The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye
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“Myth, Fiction, and Displacement” (1961), The Educated Imagination (1963),“The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Acadia
The notion of a distinguished Canadian novelist coming from such a place as Bouctouche would have struck us as queer indeed.
“Autobiographical Reflections: Speech at Moncton’s Centennial Celebration” (1990), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25. The reference is to Acadian novelist and playwright Antonine Maillet.
Accountants
Perhaps we have used honesty and balance sheets as a substitute for brilliance and riches. Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I don’t know of any other country where the accountant enjoys a higher social and moral status.
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Achievement
Every creative achievement is an invention, and to invent something is, subjectively, to construct it, and, objectively, to find it.
“The Symbol as a Medium of Exchange” (1984), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Acid Rain
But the new response to the patterns of history seems to have made itself felt, along with a growing sense that we can no longer afford leaders who think that acid rain is something one gets by eating grapefruit.
“Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington” (1989), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12. This remark is an indirect reference to the ecological views of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Actions
Inconsistency of action, being a coward one day & a hero the next, can never be patched up, though again on a verbal plane it may be “accounted for.”
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 74, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
I have often noticed that a man’s beliefs are not revealed by any profession of faith, however sincere, but by what his actions show that he believes.
“The Dialectic of Belief and Vision” (1985), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
In a temptation somebody is being persuaded to do something that looks like an act, but which is really the loss of the power to act. Consequently, the abstaining from this kind of pseudo-activity is often the sign that one possesses a genuine power of action.
The Return of Eden (1965), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
Activism
Social concern does have its own case: environmental pollution, the energy crisis, the atom bomb, all show that a purely laissez-faire attitude to the development of science is pernicious.
“Introduction to Art and Reality” (1986), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
As I used to tell my American friends at the time, Canadian activists have an outlet that your students don’t have, namely the American Embassy. If all else fails they can go down and demonstrate there.
“Towards an Oral History of the University of Toronto” (1982), referring to student activism in the 1960s, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Adolescence
In the 1920s the cult of adolescence extended into the university, where the typical undergraduate was supposed to be a case of arrested development in a coonskin coat.
“The View from Here” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
This conception of the adolescent can hardly have any basis in biology: it is a deliberate creation of industrial society, and one wonders why such a creation was made.… I would like to make it clear that when I use the word “adolescent,” I do not refer primarily to young people, but to a social neurosis which has been projected on young people.
“The Definition of a University” (1970), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
I say creation because I think the adolescent is a deliberate creation of an adult society, and that we have done with young people what Victorian society did with women: on the pretext of coddling and protecting them, we have subordinated them and kept them out of any real social role or influence, and we have done this because they represent a kind of projection of our own anxiety.
“Education and the Rejection of Reality” (1971), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
I always thought of adolescence as something to grow away from.
“Beginnings” (1981), interview by Susan Gabori, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Adonis
Jesus and Adonis are both dying gods; they have very similar imagery and very similar rituals attached to them; but Jesus is a person and Adonis is not.
“The Meaning of Recreation: Humanism in Society” (1979), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Adults
Or we may even find ourselves reading the opposite meaning into what is said: if we pass a theatre advertising “adult entertainment,” we know that “adult” in such contexts generally means “infantile.”
“Language as the Home of Human Life” (1985), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Advertising
Advertising as a socially approved form of drug culture: imaginary world, promises us magical powers within that world.
“On Education II” (1972), 18, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Advertisers are very well aware that man participates in society through his imagination, and consequently advertising is addressed entirely to what you might call a passive imagination: that is, its statements are so outrageous that they stun and numb the reason.
“Breakthrough” (1967), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Advertising implies a competitive market and an absence of monopoly; propaganda implies a centralizing of power. If advertising is selling soap we know that it is only a soap, not the exclusive way of cleanliness. Hence the statements of advertising contain a residual irony.
The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism (1971), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Democracies seem to depend on advertising, and dictatorships on propaganda. The difference is not so much in the rhetoric, as in the fact that advertising is more open to the spirit of criticism.
“Criticism in Society” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
We have here a type of irony which exactly corresponds to that of two other major arts of the ironic age, advertising and propaganda. These arts pretend to address themselves seriously to a subliminal audience of cretins, an audience that may not even exist, but which is assumed to be simple-minded enough to accept at their face value the statements made about the purity of a soap or a government’s motives.
“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
One cannot read far in advertising without encountering over-writing, a too earnestly didactic tone, an uncritical acceptance of snobbish standards, and obtrusive sexual symbolism. These are precisely the qualities of inferior literature.
“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Advertising implies an economy which has some independence