on literature as myth

In Archetypes of Literature, Frye asserts that all literature can be boiled down to several fairly obvious symbolic systems and myths. I call them obvious because I really don't think it takes that much critical ability to recognize the patterns that Frye talks about. He's definately read more mythology than me so I can't say much about the connections he draws between literature and myth, but I can comment on his claim that "all literature is displaced myth." Literature, like all art, is a representation of human experience. Music, painting, and literature all try to capture human emotions and life in a way that people can relate to. The thing is, try as they may, no artist, composer or writer can touch on an emotion that hasn't already been evoked by someone else in their field. They might be able to display the emotion in a different way, but by no means can they create a new emotion or experience. Picasso's cubistic (word?) representation of a man and Da Vinci's ,uh, normal painting of a man are extremely different, but they are still of the same thing; a man. Shakespeare's plays and Passion's Promise II: The Reluctant Iberian Mistress (thats made-up, don't go searching for it) are essentially both about love, if you can call what happens in romance novels love. You get the idea. The point is that OF COURSE all books contain many of the same symbols, because those symbols are universally understood by humans. Plants die during the fall and grow back in the spring, hence the coinciding symbols in literature. We can't see in the dark and terrible carnivorous creatures come out at night so obviously we understand that darkness is a symbol for danger or evil. These symbols stem from our experiences of watching our petunias die and stubbing our toe in the dark. Frye says he can trace all literature back to mythology, but I think I can do him one better and trace it back to human nature. The human experience can be reduced to a handful of emotions and a short list of stories, though they may vary in intensity and appearance. These emotions and experiences existed before mythology, and will continue to exist even if nothing was ever written again. Therefore, I say all literature is displaced human experience, not myth. The myth is that you need to read Northrop Frye to figure that out.