The legend of Baraffo

• Main Author: Surani, Moez
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: Surani, Moez <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Surani=3AMoez=3A=3A.html> (2005) The legend of Baraffo. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

The key development was the replacement of the metaphor of the poem as imitation, a 'mirror of nature,' by that of the poem as heterocosm, 'a second nature,' created by the poet---M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp Occupying the space between prose and poetry, The Legend of Baraffo fuses magically real elements, often associated with Post-Colonial prose fiction, with Imagist techniques associated with Modernist poetry. The plot centres on the relationship between an orphaned boy, Mazzu, who the Mayor adopts, and a prisoner, Nikita Babello, who is held in a cell in the basement of the Mayor's home. Through evening conversations, the two form a friendship that disrupts and redirects each of their lives. In the chapter 'Myth and Archetype', Wimsatt and Brooks show a relationship between language, mythology and emotional charge: But as logic and discursive thought develop, language loses its emotional charge; its quality of concreteness is attenuated; and it approaches the state of the language of science. The process on the whole is one of deprivation: language is reduced to a 'bare skeleton.' There remains one area, however, in which, even for sophisticated modern man, language 'recovers the fullness of life.' That is the realm of 'artistic expression,' where the original creative power of language is not only 'preserved' but 'renewed'. Through concrete language, The Legend of Baraffo aspires to be a vivid and emotionally visceral imaginative sphere