Radicalism
Thus the university is precisely in the position of radical groups in modern society, belonging to society yet striving to become aware of its conditioning, trying to throw off whatever is illegitimate in that conditioning, and therefore ethically bound to help carry out a long-term transformation of society.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
It seems to me that some recognition of the role of religion in society is essential in clarifying today’s radical protest, which is religious to a degree that it can hardly comprehend itself.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The strongly negative mood in today’s radicalism, the tendency to be against rather than for, is consistent with this: whatever is defined is hampering, and only the undefined is free.
“The University and Personal Life: Student Anarchism and the Educational Contract” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The most ferocious of radicals can only keep going as long as he can live in a relatively stable society created by his radicalism: the society of those who agree with him and support his views. Whatever else he wants to change, he never wants to change that.
“The Quality of Life in the ’70s” (1971), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
But radical concern also has its rituals, and the rituals of demonstration, protest, terrorism, confrontation, sit-in, love-in, and folk festival are still new. In another two or three years they will become as conventionalized as an Empire Club lunch, but right now they attract more attention. With the newspapers full of rituals of burning brassieres and bombing libraries, a convocation seems as genteel and uninvolved as an actress with her clothes on.
“A Revolution Betrayed: Freedom and Necessity in Education” (1970), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Radio
Machines get more closely related to the human body as they get less cumbersome: the radio by now is palpably just a hearing aid.
“New Fictional Formulas: Notebook 20” (after 1965), 16, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
A country in which a housewife with a radio can lighten her washday by listening to Mozart is by no means a total cultural loss.
“Have We a National Education?” (1952), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The radio is the subtlest attack on human peace of mind yet made, and constitutes a major obstacle, perhaps in many cases an insuperable one, to it.… I suppose radios incarnate the semiconsciousness of others, and of course increase the mental disturbance they’re turned on to soothe.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 16, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The man who can appreciate Bach and Dante will be bored to death by most movies, nauseated by most radio programmes, stupefied by most sermons, and sickened by most politicians.
“A Liberal Education” (1945), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Railways
In the United States, exploration and the building of railways have naturally been of central importance in the imagination of the country. In Canada they have been obsessive.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
To make a nation out of the stops on the Intercolonial and Canadian Pacific lines seemed as chimerical a notion as building an African civilization on a Cape-to-Cairo railway.
“The Cultural Development of Canada” (1990), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Rationalization
It isn’t easy to distinguish the rational from the rationalized, but one sure sign of rationalization is offering inconsistent arguments, on the any-stick-is-good-enough principle.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 234, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
In ordinary life we do not reason, we rationalize. There is nothing that cannot be rationalized: terrorists can rationalize blowing up a plane as political idealism; homicidal maniacs can rationalize murder as an indictment of an evil society; indecisive leaders can rationalize doing nothing as prudence or wisdom.
“A Revolution Betrayed: Freedom and Necessity in Education” (1970), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Reader
Every work of literature has to die and to be reborn in the individual studying it. It doesn’t just stay out there; it becomes part of him or her. Without that death and resurrection, there is no genuine possession of literature.
“Literature as a Critique of Pure Reason” (1982), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
It is an established datum of literature that we like hearing people cursed and are bored with hearing them praised, and almost any denunciation, if vigorous enough, is followed by a reader with the kind of pleasure that soon breaks into a smile.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The consumer of literature is the cultivated man, the man of liberal education and disciplined taste, for whose benefit the poet has worked, suffered, despaired, or even wrecked his life.
“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
There’s been a considerable shift in the centre of gravity away from the writer and towards the reader. Now the reader is the hero of what he reads. Culturally, for anyone interested in the verbal arts, it’s quite an exciting time to live in.
“Canadian Energies: Dialogues on Creativity” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
A reader interested in Canadian literature may feel in the position of one who has bought a box of candy and discovered from the fine print on the box that he has acquired a melange of twenty-three food, chemical, and additive substances. But he still expects some unity of taste in the final product, not a mere recognition of the subtle contributions made by invertase or lecithin.
