Summary of Frye's "Creation and Recreation"
This is strictly my interpretation of what Frye has said in Creation and Recreation. (Notes: One, Two, Three)
We live in a world our culture has created and which we help to recreate every day. This world exists in two forms: as the world of our professed beliefs and as the world our acts continuously recreate. Our professed beliefs act as a mirror, we see what we choose to see, what society agrees on as being true. Occasionally we are jolted by a look behind the scenes and the consequences of our true beliefs, revealed by our actions, are made visible. Often it is art that allows us this glimpse into reality and when it ceases to do that, when it ceases to free what we have culturally repressed, it becomes merely decorative and not creative.
Creative art is man's true work, it "humanizes an indifferent nature", gives that nature a human meaning, and connects our repressed social past to a vision of an ideal future. When art is purely aesthetic (decorative), when it is concerned with time rather than eternity, it ceases to operate in the present becoming stuck in past traditions or future imaginary worlds; it becomes a commodity rather than a living work and ceases to link the past and future in a meaningful way. The old often want a future that is seen as the return to an imaginary past while the young want to free society of a dehumanizing past and lead it into an imaginary ideal future. Neither stance can exist without some rationalized story of the historical past minus some of its cultural aspects. Both these pasts and futures are largely imaginary. Creative art restores the repressed cultural elements of the past and allows for an imaginative, rather than an imaginary, future.
Literature is the means by which new creative patterns, metaphors, narrative myths, emerge and old ones are re-vitalized. Myths give us patterns, models of human experience not as mutations of past experience (as literary realists would have us see it) but as fresh opportunities for new ways of experiencing the world. Every reader recreates the text in his own mind; good readers keep in mind both the original context (culture) in which a text was written and the culture of their own day as both contexts act as mirrors, reflecting the professed beliefs and repressing the true beliefs behind the actions, of both the author's and reader's time. If we keep both contexts in mind we can creatively connect the past and future in the present and free a bit of the world that has been previously culturally repressed, allowing past acts to motivate us into creating a better future world.
History is only cyclical if we refuse to recognize our professed beliefs (ideologies) are not our true beliefs as revealed by our actions and that the world we live in is the consequence of those same actions.
Every moment is a new opportunity to recreate the past by recognizing the results of our actions (freeing what has been culturally repressed) and so provide ourselves with the motivation to align our beliefs and actions in order to recreate, in the present, a new vision of the future.
We live in a world our culture has created and which we help to recreate every day. This world exists in two forms: as the world of our professed beliefs and as the world our acts continuously recreate. Our professed beliefs act as a mirror, we see what we choose to see, what society agrees on as being true. Occasionally we are jolted by a look behind the scenes and the consequences of our true beliefs, revealed by our actions, are made visible. Often it is art that allows us this glimpse into reality and when it ceases to do that, when it ceases to free what we have culturally repressed, it becomes merely decorative and not creative.
Creative art is man's true work, it "humanizes an indifferent nature", gives that nature a human meaning, and connects our repressed social past to a vision of an ideal future. When art is purely aesthetic (decorative), when it is concerned with time rather than eternity, it ceases to operate in the present becoming stuck in past traditions or future imaginary worlds; it becomes a commodity rather than a living work and ceases to link the past and future in a meaningful way. The old often want a future that is seen as the return to an imaginary past while the young want to free society of a dehumanizing past and lead it into an imaginary ideal future. Neither stance can exist without some rationalized story of the historical past minus some of its cultural aspects. Both these pasts and futures are largely imaginary. Creative art restores the repressed cultural elements of the past and allows for an imaginative, rather than an imaginary, future.
Literature is the means by which new creative patterns, metaphors, narrative myths, emerge and old ones are re-vitalized. Myths give us patterns, models of human experience not as mutations of past experience (as literary realists would have us see it) but as fresh opportunities for new ways of experiencing the world. Every reader recreates the text in his own mind; good readers keep in mind both the original context (culture) in which a text was written and the culture of their own day as both contexts act as mirrors, reflecting the professed beliefs and repressing the true beliefs behind the actions, of both the author's and reader's time. If we keep both contexts in mind we can creatively connect the past and future in the present and free a bit of the world that has been previously culturally repressed, allowing past acts to motivate us into creating a better future world.
History is only cyclical if we refuse to recognize our professed beliefs (ideologies) are not our true beliefs as revealed by our actions and that the world we live in is the consequence of those same actions.
Every moment is a new opportunity to recreate the past by recognizing the results of our actions (freeing what has been culturally repressed) and so provide ourselves with the motivation to align our beliefs and actions in order to recreate, in the present, a new vision of the future.