What Comes after the Irony?

Class Notes from Friday September 12th:

Low Mimetic - realistic

Alazon - the "imposter"; comes in 2 forms:
a. The soldier (who brags a lot) AKA John McCain
b. The Pedant (Professor-esque) AKA Barack Obama
*According to Dr. Sexson, Shakespeare writes the alazons the best in all literature.

Frye's "Quest Myth"
Wikipedia link to Frye's Anatomy of Criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_Criticism (includes summaries of each chapter and the "Fictional and Thematic Types by Mode" chart - and it's filled out!).

Finnegan's Wake's Vico:
- a historian who thought civilization arose with thunder
- not literal history, but poetic history
- said that the human race is in a stage of decline; the order of the decline ------>
a. The gods (hieroglyphics)
b. The Heroes (language of the epics)
c. The Men (language of commerce)
d. The Chaos (language of unintelligible gibberish - "Like, dude, that's totally excellent".)*
*We are a part of the language of chaos. An example - we are incapable of going up to a person of the opposite sex in the SUB and say, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...?" Oh, if only...

We start with MYTH then move to ROMANCE then to HIGH MIMETIC MODE and then to LOW MIMETIC MODE and lastly to IRONIC MODE. Sexson says that we are living in the last two modes, which are the lowest on the totem pole; as we move from Myth mode downward, their value gradually decreases. So where are we going to go from Ironic Mode? Terrifying, isn't it?