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A’s

I’ve spoken of the three A’s of irony, Anxiety, Alienation & Absurdity: to these one should add a fourth, Aggression.

Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 490, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

Abortion

I think that having an abortion might be a traumatic shock to a woman, and she ought to consider carefully all the factors before going into it. But I’m not prepared to say whether it is right or wrong.

“Chatelaine’s Celebrity I.D.” (1982), asked to comment on the subject of abortion, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

Abstract Expressionism

To bring my own prejudice into the open, abstract expressionism is a genre I have always distrusted, mainly because so much of it seems to me to express a violent reactionary anarchism, a repudiating not so much of the traditions as of the community of painting.

“Introduction to Arthur Lismer” (1979), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

The difference between nonobjective and abstract painting may be suggested by the difference between mathematics and music.

“The Pursuit of Form” (1948), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

I remember some Clyfford Stills I saw in Buffalo: wonderful pictures, but they wouldn’t endure anything else in the same room except another Clyfford Still. (I was told later that Still was personally almost a psychotic, and of course I disapprove of putting that fact into a casual relation to the pictures, but the effect of the picture is unmistakable.)

Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 279, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

Absurdity

Whatever gives form and pattern to fiction, whatever technical skill keeps us turning the pages to get to the end, is absurd, and contradicts our sense of reality.

“Dickens and the Comedy of Humours” (1967), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.

The word “absurd” refers primarily to the disappearance of the sense of continuity in our day.… The sense of absurdity comes from time, not space; from the feeling that life is not a continuous absorption of experiences into a steadily growing individuality, but a discontinuous series of encounters between moods and situations which keep bringing us back to the same point.

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

Just as the poetic metaphor is always a logical absurdity, so every inherited convention of plot in literature is more or less mad.

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

Acadia

The notion of a distinguished Canadian novelist coming from such a place as Bouctouche would have struck us as queer indeed.

“Autobiographical Reflections: Speech at Moncton’s Centennial Celebration” (1990), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25. The reference is to Acadian novelist and playwright Antonine Maillet.

Accountants

Perhaps we have used honesty and balance sheets as a substitute for brilliance and riches. Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I don’t know of any other country where the accountant enjoys a higher social and moral status.

“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Achievement

Every creative achievement is an invention, and to invent something is, subjectively, to construct it, and, objectively, to find it.

“The Symbol as a Medium of Exchange” (1984), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.

Acid Rain

But the new response to the patterns of history seems to have made itself felt, along with a growing sense that we can no longer afford leaders who think that acid rain is something one gets by eating grapefruit.

“Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington” (1989), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12. This remark is an indirect reference to the ecological views of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Actions

Inconsistency of action, being a coward one day & a hero the next, can never be patched up, though again on a verbal plane it may be “accounted for.”

Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 74, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

I have often noticed that a man’s beliefs are not revealed by any profession of faith, however sincere, but by what his actions show that he believes.

“The Dialectic of Belief and Vision” (1985), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

In a temptation somebody is being persuaded to do something that looks like an act, but which is really the loss of the power to act. Consequently, the abstaining from this kind of pseudo-activity is often the sign that one possesses a genuine power of action.

The Return of Eden (1965), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.

Activism

Social concern does have its own case: environmental pollution, the energy crisis, the atom bomb, all show that a purely laissez-faire attitude to the development of science is pernicious.

“Introduction to Art and Reality” (1986), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

As I used to tell my American friends at the time, Canadian activists have an outlet that your students don’t have, namely the American Embassy. If all else fails they can go down and demonstrate there.

“Towards an Oral History of the University of Toronto” (1982), referring to student activism in the 1960s, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

Adolescence

In the 1920s the cult of adolescence extended into the university, where the typical undergraduate was supposed to be a case of arrested development in a coonskin coat.

“The View from Here” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

This conception of the adolescent can hardly have any basis in biology: it is a deliberate creation of industrial society, and one wonders why such a creation was made.… I would like to make it clear that when I use the word “adolescent,” I do not refer primarily to young people, but to a social neurosis which has been projected on young people.

“The Definition of a University” (1970), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

I say creation because I think the adolescent is a deliberate creation of an adult society, and that we have done with young people what Victorian society did with women: on the pretext of coddling and protecting them, we have subordinated them and kept them out of any real social role or influence, and we have done this because they represent a kind of projection of our own anxiety.

“Education and the Rejection of Reality” (1971), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

I always thought of adolescence as something to grow away from.

“Beginnings” (1981), interview by Susan Gabori, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Adonis

Jesus and Adonis are both dying gods; they have very similar imagery and very similar rituals attached to them; but Jesus is a person and Adonis is not.

“The Meaning of Recreation: Humanism in Society” (1979), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

Adults

Or we may even find ourselves reading the opposite meaning into what is said: if we pass a theatre advertising “adult entertainment,” we know that “adult” in such contexts generally means “infantile.”