“Speech at the New Canadian Embassy, Washington” (1989), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Note to cheer myself up with: I’m not a great 17th c. poet like Milton, or a great 18th-19th c. visionary like Blake, but I am a great 20th c. reader, and this is the age of the reader.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 461, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
One end of this process is creation, and the other end is recreation.
Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
There are no dead ideas in literature; there are only tired readers.
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.
Wherever there is a literature, there is a community of shared imaginative experience; and yet, wherever there are books, there is the opposite tendency of individualizing the audience.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
I had innocently thought that people read the Reader’s Digest because they believed it to be an abridgment of contemporary magazine articles, not because they found it a comic-book monthly version of a school reader.
“Report on the ‘Adventures’ Readers” (1965), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The chief deficiency in today’s literature, for example, is not the lack of good writers, but the lack of a reading public sufficiently large, informed, and articulate to establish the real social importance of the good writer.
“The Instruments of Mental Production” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Reading
We listen to the poem as it moves from beginning to end, but as soon as the whole of it is in our minds at once we “see” what it means.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
One of the most familiar facts of literary experience is that one’s understanding deepens as well as expands. We not only learn more by reading new poems; we increase the kind of understanding we have of poems we have already read.
Entry, Notebook 30e (1952), 1, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.
There is one consciousness that subjects itself to the text and understands, and another that, so to speak, overstands. It is only the possession of the latter that makes the operation of reading worthwhile: without it a reader is a pedant who understands but does not comprehend.
“Identity and Metaphor,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
It seems that one becomes the ultimate hero of the great quest of man, not so much by virtue of what one does, as by virtue of what and how one reads.
The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (1975), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
… it is only the preliminary process of reading that is really linear: once read, the book becomes a focus of a community, and may come to mean, simultaneously, any number of things to any number of people.
“The View from Here” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
All reading begins in the revolt against narcissism: when a book stops reflecting your own prejudices, whether for or against what you think you “see in it,” & begins to say something closer to what it does say, the core of the reality in the “objective” aspect of it takes shape & you start wrestling with an angel.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1946–48), Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read.
“Beginnings” (1981), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The act of reading as a continuous act of judgment is the key to equality, and the key to freedom. Its purpose is the maintaining of the consistent consciousness which is the basis of human freedom and of human dignity. The end of the process is perhaps the occasional moments of heightened consciousness which are for those who have experienced them the centres around which all one’s life appears to revolve.
“Education and the Rejection of Reality” (1971), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
There are some people who assume that “reading for enjoyment” is a different activity from criticism, but, speaking as a critic, I am glad that I am not of their company.
“Appendix: The Social Context of Literary Criticism” (1968), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Reagan, Ronald
Reagan may be a cipher as President, but as an actor acting the role of a decisive President in a Grade B movie he’s I suppose acceptable to people who think life is a Grade B movie.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 282, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Reality
The sense of reality is, for instance, far higher in tragedy than in comedy, as in comedy the logic of events normally gives way to the audience’s desire for a happy ending.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Reality’s what’s there; illusion is what’s not there. Except that most reality is something we’ve put there and could take away again; most illusions are creations, and have that sort of reality.
Entry, Notes 54-13 (1980–81), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Renaissance Literature (2006), CW, 20.
Human kind, as Eliot says, cannot bear very much reality: what it can bear, if it is skilfully enough prepared for it, is an instant of illusion which is the gateway to reality.
“Romance as Masque” (1975), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
The last enemy to be destroyed is the metaphor of “within.” Reality is not subjective, of course; but neither is it a subject grown objective to itself.
Entry, Notes 54-13 (1980–81), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Renaissance Literature (2006), CW, 20.
… because our civilization is tied up in words, we are apt to think that whatever we can’t verbalize is unreal.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Ubi bene, ubi patria: the centre of reality is wherever one happens to be, and its circumference is whatever one’s imagination can make sense of.
