Hmmm

[Joseph Tracy]

Well I just read Robin's response to the group w post  after posting  
my own response to that and something earlier. We obviously made  
similar connections between Chase's romance-novel  and the defining  
marks of  the Mannippean Satire.  Didn't know about those suckers (MS  
s) before the p-list either.

These terms have some use  in helping us talk about broad trends and   
historic clusters. I am , in the end, the only end my friend,  very  
very skeptical of such broad terms to cover much ground when applied  
to a specific artist or work of art.  Impressionism was not a pre- 
existing concept that some artists  latched onto  but the product of   
the continuous change and exploration induced by a creative process.  
By the time one has looked at a couple thousand works of art from  
different times and cultures  a maker of art  has several models to  
work from in a creative endeavor. What marks the creative spirit is  
that she cannot stay within any pre-existing model but will form her  
own relationship with the materials at hand, will find her own  
patterns of breath and thought and fear and excitation shaping her  
choices, she will  compose in her own way  and teach herself both the  
tradition and the sacred taboos she must break.