The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye

The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

      Anniversaries

      The value of centenaries and similar observations is that they call attention, not simply to great men, but to what we do with our great men.

      “Blake after Two Centuries” (1957), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.

      We choose an anniversary like this to get free of time for a moment, when we can remember without being trapped in the past, and expect, plan, or hope without being trapped in the future.

      “To Come to Light” (1988), Northrop Frye on Religion (1999), CW, 4.

      Answers

      I don’t think there are any answers. I think that the answer cheats you out of the right to ask the question and that the function of the answer is to make you formulate a better question.

      “The Great Teacher” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      When it comes to meeting the threat to identity, a myth of freedom seems very ineffective in comparison with the narcotic charm of a closed myth of concern, with its instant, convinced, and final answers. It takes time to realize that these answers are not only not genuine answers, but that only the questions can be genuine, and all such answers cheat us out of our real birthright, which is the right to ask questions.

      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.

      I think there are all questions and there aren’t any answers.

      “The Great Teacher” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      Anthem, National

      I’m thinking of the national anthem, where the French version is doing all sorts of interesting things like “ton histoire est une épopée des plus brillants exploits,” while the poor English can only repeat “we stand on guard,” like the sentry in Pompeii about to be covered up with lava. I understand that the repetitions of this phrase have recently been cut from five to three, but it’s still pretty fatuous.

      “Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on Television … November 1971–March 1972” (1972), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

      Anthologies

      In any case anthologies ought to have blank pages at the end on which the reader may copy his own neglected favourites.

      “Canada and Its Poetry” (1943), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

      Anthropology

      … anthropologists in particular are fond of reminding us that some societies will believe anything, including no doubt some societies of anthropologists.

      Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

      The Golden Bough purports to be a work of anthropology, but it has had more influence on literary criticism than in its own alleged field, and it may yet prove to be really a work of literary criticism.

      “Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

      Anthropology is the history of law, as law is the articulated form of custom.

      Entry, 4 Jun. 1950, 394, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

      Anthropomorphism

      Nowhere does the Bible seem to be afraid of the word “anthropomorphic.”

      The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

      Man can only make things in his own image. He’s stuck with that. There’s nothing else he has material for.

      “Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      Anti-Intellectualism

      Dictatorships try to suppress the critical intelligence wherever they can; our own society is profoundly and perversely anti-intellectual; some religious groups think that only blind faith can see clearly. All such attitudes are dangerous to civilized life and abhorrent to the gospel.

      “To Come to Light” (1986), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

      Anti-Semitism

      The sources of anti-Semitism are very complex. I myself think that anti-Semitism among Christians is always, sooner or later, a disguised form of anti-Christianity. It’s your own religion you hate, and you project it on something else.

      “Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      The fact that every tribal group is or appears to be potentially conspiratorial accounts for certain aspects of anti-Semitism, the Jews being scapegoats for the Nazis who could project their own tribalism on them.

      Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 520, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

      AntiChrist

      Thus from the point of view of any one of the three great Biblical religions, our age seems to be an age of a consolidating Antichrist.

      “The Church and Modern Culture” (1950), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

      There is no alternative to Christ except Antichrist, and the form of Antichrist is the form of the society of power incarnate in a divine king, an inspired dictator, or an infallible counsellor.

      “The Church: Its Relation to Society” (1949), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

      The Jesus about whom a biography can be written is dead and gone, and survives only as Antichrist.

      “Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” interpreting Blake’s insight, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.

      Antiques

      Nowadays, the expanding of the antique market and the growing sense of the possible commercial value of whatever is no longer being produced has considerably shortened this process. The sojourn in a period of unfashionable limbo has to be very brief when an “antique” can be an object twenty years old.

      “Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

      Antitheses

      Antitheses are usually resolved, not by picking one side and refuting the other, or by making eclectic choices between them, but by trying to get past the antithetical way of stating the problem.

      “The Archetypes of Literature” (1951), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

      Antony and Cleopatra

      I don’t know what the central Shakespeare play will be in the twenty-first century, assuming we reach it, but I’d place a small bet on Antony and Cleopatra.

      “The Stage Is All the World” (1985), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28. Frye argues that Hamlet made possible the Romantic movement, and in the twentieth century King Lear came into the foreground.

      Anxiety

      Those who are not capable of faith have to settle for anxieties instead.

      “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

      As long as man is capable of anxiety he is capable of passing through it to a genuine human destiny.

      The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

      … in fact all our really urgent, mysterious and frightening questions have to do with the burden of the past and the meaning