“Letters in Canada: Poetry” (1960), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
We think of reality as out there and of illusion as mostly in here, but if we go into a theatre the illusion is what’s out there and the reality is what’s generated in the mind of the audience. There’s no reality behind, in the wings or the dressing rooms
Entry, Notes 54-6 (1981), 14, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Nine-tenths of what we call reality is not some ineluctably existing group of objects or conditions “out there”: it is rather the rubbish left over from previous human constructs.
“Introduction to Art and Reality” (1986), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
But that’s the way we do grasp reality: we grasp it with a category which is totally nonexistent.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), referring to the experience of the passing of time, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
What keeps us apart is our own illusion; what unites us is reality, but there is no reality except in thy presence, which is now and forever.
“Undated Prayers (4)” (1992), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
A society in which the presidency of the United States can be changed by one psychotic with a rifle is not sufficiently real for any thoughtful person to want to live wholly within it.
“The Instruments of Mental Production” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Maybe the “greatest” artists are also the greatest realists: they discover, like the scientists, patterns & constructs actually latent in nature.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 467, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Rear-view Mirrors
I began by saying that the rear-view mirror is our only crystal ball: there is no guide to the future except the analogy of the past.
“Address on Receiving the Royal Bank Award” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Reason
The reasonable is the opposite of the rational.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 742, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Rebellion
To rise above one’s state is rebellion; to fall from it is delinquency.
“Repetitions of Jacob’s Dream” (1983), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Recognition
… in any case, in reading fiction there are two kinds of recognition. One is the continuous recognition of credibility, fidelity to experience, and of what is not so much lifelikeness as life-liveliness. The other is the recognition of the identity of the total design, into which we are initiated by the technical recognition in the plot.
“Myth, Fiction, and Displacement” (1961), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Whether that’s true or not, it certainly is true that what you know is what other people have known, and it is a recognition for us in that sense.
“The Meaning of Recreation: Humanism in Society” (1979), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
That is, we expect a certain point near the end at which linear suspense is resolved and the unifying shape of the whole design becomes conceptually visible. This point was called anagnorisis by Aristotle, a term for which “recognition” is a better rendering than “discovery.”
“Myth, Fiction, and Displacement” (1961), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Recreation
The process itself contains the greatest possible mystery in the study of literature: why is it that somebody as remote in time and space and language and cultural assumptions from us as Homer or the writers of the Old Testament can still speak across all those barriers of time and space and hit us where we live.
“Reconsidering Levels of Meaning” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Clearly there is something essential about the place of creation in the total Biblical vision, but our ways of comprehending it seem to be grossly inadequate. When we turn to human creative power, we see that there is a quality in it better called recreation, a transforming of the chaos within our ordinary experience of nature.
“Typology II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
The real form of God’s creation is man’s recreation, which is God in man destroying the cycles of empire.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 391, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Regionalism
There is a paradoxical and mysterious law regarding culture and in particular literature: the more intensely local and provincial a work is, the more universal is its message.
“Identity and Myth” (1979), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
What I am saying is that the cultural and imaginative situation of French Canada in Quebec ought to be a norm for Canada generally, that the primary feeling should be regional and local, and that programming by the radio and television media should keep this in mind.
“Canadian Identity and Cultural Regionalism” (1970), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Reincarnation
Eternal recurrence: in the mind of God everything happens once only. That’s the Biblical view: no reincarnation is necessary, just as no fall is necessary in yoga.
Entry, Notebook 46 (1980s–90), 26, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Reincarnation is not a doctrine, whether true or false: it’s experience, a kind of self-guided fantasy. The conception of interpenetration makes it easy to see how one can enter various personalities.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 143, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
When the Westerner tries to absorb the idea of unbornness, he tumbles into the “predestination” pitfall; when the Easterner tries to get clear about deathlessness, he gets into the “reincarnation” one.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 119, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
I was born in 1912 but will live forever: that sounds silly. The Buddhist complement, that I am an unborn spirit incarnated in 1912 who will soon return to that unborn world, is badly needed here.