“Language as the Home of Human Life” (1985), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Advertising

Advertising as a socially approved form of drug culture: imaginary world, promises us magical powers within that world.

“On Education II” (1972), 18, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

Advertisers are very well aware that man participates in society through his imagination, and consequently advertising is addressed entirely to what you might call a passive imagination: that is, its statements are so outrageous that they stun and numb the reason.

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

Advertising implies a competitive market and an absence of monopoly; propaganda implies a centralizing of power. If advertising is selling soap we know that it is only a soap, not the exclusive way of cleanliness. Hence the statements of advertising contain a residual irony.

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.

Democracies seem to depend on advertising, and dictatorships on propaganda. The difference is not so much in the rhetoric, as in the fact that advertising is more open to the spirit of criticism.

“Criticism in Society” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

We have here a type of irony which exactly corresponds to that of two other major arts of the ironic age, advertising and propaganda. These arts pretend to address themselves seriously to a subliminal audience of cretins, an audience that may not even exist, but which is assumed to be simple-minded enough to accept at their face value the statements made about the purity of a soap or a government’s motives.

“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

One cannot read far in advertising without encountering over-writing, a too earnestly didactic tone, an uncritical acceptance of snobbish standards, and obtrusive sexual symbolism. These are precisely the qualities of inferior literature.

“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Advertising implies an economy which has some independence from the political structure, and as long as this independence exists, advertising can be taken as a kind of ironic game.

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

Our reaction to advertising is really a form of literary criticism. We don’t take it literally, and we aren’t supposed to: anyone who believed literally what every advertiser said would hardly be capable of managing his own affairs.

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

Television advertising is entirely a monologue relying on the power of a visual medium to hold the body motionless and, if possible, spellbound.

“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on November 5th” (1970), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

The fiction need not be his own creation: anyone who believes advertising literally, for example, would be for all practical purposes a lunatic.

“On Teaching Literature” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Advertising is halfway between: its conventions may be accepted by a ten-year-old but must be greatly weakened by twenty if one is to retain any self-control at all in a consumerist society. (That’s why it’s so important to break the hold of the rhetoric of advertising as soon as possible.)

Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 600, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

The two words practical and useful do not of course mean quite the same thing: some forms of verbal technology, like preaching, may be useful without always being practical; others, like advertising, may be practical without always being useful.

“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Advertising, propaganda, the speeches of politicians, popular books and magazines, the clichés of rumour, all have their own kind of pastoral myths, quest myths, hero myths, sacrificial myths, and nothing will drive these shoddy constructs out of the mind except the genuine forms of the same thing.

“Elementary Teaching and Elementary Scholarship” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

For the deeply disaffected in our society, advertising is propaganda, and one’s response should be that of an enemy of “the system” and not of any player of games.

“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on November 5th” (1970), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

Aesthetics

Every art, however, needs its own critical organization, and poetics will form a part of aesthetics as soon as aesthetics becomes the unified criticism of all the arts instead of whatever it is now.

“Polemical Introduction” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

Africa

The revolt of Africa hasn’t yet come, but is certainly coming.

Entry, 23 Jan. 1949, 116, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

Afterlife

So many people are repelled by the idea of a life after death that if there is a life after death a lot of people are going to be damn mad. But then a lot of people are damn mad about having been born into this world, though few of them, and those mostly suicides, get to the point of formulating it in those terms.

Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 293, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

There even used to be a version, or perversion, of Christianity which asserted that real life began after death. This is not much in fashion now, but in its day it doubtless encouraged some people to die without ever having come alive.

“Baccalaureate Sermon” (1967), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

Aging

The only thing that keeps me reconciled to life in my seventies is my realization that everything goes in cycles.

“Criticism in Society” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

The body must go helplessly from youth to age: the imagination, though of course it is influenced by this, may be contemplative at ten or youthful at eighty.

“Part Two: The Development of the Symbolism,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.

At seventy-five the sense of perspective becomes more important than the sense of discovery. And yet the perspective includes a recapturing of discovery: the sun has been told often enough that it shines on nothing new, but it knows better, and keeps rising as placidly as ever.

“Preface to On Education” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

But as our personal future narrows, we become more aware of another dimension of time entirely, and may even catch glimpses of the powers and forces of a far greater creative design. Perhaps when we think we are working for the future we are really being contained in the present, though an infinite present, eternity in an hour, as Blake calls it. Perhaps too that present is also a presence, not an impersonal cause in which to lose ourselves, but a person in whom to find ourselves again.

“Address on Receiving the Royal Bank Award” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

As life goes on, the future becomes steadily more predictable, & the life consequently less interesting. Children fascinate us; old men bore us because they conceal no surprises.

Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 146, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

Agnosticism

It is curious but significant that “gnostic” and “agnostic” are both dirty words in the Christian tradition: wisdom is not identified either with knowledge or with the denial of knowledge.

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

The advantages of being an agnostic are obvious: one does not have to pretend that one knows things that in fact one does not know.

“Baccalaureate Sermon” (1967), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

Air

Air is the invisible medium by which things become visible, hence the spiritual is the power of making things visible, the medium of creative energy.

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

But as the function of air is to be invisible, in order to make the physical world visible, so the spiritual world is invisible in order to make spiritual experience possible and visible to the participant.

“On the Bible” (1989), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

Now imagine a world where you could see the air: what you’d have is the image of fog, mist or vapour.

Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 503, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

The Spirit of the Bible is to the conscious world what the air is to the physical world. In the physical world, the things we see are visible only because the air is invisible. For the corresponding reason, the Spirit has to be invisible to consciousness, but is none the less a personal presence, personal as we are, present as everything around us is.

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

Alcohol

I find myself unusually sensitive to alcohol: I feel perceptibly more stupid after a single drink.

Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 6, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

Algebra

Algebra is neither difficult nor easy to the keen student, but to, say, the girl who has already decided on a life of bridge and Saturday shopping it is impenetrably obscure. She “can’t do” algebra because it has no place in her vision of life. Nevertheless the educational system mildly compels her at least to try a little algebra, because this is a democracy, and it is her right to be exposed to quadratic equations however little she wants them.

“Academy without Walls” (1961), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

Alice in Wonderland

If I hadn’t had the Alice books at an early age, it would have been like a couple of front teeth missing!

“Literature in Education” (1979), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

The principle is, if looking-glass reality is Alice’s dream why isn’t our reality the red king’s dream?

“New Fictional Formulas: Notebook 30o” (after 1965), 2, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

In a slightly different but related area, one feels that Alice could hardly have held her Wonderland together if she had even reached the Menarche, much less become an adult.

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

I suppose the fascination with Alice is not that she’s a child in the state of innocence, but that she’s a preternatural child: what seven-year-old girls would have been like without the Fall.

Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 558, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

I’ve often said that if I understood the two Alice books I’d have very little left to understand about literature. Actually I think the Alice books, while they carry over, begin rather than sum up — a new twist to fiction that has to do with intellectual paradox & the disintegrating of the ego.

Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 226, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

Alien Beings

I think we have a feeling of being alienated and isolated by all that empty space and a need to populate it somehow with something which is humanly intelligible. Just as you have movies like Star Wars that talk about distant galaxies as being united by beings that look remarkably like Hollywood actors, so you have myths about unidentified flying objects that, again, tend to indicate that there is something way out there which is like ourselves.

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

The sheer bumptiousness of Carl Sagan & others who want to communicate with beings in other worlds amazes me. They should be saying: look, there are several billion Yahoos here robbing, murdering, torturing, exploiting, abusing & enslaving each other: they’re stupid, malicious, superstitious and obstinate. Would you like to look at the .0001 per cent of them who are roughly presentable?

Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 425, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

Alienation

We live in a world that got along without us for billions of years, and could still get along without us, in fact still may. When this fact penetrates the public consciousness, a kind of alienation develops.

“Criticism as Education” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Alienation is minimal identity, a classical atom against the external world.

Entry, Notebook 54-8 (late 1972–77), 68, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.

Allegory

Allegorical interpretation, as a method of criticism, begins with the fact that allegory is a structural element in narrative: it has to be there, and is not added by critical interpretation alone. In fact, all commentary, or the relating of the events of a narrative to conceptual terminology, is in one sense allegorical interpretation.

“Allegory” (1965), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.

We have allegory when one literary work is joined to another, or to a myth, by a certain interpretation of meaning rather than by structure.

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

Alumni

There are now only two groups of people who have any really long-term and continuous relationship to the university: the alumni and the graduate students in the humanities working on their Ph.D.’s.

“Convocation Address, York University” (1969), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Amateurism

… practically everybody confuses the merits of practising an art as a yoga with the objective merits of its products, sooner or later. That is, they want to give up their amateur standing as soon as possible. The irony of the situation is that if most writers of poetry & other dabblers would think entirely of the benefit to them & not at all of publication, the publishable merit of what they produce would be greatly & constantly increased.

Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 57, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

… he stands for a spirit no professional can do without: the spirit of painting for fun.

“Water-Colour Annual” (1944), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Ambiguity

So the term ambiguous, which is pejorative when applied to descriptive verbal structures, is an essential concept of literature.

