"What good is the study of literature? Does it help us think more clearly, or feel more sensitively, or live a better life than we could without it?"Written in the relaxed and frequently humorous style of his public lectures, this remains, of Northrop Frye's many books, perhaps the easiest introduction to his theories of literature and literary education.

This article grew out of a profound disinclination to make the kind of comment that I was invited to make on Angus Fletcher's article in a previous issue [June 1975]. I felt that such a writer as Mr. Fletcher, who clearly understands me, and, more important, himself, ought to be allowed the last word on both subjects. Besides that, I have a rooted dislike of the "position paper" genre. In all arts, adhering to a school and issuing group manifestoes and (...) statements of common aims is a sign of youthfulness, and to some degree of immaturity; as a painter or writer or other creative person grows older and acquires more authority, he tends to withdraw from all such organizations and become simply himself. Others in the same field become friends or colleagues rather than allies. I see no reason why that should not be the normal tendency in criticism and scholarship also. About twenty years ago I was asked, in a hotel lobby during an MLA conference, "What is your position relative to Kenneth Burke?" I forgot what I mumbled, but my real answer was, first, that I hadn't the least idea and, second, that anyone who could really answer such a question would have to be a third person, neither Burke nor Frye. Northrop Frye's contribution to contemporary thought has been discussed by prominent critics in Northup Frye in Modern Criticism: Selected Papers from the English Institute . The most comprehensive bibliography of his publications and of commentaries on them has been compiled by Robert D. Denham in Northup Frye: An Enumerative Bibliography . Angus Fletcher's interpretation of Professor Frye's works, "The Critical Passion," appeared in the June 1975 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Partant de la “ définition provisoire ” que N. Frye dans Le Grand Code donne du littéraire qui serait “ une structure verbale qui existe pour elle-même ”, Robert Alter pense que cette théorie, qui reste au centre de l'ouvrage, est vulnérable du point de vue de la théorie de la littérature et par rapport à la description de la nature de la Bible. Dans les deux parties de cet article, R. Alter entend montrer comment la conception imaginative de (...) Frye est fondée sur toute une série d'interprétations plus ou moins systématiquement erronées des textes bibliques. Il rappelle que malgré la présence de la métaphore dans sa poésie, la Bible laisse cette poésie dans un “ genre minoritaire ” par rapport à l'emploi de la prose, principal outil de narration typique du projet biblique.Starting with the “Provisory definition” that N.Frye, in The Great Code. The Bible and Literature, , gives to literary: "a verbal structure that exists for itself, Robert Alter thinks that this theory, which is basic to Frye's work, is vulnerable from the point of view of literary theory and in relation to the description of the nature of the Bible. In the two parts of this article, M Alter wants to show how the imaginative conception of Frye is founded on a series of interpretations of biblical texts more or less systematically wrong. He reminds us that despite the Presence of metaphor in its poetry, the Bible leaves this poetry in a "minority genre" in comparison with prose, the principal tool of narration typical of the biblical project. (shrink)

I shall never forget my astonishment and delight on reading the 1949 essay, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," which in turn became the Polemic Introduction to Anatomy of Criticism, and my even greater astonishment and delight at the appearance of "Towards a Theory of Cultural History" , which eventually served as Essay 1 of the Anatomy, when revised and expanded. The remarkable thing about these articles was not so much their content as their assumption, namely, that criticism (...) could at least try to become a science. This assumption was couched in the form of most general scientific orientations, in that Frye took literature in its own terms,1 to begin with, and then did not prejudicially segregate and then destroy the claims of particular "minority groups" within the whole commonwealth of literary life. I did not know it at the time, but Frye was then, as now, fighting for a mode of civil rights. He was then, as now, a libertarian. He first made his name writing on Blake— freedom enough, perhaps—but it has always seemed to me that his center is as much Milton as Blake. But then, to know Blake truly is to understand Milton. · 1. This assumption is to be distinguished from that of "early" Richards, which held that a science for literary studies had to come at literature from the outside, with chiefly psychological instruments. Richards' career has been the most complex critical "life" in our century, I believe, and it should be observed that he has held, and abandoned, more than one assumptive high ground during the course of his long and magnificent involvement with poetry. Angus Fletcher's numerous writings include Allegory: The Thought of a Symbolic Mode, The Prophetic Moment: An Essay on Spenser, The Transcendental Masque: An Essay on Milton's Comus, The Stranger God: A Theoretical Study of the Myth of Dionysus, and Thresholds: A Critical Approach to the English Renaissance. Northrop Frye's response, "Expanding Eyes" appears in the Winter 1975 issue. (shrink)

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Nineteenth-century literary criticism read literature as a commentary on the world it inhabited. Thecommentators understood what they read in terms of the judgments and values they registered in it, andwhich they themselves, as commentators, as critics, made explicit - as if, somehow, the literary textunder investigation always fell short in this regard. Their criticism, then, took up, or extended, theintention of the texts they engaged, as they understood it: to say something significant about the world.In this climate, the literary object, (...) as literary, scarcely existed. Where successful, it was a transparency,in itself barely visible, so well did it convey a world.This is, briefly, the caricature of this period of literary criticism produced by those polemicists who,coming after, were keen to situate themselves in the vanguard of a new critical method. (shrink)

Northrop Frye, Anatomia krytyki, przeł. Monika Bokiniec, Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2012.

In The Twentieth-Century Humanists from Spitzer to Frye, William Calin examines the contributions of eight scholar-critics who produced their most important work between the mid-1930s and the early 1960s, before the advent of contemporary critical theory. Five are from Continental Europe. Leo Spitzer, Robert Curtius and Erich Auerbach were German-language students of Romance literatures, while Albert Béguin and Jean Rousset, both speakers of French, were leading figures of the Geneva school. Calin also includes English-language scholars: the Oxford don C. (...) S. Lewis, the American F. O. Mathiessen, and the Canadian Northrop Frye. Calin's goal is threefold. He wants to draw distinctions between the mid-twentieth .. (shrink)

American universities, which were pale copies of European counterparts before World War II, afterwards exploded into pragmatic centers of research and teaching. Previous isolationism turned into concern with foreign affairs. Change is now the slogan for many aspects of American society.

Encyclopedia entry. Explains "dichotomous," "binary," "absolute opposite," and "polar opposite" as applied to social categories, explaining feminist critical concerns about gender categories. Not all categorizing is dichotomous or binary. Gender categories may function as binary or dichotomous in some contexts but not in others.

Politics of Reality includes nine essays that examine sexism, the exploitation of women, the gay rights movement and other topics from a feminist perspective. -/- The essays "The Problem That Has No Name" and "A Note On Anger" have been translated into Spanish by Maria Lugones for circulation in la Asociacion Argentina de Mujeres en Filosofia.