Entry, Notes 54.1 (May 1990), 36, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
I don’t think much of reincarnation, the prolonging of individual identity, though it may happen sometimes with dying children.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 494, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Relativity
Nowadays many people feel that there is something about “relativity” or the “principle of indeterminacy” that gives them the best of both worlds: an up-to-date scientific doctrine which enables them to preserve their moral and religious intuitions. But this is tame compared to the kind of excitement that Newton aroused with his mathematical genius and his deep religious convictions, his irrefutable laws of motion and his suggestion that space was the sensorium of God.
“Nature Methodized ” (1960), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
Relevance
I think that relevance is something which the student has to establish for himself, whatever he studies. If he can’t do that he isn’t worthy of the very impressive and dignified title of student.
“Impressions” (1973), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
There is no such thing as inherent or built-in relevance; no subject is relevant in itself, because every field of knowledge is equally the centre of all knowledge.
“On Teaching Literature” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
What is relevant to the student is not what is related to what or where he is at the moment, but to what he may become or where he may arrive as the result of being a student.
“Unpublished Introduction to Beyond Communication” (1989), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Religion
It seems to me that the first thing that any religion does anywhere is to create a community, that what it sets up is a focus for a community, and that as soon as it stops being a community it stops being anything. It may be a philosophy, it may be a theology, it may be all kinds of things, but unless it is something with its roots in the society around it, it is no longer a religion.
“Into the Wilderness” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Religion is a matter of finding one’s identity. I think you could almost define a man’s religion as that with which he is trying to identify himself.
“Into the Wilderness” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Religion, to me, means the achieving and the holding of a social vision which comes from inside and yet includes others as well.
“Into the Wilderness” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I think all religions are really concerned with the expanding of human consciousness.
“On The Great Code (I)” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I have occasionally felt that there was no such subject as comparative religion, as I’m not sure just what gets compared.
Entry, Notebook 37 (1949–55), 11, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.
Between the secularists and the churches are those who regard religion as a kind of palladium that it might be unlucky to throw away, or feel that religion has a place as a loyal conservative opposition, checking the overconfidence of human progress with reminders that all is not yet well.
“Trends in Modern Culture” (1952), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Religion is still where medicine was in, say, 1750: its practitioners are sincere, but it can’t really cure.
Entry, 8 Jan. 1950, 25, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Everything in religion has its secular aspect, and everything in secular life has religious implications, however ignored or undefined they may be.
“To Come to Light” (1988), Northrop Frye on Religion (1999), CW, 4.
The only place I can think of where religion still influences the common law are the obstacles placed on divorce and the law against attempting suicide. Obstacles to birth control perhaps too. Whatever they are, they’re invariably nonsense.
Entry, 4 Jan. 1952, 11, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Religion tends increasingly to make its primary impact, not as a system of taught and learned belief, but as an imaginative structure which, whether “true” or not, has imaginative consistency and imaginative informing power.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Truth in religion is increasingly felt to be something that conforms to scientific and scholarly conceptions of truth, instead of being thought to reside primarily in the miraculous, or in the transcendence of other conventions of truth.
“The Knowledge of Good and Evil” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
When I was a student, each college had its own variety of religious instruction, although in University College it had to be called Oriental Languages or Ancient Near Eastern Literature, in order to preserve the decencies of secularism.
“Installation Address as Chancellor” (1978), referring to the University of Toronto’s “secular college,” Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The fact that the world is always trying to kill God is what, it seems to me, is distinctive of the Biblical religions.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
All religions constitute an intellectual handicap; the worth of a religion depends on the intellectual honesty it permits.
Entry, Notebook 18 (1956–62), 133, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.
The world’s great religious teachers tend to avoid writing and keep to direct discourse, leaving the writing down of their teachings to secretaries.
