The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye

the three R’s, the three A’s: anxiety, alienation, absurdity.

      “The University and Personal Life: Student Anarchism and the Educational Contract” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

      Apartheid

      Amiable apartheid, not a word I’d use for anything I approved of, but there are degrees.

      Entry, Notebook 42b: Notes III (1980s), 4, referring to attitudes in his youth in Moncton, N.B., Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

      Apathy

      But apathy, on the part of a majority, means that democracy is no longer a matter of majority rule, but is simply a state of enduring the tyranny of organized minorities.

      “Convocation Address: Acadia University” (1969), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

      Aphorisms

      The aphorism works on the principle of the Bloody Mary: it has to be swallowed at a gulp and allowed to explode from within.

      “Poetry of the Tout Ensemble” (1957), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.

      The aphorism is a verbal perception: that is, it’s a verbal analogy of a Gestalt perception.

      Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 110, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

      If the writer wants to suggest a kind of aloofness, if he wants to suggest that it is your business to come to him and not his business to come to you; if he wants to suggest that there are riches or reserves in his mind which what he is writing gives you only an occasional hint of, then he will naturally turn to a more discontinuous form, and he’ll write in a series of aphorisms.

      “Literature as Possession” (1959), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

      An aphorism is not a cliché: it penetrates & bites. It has wit, and consequently an affinity with satire. It appeals to the instinct in us to say “I don’t care if a man’s right or wrong; all I care about is whether his mind is alive or dead.” Naturally this will not do as a guide to thought, but it’s normal & healthy as an occasional reaction.

      Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 154, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      My own writing is developed out of a number of discontinuous aphorisms. When I’m in the routine of teaching I find my writing becomes extremely furtive; I scribble notes; that’s where the aphoristic side of my writing develops. When I have to settle down to a sustained piece of narrative writing, I pull in on myself, sometimes to a frightening degree, in order to pull the aphorisms together in the right sequence, to produce the right sort of connective tissue. I’ve said quite frequently and meant it very intensely that I don’t run my writing operation, my writing operation runs me.

      “Canadian Energies: Dialogues on Creativity” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      The obvious is the opposite of the commonplace. The aphorism represents most clearly the stage at which the idea is able to pass into a power.

      Entry, Notebook 3-12 (1946–48), 7, sec. 12, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      Christ speaks in aphorisms, not because they are alive, but because he is.

      Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 154, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      Further on the aloofness of the aphoristic sequence: in some respects it’s a dialogue with the void: what one says is surrounded by silence. It has affinities with the lyric, for instance the echo-song.

      Entry, Notebook 33 (1946–50), 61, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.

      We notice that discontinuous prose carries an authority and a sense of aloofness which suggests to the reader that he must come to it and be instructed, and that great reserves of wisdom are implied in the spaces between the sentences.

      “Rencontre: The General Editor’s Introduction” (1960s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

      The way I begin a book is to write detached aphorisms in a notebook, and ninety-five per cent of the work I do in completing a book is to fit these detached aphorisms together into a continuous narrative.

      “Response to Papers on ‘Northrop Frye and Eighteenth-Century Literature’” (1990), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.

      Oracular writers, from Heraclitus to Marshall McLuhan, have always written prose of that kind, that is, in separated sentences, where every sentence is surrounded by a big packet of silence.

      “The Limits of Dialogue” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      God, it would be wonderful to write a whole book in the discontinuous aphoristic form in which things actually come to me: I’d still have the sequence problem, but not the crippling angel of continuity to wrestle with. The hell with it, at least for now.

      Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 671, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

      Apocalypse

      Well, it can mean that, although I prefer not to think of the apocalypse as a big show of fireworks starting next Tuesday. I’d prefer to think of it as the ultimate expanding of human consciousness, which, as I see it, is what is meant by the term “revelation” as applied to the Bible.

      “On The Great Code (I)” (1982), setting aside the notion of the apocalypse as “the end,” Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      Literature is a human apocalypse, man’s revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the last judgment of mankind.

      “The Keys of Dreamland,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21. This sentence caught the eye of A.C. Hamilton in Northrop Frye: Anatomy of His Criticism (1990): “This one gnomic sentence encapsulates his entire vision of literature and the function of literary criticism. I realized that if it alone of all his writings had survived, like an anthropologist shaping Neanderthal man from one bone sliver, I could reconstruct the Anatomy.”

      Our own age is an extremely apocalyptic one, and there are always two aspects to an apocalypse: the vision we finally get when it clears away, and the sun and moon turning to blood before that happens.

      “Literature as a Critique of Pure Reason” (1982), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.

      In the New Testament Christ descends to the lower world in his death and burial, returns to the surface of the earth at the Resurrection, ascends the higher ladder to the sky in the Ascension, and descends from there at the Apocalypse. The entire axis mundi is traversed in this quest, and any second coming after that can be only an enlarged version in ourselves of what is there now.

      “Third Variation: The Cave,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.

      Why is the apocalypse a world of total metaphor as well as a world of desire?

      Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 202, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

      … the Biblical Apocalypse is our grammar of apocalyptic imagery.

      “Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

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