The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye
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of Time: III, Little World of Man: The Tragedy of Isolation” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Hence being a Xn [Christian] is one way of being a Buddhist.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 34, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
In the official Christian myth, the Creator is pure and innocent and the creature is foul and vicious; in the fabulous counterpart, the creator, being man, is foul and vicious but his creature, the work of art, is pure and innocent.
Entry, Notebook 54-4 (late 1970s), 193, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
For Christianity, like the humanities, is teachable only to a very limited extent: the rest consists in realizing anew for oneself what every Christian has always known, but can explain only to a receptive mind.
“Education and the Humanities” (1947), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
It’s given us a very strong sense of a meaning emerging out of human history rather than history as a meaningless series of cycles from which you have to be liberated.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
It still seems to be true that Christianity has some affinity for stupidity. If I were to see a small church labelled “the foursquare gospel” I’d give it a wide berth, because I know I’d find nothing inside except what I’d call hysteria.
Entry, Notes 54-5 (1976), 152, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The revolutionary core of Christianity is its identifying of God with a suffering, persecuted, and enduring man. It was in the sign of the cross, a ridiculous and shameful emblem, that an outcast religion conquered the world’s greatest empire.
“Silence in the Sea” (1968), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
However, early Christianity discovered that Christianity would be much more saleable if you perverted its good news into bad news, and in particular if you put at the centre of your teaching the doctrine that after death, unless you did what you were told at this moment, you would suffer tortures for eternity, meaning endlessly in time.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
It may be possible to Christianity to have its God and eat Him too, but it is not yet possible for a Christian philosopher to choose either the committed religious or the disinterested intellectual path and still get all the benefits of both.
“Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture” (1950s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
The central form of Christianity is its vision of the humanity of God and the divinity of risen Man, and this, in varying ways, is what all great Christian artists have attempted to recreate.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Christmas
It is the latter vision that turns the darkness of Advent into the festival of blazing lights, the lights which are the glory of a God who is also Man, who is continually born and continually dying, and yet remains unborn and beyond the reach of death.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), referring specifically to Christmas, Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The present secular Christmas is, in any case, really a New Year festival, with Santa Claus representing the spirit of the Old Year and the New one hazily identified with the Christ child. The identification is not pressed, because that would lead to the unwelcome inference that the birth of Christ and the death of Santa Claus are the same event.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The story of Christmas, from its primitive beginnings to the present, is in part a story of how men, by cowering together in a common fear of menace, discovered a new fellowship, in fellowship a new hope, and in hope a new vision of society.
“Merry Christmas (III)” (1949), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Christmas is far, far older than Christianity, as even the pre-Christian Yule and Saturnalia were late developments of it, and it was never completely assimilated to the Christian faith.
“Merry Christmas (I)” (1946), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Perhaps the answer is that people go through the bother of Christmas because Christmas helps them to understand why they go through the bother of living out their lives the rest of the year. For one brief instant, we see human society as it should and could be.…
“Merry Christmas (II)” (1948), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
There is no New Testament evidence whatever about what time of year Jesus was born, and as far as we can see, the Church seems to have been content to take the winter solstice festival from other religions.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Christmas season then is a deliberately induced period of chaos & hysteria designed to assume stability after the New Year.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 182, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The world clings to Christmas with a kind of desperation: it is the only traditional festival, apart from a flurry of new hats at Easter, that retains any real hold on ordinary life.
“Merry Christmas (II)” (1948), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Church
If the Sabbath was made for man, the Church was too.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 212, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Law is the expression of temporal authority; justice is law informed by the vision of freedom and equality; the vision of freedom and equality is a steady vision only within the Christian church. Outside the church it is only a vague hope or a fitful glimpse afforded by the lucky chance of a good ruler.
“The Analogy of Democracy” (1952), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
We can save ourselves only through an established co-operative church, and if the church ever wakes up to that fact, that will constitute enough of a miracle to get us the rest of the way.
“NF to HK,” 4 Sep. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
The dilemma the Church put modern man into is this: the Catholic position is that the Church contains the Word: the Protestant is that the Word contains the Church.
Entry, Notebook 32 (late 1946–51), 102, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
The society produced by the gospel is the church, and the church is a community whose members have all been made free and equal by their faith.
“The Return of Eden: Five Essays on Milton’s Epics” (1965), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
If Milton or Blake had joined or founded a church, therefore, they would have lost the real Church, the total vision which is the city of God, and gained a sect.
“Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
The church has the power to save the world when it is itself saved, and the saving power will work largely outside it until it is.
“The Analogy of