“Introduction,” “A History of Communications” by Harold A. Innis (1982), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Religion & Art
Once again we come back to the point that religion is raw imaginative material clarified by art.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Art is essentially esoteric; religion open to all.
“The Relation of Religion to the Arts” (1933–34), Northrop Frye’s Student Essays, 1932–1938 (1997), CW, 3.
Now religion and art are the two most important phenomena in the world; or rather the most important phenomenon, for they are basically the same thing. They constitute, in fact, the only reality of existence.
“NF to HK,” 23 Apr. 1935, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Between religion’s “this is” and poetry’s “but suppose this is,” there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
To the extent that a religion separated itself from the rest of culture, it started heading for sectarianism. To the extent that it rejoins the total body of culture, it improves itself as well as the culture.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 401, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 101, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Remorse & Repentance
Remorse is the comparison of one’s actual self with an idealized self, of what one actually is with what one naturally might have been. Hence it is a reaction of wounded pride. Repentance is, first, the same dissatisfaction with the actual natural self, but from then on it seeks reality instead of regrets.
Entry, 9 Jul. 1950, 472, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
I suppose that repentance or metanoia consists first of all in determining the conditions under which your life must henceforth operate. The irrelevant emotion of regret thereby built up is remorse.
Entry, 9 Jul. 1950, 470, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Repetition
Perhaps, of course, repetitiveness is merely the result — the flip side, so to speak — of getting it right the first time.
“Introduction” (1990), Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
On the other hand, whatever I repeat I believe to be substantially true.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), referring to reiterations in his addresses on subjects of Canadian interest, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Reputation
The literary chit-chat which makes the reputations of poets boom and crash in an imaginary stock exchange is pseudo-criticism. The wealthy investor Mr. Eliot, after dumping Milton on the market, is now buying him again; Donne has probably reached his peak and will begin to taper off; Tennyson may be in for a slight flutter but the Shelley stocks are still bearish.
“The Archetypes of Literature” (1951), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
It seems to be difficult for some to understand that a contemporary writer cannot be “great,” whatever his merits or his future reputation, because greatness includes the dimension of having been dead for a long time.
“The Beginning of the Word” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Research
If research is subordinated to teaching, the instructor soon falls behind in his subject, and his teaching suffers accordingly. If teaching is subordinated to research, the instructor, unless he leaves the university and attaches himself to a research institute, loses touch with the social context of his research.
“The Search for Acceptable Words” (1973), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Resources
The archaeologists who explore royal tombs in Egypt and Mesopotamia find that they are almost always anticipated by grave robbers, people who got there first because they had better reasons for doing so than the acquisition of knowledge. We are the grave robbers of our own resources, and posterity will not be grateful to us.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
A society valued mainly for its beaver pelts, its softwood forests, and the soldiers it can supply for other countries’ wars, is unlikely to develop any cultural phenomena beyond a problem of identity, a general state of wondering why it exists.
“The Cultural Development of Canada” (1990), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Responsibility
The more free you are, the more responsibility you have to take on.
“The Scholar in Society” (1983), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Restoration
Restoration is an often disastrous solution: tourists in English cathedrals hear a good deal about the vandalism of Cromwell’s soldiers, but the devastation wrought by Victorian restorers has been often far worse, however much better the motive.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Restraint
A man may specialize in self-restraint or in restraint of others. The former produces the vices which spring from fear; the latter those which spring from cruelty.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Resurrection
As far as I can read it, the centre of Christianity is not the salvation of the soul, but the Resurrection of the body.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Rebirth normally means loss of memory; resurrection, based on the analogy of waking up from sleep, means restoring its current.
Entry, Notebook 54-4 (late 1970s), 126, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
What is immortal is not the life we are going to live after death, but the life we have lived. The Resurrection must be retrospective.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 98, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Revolution in the Lenin sense is a vulgarization of the revolutionary principle that finds its focus in resurrection. But resurrection is not now a historical event to be believed but a fact of spiritual existence to be lived or made use of.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 551, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Revelation
The language of revelation is not invented by man to express his thoughts about God: it is used by God to accommodate himself to man.
