The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye
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The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
The idea of manifestation & disappearance seems to belong to hell; the idea of concealment and realization seems to belong to heaven: one is creation, the other apocalypse.
Entry, 25 Feb. 1950, 146, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Our age likes to imagine itself as the victim of an apocalypse, with all the furies of the four horsemen tearing it to pieces with calamities that no previous age has ever had to endure. This of course is mere self-pity, and the Old Testament prophets who saw Nineveh and Babylon buried under the sands would see nothing unprecedented in the ruins of Berlin.
“Education and the Humanities” (1947), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Apostles
The apostles developed into bishops, not into gurus or teachers of illumination.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 40, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Applause
Applause, it has been said, is the echo of a platitude, but the applause itself indicates that the response comes from the entire personality and is therefore an organic part of it.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Archaeology
Nevertheless, an archaeologist who is looking for buried treasure instead of studying the past belongs, not in the tradition of the scholars, but in the tradition of the grave-robbers.
“Research and Graduate Education in the Humanities” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Archaeology is a science in which we dig underground, using steps and descending ladders as we go, to find what remains of civilizations that at one time towered high in the air.
“Repetitions of Jacob’s Dream” (1983), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Our attitude to the past needs more of the impartiality of the archaeologist who excavates all layers and cultural periods of his site with equal care.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Archetype
I used the word “archetype” because it was a traditional term in criticism, though not many people had ever run across it. But I didn’t realize at the time that Jung had monopolized the term and that everybody would think I was a Jungian critic because I used it.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I mean by an archetype a symbol which connects one poem with another and thereby helps to unify and integrate our literary experience.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
I don’t object to a feeling that there is something about the archetype which is not removed to another world but at any rate inexhaustible in this one; something which can’t ever be completely analysed or understood. There’s a residual mystery about it.
“Archetype and History” (1986), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
… for example, I took the word “archetype” not from Jung, as is so often said, but from a footnote in Beattie’s Minstrel.
“Varieties of Eighteenth-Century Sensibility” (1990), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17. The source is The Poetical Works of James Beattie (1870).
The archetype is thus primarily the communicable symbol, and archetypal criticism is particularly concerned with literature as a social fact and as a technique of communication.
“The Literary Meaning of ‘Archetype’” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Architecture
I am not a historian: I’m an architect of the spiritual world.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 799, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Even if fifty new cathedrals were built this year, the cathedral would still be as dead as the step pyramid, at least as an imaginative power in our culture.
“Introduction,” “A History of Communications,” by Harold Innis (1982), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The turning point between fine & useful arts is architecture, which is fine when conspicuous (cathedral & castle) & useful when essentially a matter of housing.
Entry, 29 Jan. 1949, 137, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
The surrounding streets keep steadily turning into anonymous masses of buildings that look eyeless in spite of being practically all windows. Many of them seem to have had no architect, but appear to have sprung out of their excavations like vast toadstools.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Architecture: wonder why there always has to be a prick and a cunt: I wondered this when sitting in the Skydome with the CN tower beside me. Islam had a mosque and a minaret; Christianity a basilica and a bell-tower; even the New York fair had a trylon and a perisphere. Something points to the sky and something contained on earth.
Entry, Notes 54.1 (May 1990), 41, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Arguments
As I’ve often said, the irrefutable philosopher is not the person who cannot be refuted but the philosopher who’s still there after he’s been refuted.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
They that take the argument will perish by the argument; any statement that can be argued about at all can be refuted. The natural response to indoctrination is resistance, and nothing will make it successful except a well-organized secret police.
“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
… nothing is more remarkable in the Bible than the elimination of anything like an argument.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 360, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
At a certain point the bad argument will become the bad man, and what will be demanded from you and your education will not be objectivity of mind, but the courage to fight.
“To the Class of ’62 at Queen’s” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Aristocracy
When we discover that we do not need an aristocracy we shall discover who our real aristocracy are. Our real aristocracy, of course, are the children.
“Preserving Human Values” (1961), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Hence our dream of the complete or workless man, whom our aristocracies try to produce. The versatile man, who can do anything, and the entertainer or actor, who can pretend to be anything, are proximate dreams of the same kind.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 269, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Aristotle
Aristotle is interested in poetry; Plato in the poet.
“The Myth of Deliverance: II, The Reversal of Energy” (1981), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the