Northrop Frye Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question "Who am I?" than by some such riddle as "Where is here?

  Northrop Frye

  Important, Identity, Problem

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham, Jean O'Grady, David Staines (2003). “Northrop Frye on Canada”, p.346, University of Toronto Press

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• Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself.

  Northrop Frye

  Men, Apocalypse, Screens

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.156, University of Toronto Press

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• Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, Aphorism, Translate

  Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz,'The Literature Professors' Literature Professor', in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall1978.

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• Everything that happens in the Old Testament is a "type" or adumbration of something that happens in the New Testament, and the whole subject is therefore called typology, though it is a typology in a special sense.

  Northrop Frye

  Special, Old Testament, Type

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.98, University of Toronto Press

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• I see a sequence of seven main phases: creation,revolution or exodus (Israel in Egypt), law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse.

  Northrop Frye

  Egypt, Law, Israel

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.126, University of Toronto Press

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• There is a curious law of art... that even the attempt to reproduce the act of seeing, when carried out with sufficient energy, tends to lose its realism and take on the unnatural glittering intensity of hallucination.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Law, Energy

  "The Critical Path and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963-1975 (Design as a Principle in the Arts)". Book edited by Jean O'Grady and Eva Kushner, March 14, 2009.

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• The objective world is the order of nature, thinking or reflection follows the suggestions of sense experience, and words are the servomechanisms of reflection.

  Northrop Frye

  Reflection, Thinking, Order

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.31, University of Toronto Press

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• We do not live in a centred space any more, but have to create our own centres.

  Northrop Frye

  Space, Centre

  "Northrop Frye on Religion: Excluding The Great Code and Words with Power".

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• Failure to grasp centrifugal meaning is incomplete reading; failure to grasp centripetal meaning is incompetent reading.

  Northrop Frye

  Reading, Incomplete, Incompetent

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.76, University of Toronto Press

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• I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society.

  Northrop Frye

  Fundamentals, Literature, Speech

  "The Educated Imagination". Book by Northrop Frye, 1963.

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• We have revolutionary thought whenever the feeling "life is a dream" becomes geared to an impulse to awaken from it.

  Northrop Frye

  Dream, Feelings, Life Is

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.101, University of Toronto Press

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• The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

  Northrop Frye

  Character, Tennessee, Kind

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.449, University of Toronto Press

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• A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Memories, Criticism

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.4, Princeton University Press

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• Writing: I certainly do rewrite my central myth in every book, and would never read or trust any writer who did not also do so.

  Northrop Frye

  Book, Writing, Myth

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• For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, People, Giving

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.451, University of Toronto Press

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• Horace, in a particularly boastful mood, once said his verse would last as long as the vestal virgins kept going up the Capitoline Hill to worship at the temple of Jupiter. But Horace's poetry has lasted longer than Jupiter's religion, and Jupiter himself has only survived because he disappeared into literature.

  Northrop Frye

  Long, Jupiter, Literature

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.447, University of Toronto Press

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• The Bible is not interested in arguing, because if you state a thesis of belief you have already stated it's opposite; if you say, I believe in God, you have already suggested the possibility of not believing in him. [p.250]

  Northrop Frye

  Believe, Opposites, Belief

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• The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.

  Northrop Frye

  Kings, Stupid, Sheep

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.143, Princeton University Press

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• To bring anything really to life in literature we can't be lifelike: we have to be literature-like

  Northrop Frye

  Literature

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.201, Dundurn

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• We find rhetorical situations everywhere in life, and only our imaginations can get us out of them.

  Northrop Frye

  Imagination, Situation, Rhetorical

  Northrop Frye (1964). “The Educated Imagination”, p.136, Indiana University Press

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• Poetry can only be made out of other poems; novels out of other novels.

  Northrop Frye

  Copying, Made, Novel

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.97, Princeton University Press

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• Writers don't seem to benefit much by the advance of science, although they thrive on superstitions of all kinds.

  Northrop Frye

  Benefits, Superstitions, Kind

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.442, University of Toronto Press

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• Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.

  Northrop Frye

  Understanding, Intellectual, Atheism

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.127, Princeton University Press

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• Literature is not a subject of study, but an object of study.

  Northrop Frye

  Literature, Study, Subjects

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.11, Princeton University Press

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• It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.

  Northrop Frye

  Essence, Culture, Limits

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.127, Princeton University Press

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