An approach to Frye?s statement ? romance-irony-parody
There’s an assumption that literature, like language itself, has a grammar or syntax, on, which our understanding of it inevitably depends. For the reader, the simplest and the subtlest understanding of literature must depend on a similar tacit but necessary knowledge of the grammar of literature. Frye suggests we should use recurrent patterns, because they are there. For him, an inductive survey of all western literature reveals the presence of four archetypal narrative patterns, called mythoi by Frye and the lyrics analogues, romance, irony, tragedy and comedy, constituting the basic framework of literature (Frye 01).
He believes that as structure the central principle of irony myth is best approached as a parody of romance: the application of romantic mythical forms to more realistic content which fits them in unexpected ways” (Anatomy of criticism 223, Smith 860-871-872).
We can imagine a world in which goals are thwarted and nightmares become reality (the world of irony). In this sense, we need to qualify the relationship between narrative patterns and individual works of literature in a third way. Just as the pattern of expectations cannot be derived from or limited to a single literary work, so the particulars of the work cannot be reduced to the
Cunha 02
pattern. The full meaning of any story worth our time depends on pattern but can never be reduced to it. Each narrative pattern is related to the mode. Each mode has a special affinity with one of the narrative patterns. E.g. romantic mode and romance, ironic mode and irony. (A transition from archetypal criticism as practiced by Hughes to archetypal criticism based on Frye’s