The Northrop Frye Quote Book. Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

      But of course America itself is becoming Americanized in this sense, and the uniformity imposed on New Delhi and Singapore, or on Toronto and Vancouver, is no greater than that imposed on New Orleans or Baltimore.

      “Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

      Americans & Canadians

      I remember that practically every American I met began the conversation by producing a Canadian relative or ancestor. So, if asked to name the chief products of Canada, I’d begin with “Americans.”

      “Education and the Humanities” (1947), referring to a year spent at Harvard University, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

      Anagnorisis

      Much of my critical thinking has turned on the double meaning of Aristotle’s term anagnorisis, which can mean “discovery” or “recognition,” depending on whether the emphasis falls on the newness of the appearance or on its reappearance.

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

      Epiphany is not a new experience: it is the knowledge that one has the experience: it’s recognition or anagnorisis.

      Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 152, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

      Anagogy

      When we pass into anagogy, nature becomes, not the container, but the thing contained, and the archetypal universal symbols — the city, the garden, the quest, the marriage — are no longer the desirable forms that man constructs inside nature, but are themselves the forms of nature. Nature is now inside the mind of an infinite man who builds his cities out of the Milky Way. This is not reality, but it is the conceivable or imaginative limit of desire, which is infinite, eternal, and hence apocalyptic.

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

      Analogy

      Analogy establishes the parallels between human life and natural phenomena, and identity conceives of a “sun-god” or a “tree-god.”

      “Myth, Fiction, and Displacement” (1961), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

      Anarchism

      The anarchism of today seem[s] almost as indifferent to the future as to the past: one protest will be followed by another, because even if one issue is resolved society will still be “sick,” but there appears to be no clear programme of taking control or assuming permanent responsibility in society.

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

      But now I really begin to feel that I’m living in a post-Marxist age. I think we’re moving into something like an age of anarchism: the kind of violence and unrest going on now in China, in the city riots (which are not really race riots: race hatred is an effect but not a cause of them) in America, in Nigeria, in Canadian separatism — none of all this can satisfactorily be explained in Marxist terms. Something else is happening.

      Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 427, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

      Anatomy of Criticism

      I began the Anatomy of Criticism long ago by remarking that every serious subject, including criticism, seems to go through a kind of inductive metamorphosis, in which what has previously been assumed without discussion turns into the central problem to be discussed.

      “Varieties of Eighteenth-Century Sensibility” (1990), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.

      Anatomy of Criticism presents a vision of literature as forming a total schematic order, interconnected by recurring or conventional myths and metaphors, which I call archetypes. The vision has an objective pole: it is based on a study of literary genres and conventions, and on certain elements in Western cultural history. The order of words is there, and it is no good trying to write it off as a hallucination of my own. The fact that literature is based on unifying principles as schematic as those of music is concealed by many things, most of them psychological blocks, but the unity exists, and can be shown and taught to others, including children. But, of course, my version of that vision also has a subjective pole: it is a model only, coloured by my preferences and limited by my ignorance.

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

      Ancestry

      If we are interested in our ancestry, it is natural to trace our direct ancestry first, but we all know that we eventually come to a point at which everyone alive was an ancestral relative.

      “Framework and Assumption” (1985), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.

      … we all belong to something before we are anything.…

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

      Angels

      If I had been on the hills of Bethlehem in the year one, I do not think I should have heard angels singing because I do not hear them now, & there is no reason to suppose that they have stopped.

      Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 5, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      The bird is not a higher form of imagination than we are, but its ability to fly symbolizes one, and men usually assign wings to what they visualize as superior forms of human existence.

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

      Angels are spiritual beings because they don’t travel but just epiphanize (when they do) in an interpenetrating space, and all angels by the royal metaphor are One Spirit, a little higher (Ps. 8) than we are.

      Entry, Notebook 11e (ca. 1978), 59, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

      Anglicanism

      Incidentally, I hate to seem intolerant, but I do not approve of Anglicanism. There are two possible approaches to Christianity, or any religion — the Protestant or individual approach, and the Catholic or collective one. Anglicanism never made up its mind which it was going to be, and did not much want to, as it is based on the useful but muddle-headed English idea of pleasing everybody.

      “NF to HK,” 25 Aug. 1932, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.

      Angst

      Fear without an object, as a condition of mind prior to being afraid of anything, is called Angst or anxiety, a somewhat narrow term for what may be almost anything between pleasure and pain.

      “Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility” (1956), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.

      Animals

      The deaths of animals seem to have an extraordinary resonance in Canadian literature, as though the screams of all the trapped and tortured creatures who built up the Canadian fur trade were still echoing in our minds.

      “Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

      I don’t know why I have such a horror of animals. A recurrent nightmare is badly hurting an animal and then stomping it furiously into a battered wreck in a paroxysm of cowardly mercy. And that is to some extent what I’m like. Any intimate contact with any animal I dislike, & their convulsive movements give