“The Transferability of Literary Concepts” (1955), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

Americanism

I do not see how America can find its identity, much less avoid chaos, unless a massive citizens’ resistance develops which is opposed to exploitation and impersonality on the one hand, and to jack-booted radicalism on the other. It would not be a new movement, but simply the will of the people, the people as a genuine society strong enough to contain and dissolve all mobs. It would be based on a conception of freedom as the social expression of tolerance, and on the understanding that violence and lying cannot produce anything except more violence and more lies. It would be politically active, because democracy has to do with majority rule and not merely with enduring the tyranny of organized minorities. It would not be conservative or radical in its direction, but both at once.

“America: True or False?” (1969), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

It is a peculiarity of American social mythology that its mythology of the past largely contradicts its mythology of the present.

“Report on the ‘Adventures’ Readers” (1965), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Americanization

I’m not greatly worried about what is called the Americanization of Canada. What people mean when they speak of Americanization has been just as lethal to American culture as it has been to Canadian culture. It’s a kind of levelling down which I think every concerned citizen of democracy should fight, whether he is a Canadian or an American.

“From Nationalism to Regionalism: The Maturing of Canadian Culture” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

… when Canada was, in the stock phrase, “flooded with American programmes,” it was clear that the majority of Canadians preferred the flood to any Canadian ark that would float above it.

“Across the River and Out of the Trees” (1980), 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 me panic. If I go to hell, Satan will probably give me a wet bird to hold.

Entry, 24 Jul. 1942, 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 of tradition.

“Address on Receiving the Royal Bank Award” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

After 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.

The apocalypse is the way the world looks after the ego has disappeared.

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

The idea of manifestation & disappearance seems to belong to hell; the idea of concealment and realization seems to belong to heaven: one is creation, the other apocalypse.

Entry, 25 Feb. 1950, 146, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

Our age likes to imagine itself as the victim of an apocalypse, with all the furies of the four horsemen tearing it to pieces with calamities that no previous age has ever had to endure. This of course is mere self-pity, and the Old Testament prophets who saw Nineveh and Babylon buried under the sands would see nothing unprecedented in the ruins of Berlin.

“Education and the Humanities” (1947), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Apostles

The apostles developed into bishops, not into gurus or teachers of illumination.

Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 40, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

Applause

Applause, it has been said, is the echo of a platitude, but the applause itself indicates that the response comes from the entire personality and is therefore an organic part of it.

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

Archaeology

Nevertheless, an archaeologist who is looking for buried treasure instead of studying the past belongs, not in the tradition of the scholars, but in the tradition of the grave-robbers.

“Research and Graduate Education in the Humanities” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Archaeology is a science in which we dig underground, using steps and descending ladders as we go, to find what remains of civilizations that at one time towered high in the air.

“Repetitions of Jacob’s Dream” (1983), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.

Our attitude to the past needs more of the impartiality of the archaeologist who excavates all layers and cultural periods of his site with equal care.

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

Archetype

I used the word “archetype” because it was a traditional term in criticism, though not many people had ever run across it. But I didn’t realize at the time that Jung had monopolized the term and that everybody would think I was a Jungian critic because I used it.

“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

I mean by an archetype a symbol which connects one poem with another and thereby helps to unify and integrate our literary experience.

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

I don’t object to a feeling that there is something about the archetype which is not removed to another world but at any rate inexhaustible in this one; something which can’t ever be completely analysed or understood. There’s a residual mystery about it.

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

… for example, I took the word “archetype” not from Jung, as is so often said, but from a footnote in Beattie’s Minstrel.

“Varieties of Eighteenth-Century Sensibility” (1990), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17. The source is The Poetical Works of James Beattie (1870).

The archetype is thus primarily the communicable symbol, and archetypal criticism is particularly concerned with literature as a social fact and as a technique of communication.

“The Literary Meaning of ‘Archetype’” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

Architecture

I am not a historian: I’m an architect of the spiritual world.

Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 799, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

Even if fifty new cathedrals were built this year, the cathedral would still be as dead as the step pyramid, at least as an imaginative power in our culture.

“Introduction,” “A History of Communications,” by Harold Innis (1982), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

The turning point between fine & useful arts is architecture, which is fine when conspicuous (cathedral & castle) & useful when essentially a matter of housing.

Entry, 29 Jan. 1949, 137, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

The surrounding streets keep steadily turning into anonymous masses of buildings that look eyeless in spite of being practically all windows. Many of them seem to have had no architect, but appear to have sprung out of their excavations like vast toadstools.

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

Architecture: wonder why there always has to be a prick and a cunt: I wondered this when sitting in the Skydome with the CN tower beside me. Islam had a mosque and a minaret; Christianity a basilica and a bell-tower; even the New York fair had a trylon and a perisphere. Something points to the sky and something contained on earth.

Entry, Notes 54.1 (May 1990), 41, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.

Arguments

As I’ve often said, the irrefutable philosopher is not the person who cannot be refuted but the philosopher who’s still there after he’s been refuted.

