The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye
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of communications.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Communism
But, if the first half of the century saw the passing of Fascism, the second half may see the passing of Communism. I don’t look for catastrophic war, but for restricted bleeding wars, threats, interdicts, and an attempt on the part of each side to wait for the enemy to blow up through internal contradictions.
Entry, 1 Jan. 1951, 1, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
But if the entire Communist world were annihilated tomorrow all our enemies would still be with us, in many respects stronger than ever.
“By Liberal Things” (1959), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Communism has no God, but that does not prevent it from being a religion with prophets, revealed scriptures, a body of infallible doctrine, heresies, saints, martyrs, and shrines.
“The Changing Pace in Canadian Education” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Communities
But if we place the works of the human imagination in the centre of the community and make sure they stay there, we shall be able eventually to see that community itself as the total form of what human beings can bring forth, their own larger life that continues to live and move and possess its inward being.
“Literature as a Critique of Pure Reason” (1982), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
But while communities enrich themselves by what they include, they define themselves by what they exclude. The more intensely a community feels its identity as a community, the more intensely it feels its difference from what is across its boundary. In a strong sense of community there is thus always an element that may become hostile and aggressive.
“Hart House Rededicated” (1969), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Total communication threatens a community’s identity by attacking it from without: it’s what a community can absorb, not what it can reach that’s important. There’s no reason why exclusion should be hostile: whether or not good fences make good neighbours, the fence certainly creates the neighbour.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 119, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
In an interpenetrating world every community would be the centre of the world.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The study of literature therefore is a means of making one a member of a community beyond death, a community of the human imagination which has survived thousands of years of empires that have come and gone and is still adding to and building up its central imaginative structures.
“Reconsidering Levels of Meaning” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
All religions are one, not alike; “that they may be one,” not that they should all think alike: community means people thinking along similar lines & motivated by similar drives; communion means that all men are the same man.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 560, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
I think that the human community is really something that is prior to the individual. The individual grows out of the community, not the other way around.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The form of human community envisaged by democracy is not new: it is the real form of human community which has been with us since the beginning of history, obscured by human weakness, ignorance, passion, and greed.
“The Analogy of Democracy” (1952), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Compromise
If Canada had not been able to compromise, it would never have been Canada.
“Canadian Voices” (1975), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Compromise is not a betrayal when a refusal to compromise would be a greater betrayal.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Compulsions
We live in a world of threefold external compulsion: of compulsion on action, or law; of compulsion on thinking, or fact; of compulsion on feeling, which is the characteristic of all pleasure whether it is produced by the Paradiso or by an ice cream soda. But in the world of imagination a fourth power, which contains morality, beauty, and truth but is never subordinated to them, rises free of all their compulsions.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Computers
The mechanical age stopped with the Selectric typewriter, as far as I’m concerned.
“‘Condominium Mentality’ in CanLit” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Computers can think; they have intelligence and consciousness. What they don’t have (so far) is will: they have to be plugged in or turned on like other machines. Perhaps electricity is will on the mechanical level.…
Entry, Notebook 47 (1989–90), 18, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Eventually, no doubt, we shall have machines that stand in the same relation to ordinary human brains that jet planes do to ordinary human feet.
“Introduction to the Second Volume of Harold Innis’s “A History of Communciations” (1980s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
I suppose computers are the physical realization of magic, just as the television screen is the physical realization of ghosts.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 262, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
There’s no reason why man should not develop machines that can reproduce every activity of the human brain on a vastly higher level of speed and efficiency. But nobody has yet come up with a computer that wanted to do these things on its own: as well, so far, every machine is an expression of the will of its makers.
Entry, Notes 54.2 (1982–91), 2, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Concern
Briefly, the language of concern is the language of myth. Myth is the structural principle of literature that enters into and gives form to the verbal disciplines where concern is relevant.
“The Instruments of Mental Production” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
And I speak of concern rather than belief, because a general public assent to certain formulas is more important to a society than actual belief in them. Belief may be in theory the essential thing, but private beliefs elude social vigilance, as the public expression of them does not.
“The Myth of Deliverance: I, The Reversal of Action” (1981), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
To liberate the language of concern is to ensure that the whole imaginative range of concern is being expressed in society, instead of being confined to a selected type of imagination which is hitched to the tactics of one social group, as propaganda for it, or what we have called a rhetorical analogue to it.
The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social