Five Kinds of Freedom: Northrop Frye's Theory of Symbols and Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path White Clouds

Abstract

<p>I use Northrop Frye's theory of symbols (from Anatomy of Criticism) as a methodological guide for my literary analysis of Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha. I also offer a significant interpretation of Frye's theory of symbols and its five phases of poetic language. Finally I compare the conceptions of freedom that Frye offers with conceptions of freedom that Nhat Hanh offers. I come to several important conclusions. The language of objective reality, though essential, is limited even as a means of relating to reality. Nhat Hanh offers a genuine vision of an ideology that respects human dignity. The vision of spiritual liberation that Frye articulates in the theory of symbols is clarified by Nhat Hanh's conception of mindfulness. Literature and its conventions help bring readers into contact with reality. It does this by inspiring a cognitive receptiveness to patterns of experience. The human imagination is a trinity of creation, concern, and interpenetration. The formal phase of the theory of symbols emphasizes the creative aspect of the imagination, the mythical emphasizes the concerned, and the anagogic emphasizes the interpenetrative. What are created at the formal level are forms which include images, narrative transformations, metaphors, and types. These are the building blocks of perception. In the mythical phase, all of literature speaks to us of the primary concerns of human beings, which are, at the physical level, concerns we share with animals, and, at the spiritual level, concerns that are distinctly human but that are metaphorically related to our physical concerns. In the anagogic phase, the full power of the human verbal imagination is unleashed. To understand this power, we need to rely on Buddhist terms such as emptiness, interbeing, and interpenetration. Apocalypse is the typical genre of the anagogic phase.</p>