“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

They that take the argument will perish by the argument; any statement that can be argued about at all can be refuted. The natural response to indoctrination is resistance, and nothing will make it successful except a well-organized secret police.

“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

… nothing is more remarkable in the Bible than the elimination of anything like an argument.

Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 360, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

At a certain point the bad argument will become the bad man, and what will be demanded from you and your education will not be objectivity of mind, but the courage to fight.

“To the Class of ’62 at Queen’s” (1962), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Aristocracy

When we discover that we do not need an aristocracy we shall discover who our real aristocracy are. Our real aristocracy, of course, are the children.

“Preserving Human Values” (1961), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

Hence our dream of the complete or workless man, whom our aristocracies try to produce. The versatile man, who can do anything, and the entertainer or actor, who can pretend to be anything, are proximate dreams of the same kind.

Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 269, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

Aristotle

Aristotle is interested in poetry; Plato in the poet.

“The Myth of Deliverance: II, The Reversal of Energy” (1981), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.

Art

But great art comes from harnessing a conscious intention to the creative powers beneath consciousness, and we do not get closer to the author’s meaning by getting closer to the book’s meaning. The greater the book, the more obvious it is that the author’s consciousness merely held the nozzle of the hose, so to speak.

“Don Quixote” (1949), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.

The formal principles of the arts are concealed inside us somewhere.

Entry, Notebook 20 (after 1965), 15, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

It is important that the limits of art seem to lie somewhere between pure dream & pure reality.

Entry, Notebook 38 (1952–55), 56, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.

Through such an analysis we may come to realize that the two essential facts about a work of art, that it is contemporary with its own time and that it is contemporary with ours, are not opposed but complementary facts.

“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

It speaks with authority, but not the familiar authority of parental or social conditioning: there will always be, I expect, some mystery about the real source of its authority.

“The View from Here” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Art proves the inadequacy of abstract and rational ideas by the rule that examples and illustrations are more powerful than doctrines or precepts.

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

The function of art is to awaken faith by making us aware of the imaginative world concealed within us.

Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 572, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

And the greater the work of art, the more completely it reveals the gigantic myth which is the vision of this world as God sees it, the outlines of that vision being creation, fall, redemption, and apocalypse.

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

In short, works of art constituted for him what they have always been since Palaeolithic times, a focus of meditation, a means of concentrating consciousness.

“The View from Here” (1980), referring to William Blake, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

All art, even the greatest, is flawed, and our total response to it is bound to include a certain critical detachment.

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

The total form of art, so to speak, is a world whose content is nature but whose form is human; hence when it “imitates” nature it assimilates nature to human forms.

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

The sources of art are enthusiasm and inspiration: if society mocks and derides these, it is society that is mad, not the artist, no matter what excesses the latter may commit.…

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

Art is not simply an identity of illusion and reality, but a counter-illusion: its world is a material world, but the material of an intelligible spiritual world.

Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 399, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

Art, according to Plato, is a dream for awakened minds, a work of imagination withdrawn from ordinary life, dominated by the same forces that dominate the dream, and yet giving us a perspective and dimension on reality that we don’t get from any other approach to reality.

“The Keys to Dreamland,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

We have as great art as humanity can ever produce with us now.

“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

In art we learn as the child learns, through the concrete illustration of stories and pictures, and without that childlike desire to listen to stories and see pictures art could not exist.

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

It is difficult to see things that move quickly and are far away: in the world of time and space, therefore, all things are more or less blurred. Art sees its images as permanent living forms outside time and space.

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

You can’t “substitute art for religion” without making art include religion, & so recovering it from the individual or ego-centric sphere. That’s really what I’m trying to do.

Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 128, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

Commercial art is not only monotonous but also prudish, ready to give way to any kind of pressure in order to please every kind of superstition and immaturity.

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

… the idea I got from Pynchon: that art is a form of creative paranoia, which counteracts the real paranoia that starts wars and buggers nature.

Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 114, referring to the novelist Thomas Pynchon, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

I’ve been saying that art drives a wedge between being & not-being. Wonder if it also drives a wedge between life & death. By death I mean not simple extinction, but shadow-life, Hades, the world we perhaps enter in dreams.

Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 2, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

Art, then, owes its existence to man’s dissatisfaction with nature and his desire to transform the physical world into a human one.

“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

What does improve in the arts is the comprehension of them, and the refining of society which results from it.

“Tentative Conclusion” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.

Art is not an escape from reality but a vision of the world in its human form.

“The Primary Necessities of Existence” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

A work of art is an effort at imaginative communication: if it succeeds in being that, it becomes the focus of a community. The critic is there, not so much to explain the poet, as to translate literature into a continuous dialogue with society.

