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Genre

The Uses of Convention

The Uses of Convention

Nick Cole's Strange Company 3 is coming out April, so I started reading the first Strange Company again this week. And that got me to thinking about the use of convention in telling stories. We cannot truly understand literary genres without understanding the conventions that comprise them. Yet

Northrop Frye on Symbol as Archetype: The Mythical Phase

Northrop Frye on Symbol as Archetype: The Mythical Phase

With my recent comparison of two D&D-inspired anime using a method of genre analysis, this is a good time to get into Northrop Frye's fourth phase of interpretation, the mythical phase. In the mythical phase, we will interpret literary symbols as archetypes. This phase of interpretation

Frieren and Dungeon Meshi: Beyond Romance's End

Frieren and Dungeon Meshi: Beyond Romance's End

The society emerging at the conclusion of comedy represents, by contrast, a kind of moral norm, or pragmatically free society. Its ideals are seldom defined or formulated: definition and formulation belong to the humors, who want predictable activity. We are simply given to understand that the newly-married couple will live