Northrop Frye Quotes

Quotes about:

• Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination.

  Northrop Frye

  Imagination, Literature, Study

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.484, University of Toronto Press

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• Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.

  Northrop Frye

  Character, Black And White, Opposites

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• This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.

  Northrop Frye

  Loss, Thinking, Identity

  Northrop Frye (1964). “The Educated Imagination”, p.55, Indiana University Press

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• Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat-show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell.

  Northrop Frye

  Cat, Blue, Imagination

  Northrop Frye (1964). “The Educated Imagination”, p.105, Indiana University Press

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• The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

  Northrop Frye

  Book, Technology, Men

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• There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.

  Northrop Frye

  Way, Language, Mankind

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.195, Dundurn

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• The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination.

  Northrop Frye

  Reality, Imagination, Literature

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.470, University of Toronto Press

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• The fact that creative powers come from an area of the mind that seems to be independent of the conscious will, and often emerge with a good deal of emotional disturbance in their wake, provides the chief analogy between prophecy and the arts... Some people pursue wholeness and integration, others get smashed up, and fragments are rescued from the smash of an intensity that the wholeness and integration people do not reach.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Independent, Emotional

  "The Collected Works of Northrop Frye, Volume 19: 'The Secular Scripture' and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976-1991". Book by Northrop Frye, November 1, 2005.

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• Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, recognizes that it is man's destiny to unite and not divide, and understands that creating proletariats and scapegoats and second-class citizens is a mean and contemptible activity.

  Northrop Frye

  Real, Mean, Destiny

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham, Jean O'Grady, David Staines (2003). “Northrop Frye on Canada”, p.416, University of Toronto Press

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• Even the human heart is slightly left of centre.

  Northrop Frye

  Heart, Centre, Humans

  Quoted by Paul Wilson in'Growing Up with Orwell', in The Idler, Jul - Aug 1989.

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• We are always in the place of beginning; there is no advance in infinity.

  Northrop Frye

  Infinity

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham (2000). “Northrop Frye's Late Notebooks, 1982-1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World”, p.281, University of Toronto Press

  20 Copy quote

• The simplest questions are the hardest to answer.

  Northrop Frye

  Knowledge, Answers, Hardest

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• Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.

  Northrop Frye

  Animal, Men, Body

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.329, Dundurn

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• Literally, the Bible is a gigantic myth, a narrative extending over the whole of time from creation to apocalypse, unified by a body of recurring imagery that "freezes" into a single metaphor cluster, the metaphors all being identified with the body of the Messiah, the man who is all men, the totality logoi who is one Logos, the grain of sand that is the world.

  Northrop Frye

  Men, World, Body

  "The Great Code: The Bible and Literature". Book by Northrop Frye, 1981.

  21 Copy quote

• A writers desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he'll start by imitating whatever he's read, which usually means what the people around him are writing.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, Mean, People

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.89, Dundurn

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• I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: The most conscientous student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning.

  Northrop Frye

  Doe, Literature, Students

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.5, University of Toronto Press

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• Nobody is capable of of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at.

  Northrop Frye

  Use, Speech, Language

  "The Educated Imagination (Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence)". Book by Northrop Frye, 1963.

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• A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

  Northrop Frye

  People, Mind, Literature

  Northrop Frye (1964). “The Educated Imagination”, p.15, Indiana University Press

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• One doesn't bother to believe the credible: the credible is believed already, by definition. There's no adventure of the mind.

  Northrop Frye

  Believe, Adventure, Mind

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham (2000). “Northrop Frye's Late Notebooks, 1982-1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World”, p.313, University of Toronto Press

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• Read Blake or go to hell, that's my message to the modern world.

  Northrop Frye

  World, Messages, Hell

  Northrop Frye, Nicholas Halmi (2004). “Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake”, p.45, University of Toronto Press

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• Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.

  Northrop Frye

  Business, Mixtures, Advertising

  Northrop Frye (1976). “The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance”, p.167, Harvard University Press

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• Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience. The further it goes in this direction, the more it tends to speak the language of mathematics, which is really one of the languages of the imagination, along with literature and music. Art, on the other hand, begins with the world we construct, not with the world we see. It starts with the imagination, and then works toward ordinary experience.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Moving, Science

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• We must reject that most dismal and fatuous notion that education is a preparation for life.

  Northrop Frye

  Educational, Preparation, Notion

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• The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.

  Northrop Frye

  Philosophy, Literature, Mythology

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham (2003). “Northrop Frye's Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts”, p.158, University of Toronto Press

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• Beauty and truth may be attributes of good writing, but if the writer deliberately aims at truth, he is likely to find that what he has hit is the didactic.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, May, Attributes

  Northrop Frye (1996). “Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963”

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