“The Responsibilities of the Critic” (1976), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.

Art, Canadian

I am a Canadian intellectual, and therefore (in Canada it is a therefore) I am a cultural regionalist, but the extent to which Canadian culture can grow out of the Canadian soil I realize in advance to be an exceedingly limited one.

“Design as a Creative Principle in the Arts” (1966), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.

Still, it is good to see some abstract painting in Canada: the only really modern art in Toronto is in the Museum, where it is labelled ancient.

“Gordon Webber and Canadian Abstract Art” (1941), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Art, Moslem

In Moslem art I notice that the effect of a great mosque is overall, in contrast to the cathedral where you move from point to point.

Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 340, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

Arthurian Legends

The Arthurian legends might well have become, in a different cultural setting, the starting point of great apocalyptic visions of Celtic triumph and Teutonic or Latin disaster, paralleling the Biblical dreams of a fallen Babylon and an eternal Jerusalem.

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

Articulation

Articulateness is the only freedom, and relates only to the individual. All society can do is to arrange for conditions of this freedom.

Entry, Notebook 54-8 (late 1972–77), 61, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15

The better the poem, the more precisely and inevitably it expresses the inarticulate need for articulation.

“Interior Monologue of M. Teste” (1959), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

Artists

Art flourishes when the artist is regarded, not as a long-haired wild-eyed shaman, but as a skilled labourer who gets properly paid for his work — whether he is famous or anonymous does not matter.

“The Jooss Ballet” (1936), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

The “artist” too, of course, is an intermediate figure between aristocrat & beat, with the same satyrical display of balls.

Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 44, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

Most of the world’s best art has been produced by men who had genius but were otherwise no better, to say the least, than ourselves. (That, incidentally, is why no artist can become a classic until he dies, for his death separates his genius from his life, and so releases and purifies the former.

“Education and the Humanities” (1947), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

The creative artists are important because their works are the only visible and audible models of what is going on. The rest of it is a mysterious process in which the activity of God takes place through human beings, both the living and the dead.

Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–1990), 459, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

Arts

Literature is unique among the arts in being able to reflect the world escaped from, in its conventions of tragedy and irony and satire, along with the world escaped to, in its conventions of pastoral and romance and comedy.

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 merely stress the possibility, importance, and genuineness of a response to the arts in which we can no longer separate that response from our social context and personal commitments. As for the danger of poetry becoming a “substitute” for religion, that again is merely bad metaphor: if both poetry and religion are functioning properly, their interpenetration will take care of itself.

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

The arts in their turn cannot help releasing the powerful acids of satire, realism, ribaldry, and fantasy in their attempt to dissolve all the existential concretions that get in their way.

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

For the arts reflect the world that produces them, and everything the detractors of modern art say about it is true, except that what they are objecting to is not so much something in our art as something in our lives.

“Academy without Walls” (1961), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

In other words, the arts belong to a conception of reality in which reality is something that man makes, something that man constructs himself, so that when the issue is raised about the rights and wrongs of such reality, we have to raise the question of what our vision of society is in the largest sense.

“The Social Importance of Literature” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Everything worth doing and done well is an art, whether love, conversation, religion, education, sport, cookery or commerce.

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

Arts & Sciences

The individual artist is a representative of human imagination, just as the individual scientist is a representative of human reason.

“Speculation and Concern” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

The natural direction of science, then, is onward: it moves toward still greater achievements in the future. The arts have this in common with religion, that their direction is not onward into the future but upward from where we stand.

“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

But subjective art is as impossible a conception as subjective science. The arts are techniques of communication.…

“Speculation and Concern” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

For the arts, including the liberal arts, do not, like the sciences, improve: they revolve around certain classics, or models, which will remain models as long as the art endures.

“Comment” (1961), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.

The sciences are primarily concerned with the world as it is, and the arts are primarily concerned with the world man wants to live in. What is not readily recognized is the fact that both require the same mental processes.

“The Primary Necessities of Existence” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

The polarizing of creative power between vision and sense is the basis of the distinction between the arts and the sciences. The sciences begin with sense, and work towards a mental construct founded on it. The arts begin with vision, and work towards a mental construct founded on it.

“The Imaginative and the Imaginary” (1962), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

The sciences demand intellect, the arts demand good taste, or disciplined imagination and emotions.

“By Liberal Things” (1959), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

… fifty years of teaching have only confirmed my conviction that only the arts and sciences are stable social realities: everything else simply dissolves and re-forms. The world of 1989 is no more like the world I was born into in 1912 than it is like the Stone Age, but nothing has improved since then except scientific and scholarly knowledge, and nothing has remained steady except human creative power.

“Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington” (1989), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Assassination

It seems almost as though the Hitlers and Stalins of the world do not get shot because the people who hate them are the kind of people to whom murder, for however good a cause, is repugnant. But the Lincolns and Gandhis of the world are hated by the kind of people to whom murder comes naturally and agreeably.