“Review of Paul Tillich” (1964), 6, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
There is thus a natural alliance between the language of the imagination and the teachings of most of the higher religions. The poet may follow closely the canons of divine revelation as they are accepted in whatever religion is contemporary with him, or he may ignore these canons and concentrate on some other aspect of human experience, real or imagined. In either case, whatever he reveals, he reveals in human terms.
“Religion and Modern Poetry” (1959), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
There are mysteries in the life brought forth by thy Spirit that we cannot know, for we know only what it is within the form of our natures to know. But thou art not a God of mystery; thou art a God of revelation, through whom we may see visions and dream dreams. We may not see thee, but it is through thee that we see, and it is as thy instruments that we may understand the world above our world.
“Prayers: Wednesday” (1992), Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
A revelation from an infinite mind may transcend the reason of a finite one, but does not contradict or humiliate it.
“The Problem of Spiritual Authority in the Nineteenth Century” (1964), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
To the corporeal understanding, in short, the Bible’s final “Revelation” is an utter mystery: that is, it bears the same name as the Great Whore whose destruction it foretells.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Myth is a human language, so it isn’t revelation. So what is revelation? What comes through human language the other way.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 76, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
It is, I am convinced, through the criticism of mythology, which unravels the implications of a myth from within and studies its context with other myths outside it, that we arrive most closely to what we can learn through words, or the contact with words that has traditionally been called revelation.
“The Mythical Approach to Creation” (1985), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
I suppose the moral is that all religions are one and that revelation can only come through an individual.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 499, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Revelation itself is kerygma: beyond it is the word of words as seen by the Word.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 430, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
If prayer is the attempt of the creature to direct words to his creator, revelation is not merely an answer to prayer but a counter-prayer. If the revelation is thought of as definitive, it is the answer to all possible prayers.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 578, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Myth is the form of human language appropriate to the revelation of religion. Revelation is mythical in form & content, but its direction is reversed.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 153, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Reviewing
Book reviewers are among the shock troops of culture. They are the first victims of the fact that far too many people can read and write.
“On Book Reviewing” (1949), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
The end of book reviewing is the beginning of criticism proper.
Remark quoted in Here and Now (University College), June 1949; quoted by Robert D. Denham, editor of Northrop Frye: On Culture and Literature (1979).
Aristotle was a great critic, but I should guess that he would have been a rather poor book reviewer.
“On Book Reviewing” (1949), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Revolution
We have revolutionary thought whenever the feeling “life is a dream” becomes geared to an impulse to awaken from it.
“Typology I,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
It is possible that social, political, or religious revolution always, and necessarily, betrays a revolutionary ideal of which the imagination alone preserves the secret.
The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (1975), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
I think the real longing is not for a mass movement sweeping up individual concerns, but for an individualized movement reaching out to social concerns.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
I would think of education as the only genuine revolution that society is ever likely to accomplish.
“The Only Genuine Revolution” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
… the revolutionary element is built into contemporary society everywhere. A technological revolution makes the world more uniform: one cannot take off in a jet plane and expect a radically different way of life in the place where the plane lands.
“The Meeting of Past and Future in William Morris” (1982), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
The primary revolutionary categories tend to be psychological rather than economic, closer in many respects to Freud than to Marx.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The revolutionary thinks dialectically and understands what he wants by defining its opposite. The humanist thinks in a process of expansion & containment.
Entry, Notebook 11f (1969–70), 147, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The real meaning of tradition is learning from the past how to live in the present. And the real meaning of revolutionary action is learning from what could be to see more clearly what is there.
“Convocation Address, Franklin and Marshall” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Revolutions are started, though they are seldom finished, by people of conviction. Nothing is more tedious than other people’s convictions, and the most natural response to tedium is apathy.
