance between words and their reader, and we’ll go ‘into the sunset’ as the perfect romance where there is naught but silence. Once the lovers have fallen in love there’s ‘nothing left to say’, at that point our ideal romance comes to an end. Things like marriage are left out of typical romantic narratives because people don’t ‘fall in love’ the day of their wedding (see Sinbad), nor do they realize their true feelings as they’re bedding (see Oedipus). If laughter is the lasting image of irony then it follows that it would also be the first sign of romance (see King&Corpse), but everyone knows that all stories come to an end; even the ones with happy endings (see Haroun). Sure, the linear continuum may not end because the imagination won’t allow it. Stories may extend and they amend for those who don’t want it to end, but the romance is over…for now, because speech cannot be stopped even if there is a moment of silence…until later on after that silence, that pause in time, an elliptical reflection…and then it all comes pouring out because there’s and ocean of stories more! That’s what’s so peculiar about stories in general because they work with and within themselves. Also, the same stories exist everywhere, they’re transcultural and the subtle advocate which allows stories to persist and proliferate is myth. So, here we are, at the end where ironically we find a new beginning. At the head of the paragraph are the first words I read for this class and at the foot I’ll leave you with a quote from Frye’s preface.

“However, the book has its own place in my writing as a very brief and summary geography lesson in what I call the mythological or imaginative universe...Even if there is ultimately only one mythological universe, every reader sees it different.“ (Frye, vii-viii)