“Gandhi” (1948), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

Astrology

I have been studying astrology recently and found that I was born under the sign of Cancer, the Crab. This interested me at once, of course, as I saw there must be something in the science after all, so I read on and learned quite a bit about it.

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

There are many who “believe in” astrology, i.e., would like to feel that there is “something in it,” but I should imagine that relatively few of them are astronomers.

“The Times of the Signs” (1973), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.

Even at that I’m suspicious of astrology: it’s too close to the view that creation was made for man, a notion not only wrong but ultimately sick.

Entry, Notebook 11e (1978), 38, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

Astronomy

In my childhood I dreamed of becoming a great astronomer & discovering a new planet beyond Neptune that I was going to call Pluto.

Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 172, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

But then I like astronomy to be spectacular & obvious. I’ll take the galaxies millions of light years away on faith, or rather trust, and as for seeing, if I can see mountains on the moon I’m perfectly happy.

Entry, 18 Aug. 1950, 555, after attending a lecture by astronomer Harlow Shapley and viewing through a telescope a galaxy and then the moons of Jupiter, Harvard University, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

Atheism

If we say, “There is a God,” we have suggested the possibility of saying, “There is no God,” and so in a sense have already said it. The most effective ideologies today, as said earlier, are those that have developed enough flexibility and tolerance to take account of this fact.

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

Atlantis

What’s under the Atlantic is what’s inside us: if we uncover it we either find a spring of living water or we get drowned in a new flood just for us.

Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 27, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.

Why does Atlantis have to be in the past? If it’s a myth, of course, it’s present, an example or warning.

Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 197, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

I’m no nearer understanding Atlantis or reincarnation symbolism, but I do understand more clearly that it polarizes the Bible in some way.

Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 224, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.

The myth of Atlantis, as I’ve known from the beginning, is another version of the myth of the fall, except that those who deal with it usually try to place it in history, whereas it doesn’t really belong in history necessarily.

Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 41, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.

Plato dreams up an ideal state, with future overtones, then says it corresponds exactly to an anti-diluvian state that fell from grace.

Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 313, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.

Atom Bombs

Man is a very frivolous animal, with a short memory and a limited imagination, and he can tie himself up in words to the point of persuading himself that dropping atom bombs on people he’s never seen is a kind of shrewd move in an exciting chess game.

“Laurence Hyde, ‘Southern Cross,’ and ‘The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes’” (1952), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

I said I felt distressed at the thought of a city going up in smoke, but the thought of a chain-reaction blowing the whole world to pieces filled me with profound peace.

Entry, 20 Feb. 1950, 130, an informal discussion with colleagues on “the H-bomb,” The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

When Russian and American spokesmen both tell us that nobody would start an atomic war because there would be no sense in such a thing and nobody could gain anything at all from it, we are not reassured. We simply do not believe that human society is as sane as that any more.

“The View from Here” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Atwood, Margaret

Margaret Atwood, like the CN Tower, is a free-standing structure, and needs no patronizing props of reference to her sex or her nationality.

“Margaret Eleanor Atwood” (1983), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Audiences

The writer has two centres of gravity: one in his own time and audience; the other in our time and in us. It is a mysterious but primary fact of literature that a poet remote from us in space and time and culture can still communicate his central vision to us, though we may admire him for reasons quite unintelligible to him or his age.

“Tradition and Change in the Theory of Criticism” (1969), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.

Any dramatist who knew his audience as well as Shakespeare would know that the important difference in it is not the difference between intelligent and stupid people, but the difference between intelligent and stupid responses to the play, both of which may exist in the same mind.

“A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance; II, Making Nature Afraid” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.

… to say that society should be tolerant is as fallacious as saying that the artist should be a good man. Both these things are true, but on different grounds. The role of the artist & the quality of art depends primarily on the quality of the audience’s imaginative response.

Entry, Notebook 8 (1946–58), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Renaissance Literature (2006), CW, 20.

Austen, Jane

Jane is a blind spot to me: I enjoy reading her for relaxation and I admire her skill and ingenuity, but I never feel much sense of cultural infusion, of the kind I require from a great writer.

Entry, 23 Aug. 1942, 75, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

Authority

I believe that one of the intellectual activities of our time consists in trying to see what is behind the social and political façade of authority.

“The Wisdom of the Reader” (1979), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.

Every writer, past or present, big or little, is, by the act of writing, making a bid for authority, for filling a place in our imaginative experience that no one else can fill in quite the same way.

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

Authority is of the subject: this is what equalizes teacher & student.

“On Education II” (post-1972), 26, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.

All personal authority comes from teachers who want to stop being teachers.

Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 493, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.

