Northrop Frye Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• There is a curious law of art... that even the attempt to reproduce the act of seeing, when carried out with sufficient energy, tends to lose its realism and take on the unnatural glittering intensity of hallucination.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Law, Energy

  "The Critical Path and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963-1975 (Design as a Principle in the Arts)". Book edited by Jean O'Grady and Eva Kushner, March 14, 2009.

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• We do not live in a centred space any more, but have to create our own centres.

  Northrop Frye

  Space, Centre

  "Northrop Frye on Religion: Excluding The Great Code and Words with Power".

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• Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, Aphorism, Translate

  Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz,'The Literature Professors' Literature Professor', in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall1978.

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• The objective world is the order of nature, thinking or reflection follows the suggestions of sense experience, and words are the servomechanisms of reflection.

  Northrop Frye

  Reflection, Thinking, Order

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.31, University of Toronto Press

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• Failure to grasp centrifugal meaning is incomplete reading; failure to grasp centripetal meaning is incompetent reading.

  Northrop Frye

  Reading, Incomplete, Incompetent

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.76, University of Toronto Press

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• We have revolutionary thought whenever the feeling "life is a dream" becomes geared to an impulse to awaken from it.

  Northrop Frye

  Dream, Feelings, Life Is

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.101, University of Toronto Press

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• A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Memories, Criticism

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.4, Princeton University Press

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• The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

  Northrop Frye

  Character, Tennessee, Kind

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.449, University of Toronto Press

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• I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society.

  Northrop Frye

  Fundamentals, Literature, Speech

  "The Educated Imagination". Book by Northrop Frye, 1963.

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• Writing: I certainly do rewrite my central myth in every book, and would never read or trust any writer who did not also do so.

  Northrop Frye

  Book, Writing, Myth

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• For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, People, Giving

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.451, University of Toronto Press

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• The Bible is not interested in arguing, because if you state a thesis of belief you have already stated it's opposite; if you say, I believe in God, you have already suggested the possibility of not believing in him. [p.250]

  Northrop Frye

  Believe, Opposites, Belief

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• To bring anything really to life in literature we can't be lifelike: we have to be literature-like

  Northrop Frye

  Literature

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.201, Dundurn

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• The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.

  Northrop Frye

  Kings, Stupid, Sheep

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.143, Princeton University Press

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• Poetry can only be made out of other poems; novels out of other novels.

  Northrop Frye

  Copying, Made, Novel

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.97, Princeton University Press

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• Writers don't seem to benefit much by the advance of science, although they thrive on superstitions of all kinds.

  Northrop Frye

  Benefits, Superstitions, Kind

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.442, University of Toronto Press

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• Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.

  Northrop Frye

  Children, Mean, Thinking

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• Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.

  Northrop Frye

  Understanding, Intellectual, Atheism

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.127, Princeton University Press

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• 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 judgement of mankind.

  Northrop Frye

  Men, Criticism, Literature

  1963 The Educated Imagination,'The Keys of Dreamland'.

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• Literature is not a subject of study, but an object of study.

  Northrop Frye

  Literature, Study, Subjects

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.11, Princeton University Press

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• It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.

  Northrop Frye

  Essence, Culture, Limits

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.127, Princeton University Press

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• Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Nature, Artist

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.257, University of Toronto Press

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• No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become distinguished from other aspects of life: it's still embedded in religion, magic and social ceremonies.

  Northrop Frye

  Magic, Literature, Kind

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.447, University of Toronto Press

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• Wherever illiteracy is a problem, it's as fundamental a problem as getting enough to eat or a place to sleep.

  Northrop Frye

  Sleep, Fundamentals, Language

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.175, Dundurn

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• Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, People, Use

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.10, Princeton University Press

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