The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye

“truth” can be reached only by passing through myth and metaphor.

      “Introduction” (1990), Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.

      I’m trying to distinguish the sacred book, the Bible, from secular literature. That literature is written in the imaginative language of myth and metaphor, but it doesn’t provide a model to adopt as a way of life, whereas the object of the writers of the Gospels writing about Jesus was the imitation of Christ, in the sense that they were telling a story just as the writers of literature tell a story. But the particular story they told was the one that they wanted to make a model of the life of the person reading it.

      “Cultural Identity in Canada” (1990), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      Works of literature aren’t on a par with the Bible: they form models for the central understanding of the Bible. One has to see the Bible as though it were literary before one can pass beyond the literary.

      “Notes for ‘The Dialectic of Belief and Vision’” (1983), 22, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

      It’s just nonsense to apply evaluation to the Bible, and that’s because it keeps continually breaking out of the category of literature.

      “Getting the Order Right” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      Nothing happens in the Bible except verbal events, but it’s the interplay among those verbal events in which the truth emerges. Afterwards it is inexhaustible.

      “Archetype and History” (1986), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      The Bible is the only place in our tradition I know where one can get a view of literature that goes beyond literature, and so establishes its relative finiteness, and yet includes all the elements of literature. In this age of posts and metas, I can find nothing in our cultural tradition except the Bible that really illustrates the metaliterary.

      “Auguries of Experience” (1987), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.

      One thinks more particularly of the Bible, which is one long folk tale from beginning to end, and the most primitive and popular book in the world.

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

      Perhaps our conclusion will be that the Bible is the only work of literature that ever succeeded in getting beyond literature. I am not at this point discussing the Bible’s truth or reality, only the language in which that truth or reality is being presented to us. That that language is mythical seems to me unanswerable.

      Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 61, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      If the Word is the beginning, it is the end too, and the Omega as well as the Alpha, and what this principle indicates is that to receive the revelation of the Bible we must examine the total verbal structure of the Bible.

      “The Mythical Approach to Creation” (1985), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

      The Bible suggests that there is a structure beyond the hypothetical.

      Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 68, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

      With such a book as the Bible, which has had so tremendous a role to play in our cultural tradition, all value judgments are palpably absurd and futile.

      “Reconsidering Levels of Meaning” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

      The Bible is a colossal literary tour de force, whatever “more” it is, and the canonical instinct is so sure, in the large view, as to suggest a direct intervention by God. I don’t see this in the Koran, & I don’t see how anybody could see it in the Koran. But what does this lead to? Apparently to the reflection that God is exactly like me: in a world howling with tyranny and misery all he cares about is getting his damn book finished.

      Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 661, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

      The function of the Bible is to give us knowledge of myth (and metaphor). Not experience: that’s the reader’s response. The Bible guides and girds the experience: unorganized mythical experience is hysteria or insanity.

      Entry, Notebook 11b (late 1980), 22, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      If we insist that the Bible is “more” than a work of literature, we ought at least to stick to the word “more,” and try to see what it means.

      “Language II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.

      To say that the Bible is “more” than a work of literature is merely to say that other methods of approaching it are possible.

      “Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

      Bible as Mythology

      To me the Bible is a single and definitive myth.

      “Breakthrough” (1967), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

      The Bible teaches the knowledge of myth: the poets teach the experience of it.

      Entry, Notebook 11b (late 1980), 26, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      To me the Bible, though not a work of literature, is none the less written in the literary language of myth and metaphor throughout, and therefore its “literal” meaning is its poetic and imaginative meaning, whatever other kinds of meaning may be found in it.

      “Preface to Essays Translated into Russian” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

      If we take the Bible as a key to mythology, instead of taking mythology in general as a key to the Bible, we should at least have a definite starting point, wherever we end.

      “Typology I,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.

      When we do look into it, we find that the sense of unified continuity is what the Bible has as a work of fiction, as a definitive myth extending over time and space, over invisible and visible orders of reality, and with a parabolic dramatic structure of which the five acts are creation, fall, exile, redemption, and restoration.

      “Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

      … and for me the two statements, The Bible tells a story, and, The Bible is a myth, are essentially the same statement.

      “Myth I,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.

      The Bible is for the literary critic the best place to study the mythological framework that Western culture has inherited.

      “Literature and Society” (1968), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.

      At this point the word mythos begins to turn into the word “myth,” and we have to face the possibility that the entire Bible has to be read in the same way that most of us now read the story of Noah’s ark.

      “History and Myth in the Bible” (1975), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

      As there is no boundary line, it follows that nothing in the Bible which may be historically accurate is there because it is historically accurate.

      “Pistis and Mythos” (1972), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

      A genuine higher criticism of the Bible, therefore, would