The source of actual or “temporal” authority in society is seldom hard to locate. It is always in the near vicinity of whatever one pays one’s taxes to.

“The Problem of Spiritual Authority in the Nineteenth Century” (1964), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.

The authority of the logical argument, the repeatable experiment, the established fact, the compelling work of art, is the only authority that exacts no bows or salutes. It is not sacrosanct, for what is true today may be inadequately true tomorrow, but it is what holds society together for today.

“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

We have seen that spiritual authority begins in the recognition of truth, and truth usually has about it some quality of the objective, something presented to us.

“The Problem of Spiritual Authority in the Nineteenth Century” (1964), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.

There is only one real authority in society, and that is the authority of the arts and sciences, the authority of logical reasoning, uncooked evidence, repeatable experiments, verifiable scholarship, precise and disciplined creative imagination.

“Universities and the Deluge of Cant” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

No human being or human institution is fit to be trusted with any temporal authority that is not subject to cancellation by some other authority.

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

… authority in the sciences is thus impersonal, and comes from the subject itself; authority in the arts is personal, and derives from individual genius. We still need loyalty to something with enough authority to form a community, but it must be a free authority, something that fulfils and does not diminish the individual. Such an authority can ultimately only be the kind of authority that education embodies.

“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

The authority of the logical argument, the repeatable experiment, the compelling imagination, is the final authority in society, and it is an authority that demands no submission, no subordinating, no lessening of dignity. As this authority is the same thing as freedom, the university is also the only place in society where freedom is defined.

“A Revolution Betrayed: Freedom and Necessity in Education” (1970), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.

Authorship

A few novelists, most of them bad ones, may eke out a small living by writing, or even hit a best-seller jackpot; but a poet would have to be spectacularly bad before he could live on his poetry.

“Culture and the National Will” (1957), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Autobiography

Autobiography is, like blank verse, very easy to write and very hard to write well.

“Herbert Read’s The Innocent Eye” (1947), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

Thus an autobiography coming into a library would be classified as nonfiction if the librarian believed the author, and as fiction if she thought he was lying. It is difficult to see what use such a distinction can be to a literary critic.

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

Automobile

Washington was a city designed for automobiles rather than pedestrians long before there were any automobiles: Los Angeles, a city never designed at all, seems to have broken through the control even of the automobile. It was, after all, named after angels, who traditionally do not travel through space but simply manifest themselves elsewhere.

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

Aviation

Technology is the most dramatic aspect of this development: one cannot take off in a jet plane and expect a radically different way of life in the place where the plane lands.

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

Technology can improve the efficiency of aeroplanes to a degree that outstrips the wildest dreams with which it began. But no sooner has it done so than the airline companies go broke, airports get clogged up, citizens complain about sonic-boom noise, and terrorists develop a taste for free rides to Cuba.

“The Quality of Life in the ’70s” (1971), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.

What’s produced the aeroplane is not so much a desire to fly as a rebellion against the tyranny of time and space. And that’s a process that can never stop, no matter how high our Titovs and Glenns may go.

“The Motive for Metaphor,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

Elsewhere the plane may mean a loosening of bonds, a way of escape; in Canada it is a means of tightening the country into a recognizable shape.

“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

… it’s the airplane, I think, that has made one crucial difference to the Canadian consciousness. The airplane supplied a perspective that began to pull the country together.…

“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

The airplane is a recent invention, but the vision that produced it was already ancient in the arts when Daedalus flew out of the labyrinth and Jehovah rode the sky on the wings of a seraph.

“The Imaginative and the Imaginary” (1962), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.

Awards

Our real judgments, therefore, are positive, not comparative or superlative.

“Governor General’s Awards (I)” (1963), on being a judge, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

But the real importance of the awards, and the justification for associating them with so distinguished an office, is not that they pick the “best” books, but that they indicate a specific interest on the part of the nation in the production of good ones.

“Speech on Acceptance of the Governor General’s Award for Northrop Frye on Shakespeare” (1987), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.

Lobbying for a writer to get a prize which, if she won it, would become worthless because she won it doesn’t strike me as a very dignified occupation.

Entry, 23 Jan. 1952, 58, on refusing to join a recommendation that Mazo de la Roche be considered for a Nobel Prize, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.

We are not conferring a distinction on them; we are merely pointing out the distinction they themselves have achieved.

“Governor General’s Awards (I)” (1963), speaking as a judge, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.

Axis mundi

About the axis mundi, we can say two things, first, that it is not there, and second, that it won’t go away.

“The Koiné of Myth: Myth as a Universally Intelligible Language” (1984), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.

Ayatollah

God doesn’t create post-mortem hells even for people devoting their lives to cruelty and tyranny, but if he did the Ayatollah would certainly be howling in one of them forever.

Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 162, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.