I found the section in "Sequence and Mode" about the importance of the author interesting. He says on page 12, "The impersonal and objective quality of dialectical writing is an ideal, and a very important one at that, but the impersonal leaves out the personal, and one wonders if the personal can be left out indefinitely.....So the objective style of conceptual writing is started off by something more like a subjective desire or energy. This suggests that other factors are involved besides the logically impeccable construct." I am studying this concept in my Survey of Literary Criticism class. According to M.H. Abrams, there are four elements of literary criticism: World, Audience, Author, and Language. These must all be systematically taken into account in order to be considered scholarly literary criticism.

There are many theories about the importance of the author how the identity of the author impacts the text. Longinus believes that there are five sources of sublimity which, in my opinion, all relate to the author: (i) "the power to conceive great thoughts.....First then we must state where sublimity comes from: the orator must not have low or ignoble thoughts. Those whose thoughts and habits are trivial and servile all their lives cannot possibly produce anything admirable or worthy of eternity. Words will be great if thoughts are weighty." (ii) "strong and inspired emotion." (iii) "Certain kinds of figures. (These may be divided into figures of thought and figures of speech.)" (iv) "Noble diction. This has as subdivisions choice of words and the use of metaphorical and artificial language." and finally, (v) "dignified and elevated word arrangement." I think all of these reveal things about the identity of the author and the impact he/she has on the sublimity of the literature. What kind of person would have these thoughts and where did the emotion come from? Did education, social status, sex, ect. have any affect on the depth of emotion, kinds of figures, diction, or word arrangement?

There is one more quote from Longinus that I want to add, "This is the way of imitation and emulation of great writers of the past. Here too, my friend, is an aim to which we must hold fast. Many are possessed by a spirit not their own. It is like what we are told of the Pythia at Delphi: she is in contact with the tripod near the cleft in the ground which (so they say) exhales a divine vapour, and she is thereupon made pregnant by the supernatural power and forthwith prophesies as one inspired. Similarly, the genius of the ancients acts as a kind of oracular cavern, and effluences flow from it into the minds of their imitators. Even those previously not much inclined to prophesy become inspired and share the enthusiasm which comes from greatness of others." He continues to stress the imitation of earlier writers as a means to sublimity, such as Plato's competition with Homer. It makes me wonder what/who the Bible's authors studied and what culture influenced them. What inspired and motivated them to write and why did they feel compelled they were the right ones to do it?

Later on page 12, Frye continues this discussion on the author's identity, "There is an impersonal argument, an appeal to a consensus, and other marks of an intellectual honesty that has its own authority. Still, something is missing. In theory an argument would not depend for its validity on the person who advanced it: it would be the same argument no matter who worked it out. But nobody quite believes this: there is always some glimpse of relation to a personality." I think this is because once personality is given to the individual, there are naturally an implication within the writing. The reader must then sort through what personal bias the argument contains in order to find the truth.

I must admit that before this class I had read little of the Bible, and it was easy for me to read it, as a child and young adult, without pondering the identity of the author/s. Now, and especially after reading the intro to The Hidden Book in the Bible, I am beginning to become more and more intrigued with a text that I previously had little interest in. It amazes me that one of the oldest, most popular books of all time still contains so much mystery.