“Convocation Address: Acadia University” (1969), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Revolution, American
Yet there is, I think, a more distinctive attitude in Canadian poetry than in Canadian life, a more withdrawn and detached view of that life which may go back to the central fact of Canadian history: the rejection of the American Revolution.
“Preface to an Uncollected Anthology” (1956), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Who is a Canadian? Well, the political answer is that he is an American who avoided revolution.
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Rhetoric
It is the language of rhetoric and the language of ideology that are the spark plugs of history.
“Literature as Therapy” (1989), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
In poetry there is no direct address: in rhetoric there is nothing else.
Entry, Notebook 44 (1986–91), 615, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
It seems to me that the study of literature should be accompanied, as early as possible, by the study of the rhetorical devices of advertising, propaganda, official releases, news media, and everything else in a citizen’s verbal experience that he is compelled to confront but is not (so far in our society) compelled to believe, or say he believes.
“On Teaching Literature” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
We distinguish two forms of rhetoric which, if not always debased, are certainly suspect: propaganda and advertising.
“Sequence and Mode,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
Rhetoric lies about history; kerygma overrides it.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 168, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
The social vision of rhetoric is that of society dressed up in its Sunday clothes, people parading in front of each other, and keeping up the polite, necessary and not always true assumption that they are what they appear to be.
“The Vocation of Eloquence,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Rhetoric is figured language like poetry, and shades off imperceptibly into the mythical and poetic. Because it makes assertions, it “answers” to dialectic.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 25, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Rhythm
My own teacher, Pelham Edgar, once told me that if the rhythm of a sentence was right, its sense could look after itself.
“Verticals of Adam,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
I am not saying that the “real” rhythm is the four-stress one: I am saying that the real rhythm is contrapuntal, a tension between four stresses and five feet.
“Rencontre: The General Editor’s Introduction” (1960s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Riddles
Similarly, the riddle is essentially a charm in reverse: it represents the revolt of the intelligence against the hypnotic power of commanding words.
“Charms and Riddles” (1975), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
The idea of the riddle is descriptive containment: the subject is not described but circumscribed, a circle of words drawn around it.
“Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
I read riddles; I don’t “solve” or destroy them. But what’s riddling about them, in this sense, is their egocentricity, their isolation from the rest of literary experience.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 212, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Rights
There can hardly be a society that does not at least pretend to provide some legal rights for its citizens, and when a totalitarian state resorts to arbitrary violence it is still breaking its own laws.
“Introduction,” “A History of Communications” by Harold A. Innis (1982), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
To put the question in another way, what gives a minority a right? Criminals are a minority, but clearly have no right to be criminals.
“The Problem of Spiritual Authority in the Nineteenth Century” (1964), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
Rilke, Rainer Maria
I think the current interest in such writers as Rimbaud & Rilke is also caused by a desire to study, not the “great” artists, but those who have made most obviously a yoga out of art, who have employed art as a discipline of the spirit that takes one all the way. Rimbaud is the great denier & Rilke the great affirmer of this aspect of art.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 50, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Ritual
The pull of ritual is toward pure cyclical narrative, which, if there could be such a thing, would be automatic and unconscious repetition.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Ritual is primarily the dramatization of myth.…
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 501, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
A ritual relates our life in time to those two primary moments of birth and death, the moment of entering the world and the moment of leaving it, and it makes us realize how every moment in between is the death of the past and the birth of the future.
“Convocation Address: McGill University” (1983), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
But rituals don’t do anything: you can no more bring about permanent social change by demonstrating than you can bring about the end of the world by attending church.
“Universities and the Deluge of Cant” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Rivière du Loup, Que.
Rivière du Loup, a hideous little pigsty full of ignorance, superstition, dirt, the quaint charm of old Quebec and the devout unspoiled piety of the habitant, is not a black hole I should care to be stuck in with half a dollar.
“NF to HK,” 1 Sep. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Robot
What, psychologically, is the connection in eeriness between the robot & the ghost?
Entry, 11 Mar. 1949, 259, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Here’s a science fiction story with a man & a female robot: it’s assumed that no man could ever love a robot. I imagine I could: no robot could be more completely programmed & conditioned than some people I’ve known & been quite fond of. The robot is simply the idea of the slave realized.
Entry, Notebook 48 (1993), 17, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Rocky Mountains
Flying over the Rockies recently I thought how human civilization cuts into the continuum of nature, which is really doing something else, with another rhythm & dimension from another world.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 240, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Romance
Romance in its totality is the record of the journey of the human imagination around its own cosmos.
Entry, Notebook 54-8 (late 1972–77), 50, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
It looks as though the romance is actually the primitive and popular basis of dramatic entertainment, all other forms being specialized varieties of it.
“Comic Myth in Shakespeare” (1952), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
The perennially child-like quality of romance is marked by its extraordinarily persistent nostalgia, its search for some kind of imaginative golden age in time or space.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Romance is older than the novel, a fact which has developed the historical illusion that it is something to be outgrown, a juvenile and underdeveloped form.
“Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The difference between romance & comedy is that comedy attains, romance contains: one drives toward a telos, the other revolves around it in the circular quest shape.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 128, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Romance, fantasy, and mythopoeia are the inescapable forms for a society which no longer believes in its own permanence or continuity.
“The Renaissance of Books” (1973), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Romanticism
The Romantic movement has only been around for about 160 years, and it will perhaps be another couple of centuries before the educational theory catches up with it.
“The Only Genuine Revolution” (1968), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Any such conception as “Romanticism” is at one or more removes from actual literary experience, in an inner world, where ten thousand different things flash upon the inward eye with all the bliss of oversimplification.
“The Drunken Boat: The Revolutionary Element in Romanticism” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2005), CW, 17.
The effect of the romantic revival on English literature was so powerful and widespread that no subsequent poet can be considered without some reference to it, so that all the poetry of the last century or so is to that extent postromantic.
“Robert Browning: An Abstract Study” (1932–33), Northrop Frye’s Student Essays, 1932–1938 (1997), CW, 3.
Rome
What Prussia is to Germany, what Scotland is to Britain, that Rome is to Italy — sterile as an egg and proud of it.
“NF to HK,” 5 Apr. 1937, written in Rome, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau became the first modern revolutionary thinker because he was the first thinker to emphasize the primacy of primary concern.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 239, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Rowse, A.L.
Literary criticism ought to be profoundly grateful to Professor Rowse for writing so bad a book: it practically proves that writing a good book on Shakespeare is a task for a mere critic.
“Criticism, Visible and Invisible” (1964), characterizing Rowse’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1964), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
A satirical revue in Toronto some years ago known as Spring Thaw depicted a hero going in quest of a Canadian identity and emerging with a mounted policeman and a bottle of rye. If he had been Australian, one realizes, he would have emerged with a kangaroo and a boomerang. One needs to go deeper than ridicule, however, if one is to understand the subtlety of the self-deceptions involved.
“Criticism and Environment” (1981), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Royal Commissions
To establish a Royal Commission to look into the possibility of doing something that should have been done fifty years ago is, perhaps, timely. There is nothing to show, however, that this will not be merely one more vast expenditure of brains and time and money and organization which will then gather dust in the Department of Procrastination.
“Culture and the Cabinet” (1949), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Royal Ontario Museum
It is part of the greatness of such an achievement that so much of Crete and Mexico and China should now be “ours,” not in the sense of possession, but in the sense of shared experience.
“Introduction to Charles T. Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home” (1956), referring to ROM and its founder C.T. Currelly, Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Russia
Soviet Russia is very proud of its production of tractors, but it will be some time before the tractor replaces the sickle on the Soviet flag.
“The Language of Poetry” (1955), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Unfortunately, the Sputnik affair had not put the fear of God into America, only a fear of Russian technology, and by the time American astronauts had reached the moon, a good deal of the anti-intellectualism was back in charge.
“Preface to On Education” (1988), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.