Vagina
It’s also, of course, the most elaborately concealed part of the body: even “nature” conceals it when the body is stark naked.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 331, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Value Judgments
I think that genuine value judgments are always assumptions; that is, they are working assumptions, heuristic assumptions, and they are consequently subject to later scholarship, which means that scholarship always has the power of veto over value judgments.
“Back to the Garden” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I have never said that there were no literary values or that critics should never make value judgments: what I have said is that literary values are not established by critical value judgments. Every work of literature establishes its own value; in the past much critical energy has been wasted in trying to reject or minimize these values.
“Letter to the English Institute, 1965” (1965), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Value judgments are working assumptions, but nothing can be built on them. They buttress experience but not knowledge, & lead to no discoveries.
Entry, Notebook 11e (1978), 14, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
It seemed to me clear that the new knowledge had, as I put it later, a power of veto over the value judgment.
“Reflections in a Mirror” (1966), referring to the nature of Blake’s Prophecies, “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
This fact needs explanation, as the value-judgment is often, and perhaps rightly for all I know, regarded as the distinguishing feature of the humanistic and liberal pursuit.
“Polemical Introduction” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Value judgments are founded on the study of literature; the study of literature can never be founded on value judgments.
“Polemical Introduction” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Everyone accepts the value judgment that Shakespeare was a great poet; everyone finds this value judgment confirmed in practice; but no Shakespearean scholarship whatever is founded on that value judgment.
“The Critical Path” (1979), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In knowledge the context of the work of literature is literature; in value judgment, the context of the work of literature is the reader’s experience.
“On Value Judgments” (1968), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
“Wrong” value judgments are not errors in taste: they are expressions of inadequate knowledge about literature.
“Frye, Literary Critic” (1987), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Values can be assumed, they can be argued about, but they cannot be demonstrated.
“Sacred and Secular Scriptures” (1975), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The only value-judgment which is consistently and invariably useful to the scholarly critic is the judgment that his own writings, like the morals of a whore, are no better than they should be.
“On Value Judgments” (1968), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
My point that knowledge has the power of veto over value in criticism has a lot of implications, including theological ones. More knowledge (or wisdom as potential knowledge) has the power of veto over everything founded on present knowledge.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 468, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Values
Every deliberately constructed hierarchy of values in literature known to me is based on a concealed social, moral, or intellectual analogy.
“Polemical Introduction” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Values, like god, come first as creative assumptions, not last as judges.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 627, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
There are so surprisingly few things that really matter. Music matters, and babies matter — so do poetry, sunsets over marshes, plain food, and people’s flea-bitten souls. But that’s about all. So why bother about anything else?
“NF to HK,” 2 Sep. 1932, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
The silly things are just as acceptable socially as the shrewd or penetrating thing.
“The Limits of Dialogue” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The pursuit of values in criticism is like the pursuit of happiness in the American Constitution: one may have some sympathy with the stated aim, but one deplores the grammar.
“On Value Judgments” (1968), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
There is such a thing as value in literature, certainly, but a work of literature establishes its own value. What we really mean by such terms as “classic” and “masterpiece” are fundamentally works of literature that insist on their value, and refuse to go away.
“Criticism as Education” (1979), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The goal of ethical criticism is transvaluation, the ability to look at contemporary social values with the detachment of one who is able to compare them in some degree with the infinite vision of possibilities presented by culture. One who possesses such a standard of transvaluation is in a state of intellectual freedom.
“Tentative Conclusion” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
When I joined the university I believed in the values it stood for: after thirty years of working in it I am convinced of them. And there are not many other things I am convinced of in this world.
“The ideal University Community” (1969), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Velikovsky, Immanuel
Naturally he’s deterministic: myth is an effect for him, following a natural event as its cause. He perhaps underrates the absorptive power of mythical language. It’s another aspect of my point that there’s no such thing as a constellation.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 84, after reading Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
In our day a writer who has had a considerable vogue, especially among students, Immanuel Velikovsky, has written books to show that two of the most unlikely events recorded in the Bible, the sun standing still during a battle of Joshua’s and the shadow of the dial going backward during the illness of Hezekiah, did take place in the way that they are described. What is significant here is that the Bible itself does not appear to record confirming evidence from outside itself as really strengthening its case.
“History and Myth in the Bible” (1976), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Verse
You can have verse in the most primitive societies; you cannot have prose except in developed and sophisticated ones.
“Literature as Possession” (1959), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Blank verse is the easiest metre in English to write accurately and the most difficult to write well.
“Literature as Possession” (1959), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Light verse is more elaborately contrived than serious verse, just as detective and adventure stories are more elaborately contrived than “serious” novels.
“Rencontre: The General Editor’s Introduction” (1960s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Vico, Giambattista
I know of no other thinker who is as close to thinking of the entire structure of concern as a poetic myth.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 343, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Victims
The focusing of interest on the victim is a common civilizing element in all our major cultural traditions.
“Violence and Television” (1975), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Other people are the same: hence the hatred of Jews & negroes, whom even the most ignorant know perfectly well are not the real enemy. It’s because they’re not the real enemy that they’re chosen as victims. Of course the real enemy is inside.…
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 99, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Victoria College
The university is an enormously continuous institution. While Victoria fifty years ago was, I suppose, a small Methodist college and now it’s a big cosmopolitan university, nevertheless people who have been around it for half a century, like myself, don’t feel any violent discontinuity in what has taken place in that time.
“Music in My Life” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
For you are not leaving Victoria College for the world: you are taking Victoria College with you into the world. From now on, Victoria College will be also wherever you are, and its reputation will depend on you as well as on us.
“Senior Dinner Address” (1960), addressing new graduates, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
As I’ve remarked before, playing goal for the girls’ hockey team is about the only job I haven’t been assigned around this place yet.
Entry, 27 Feb. 1952, 143, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
The advantage of a small college is that everybody feels as though they belonged to it, and the process of education is personal, as education always should be. The disadvantage of a small college is that it’s not a great university.
“The Principal’s Message” (1963), referring to the origin of Victoria University as a small liberal-arts college in Cobourg, Ont., Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
The principle of federation was that the sciences, on the whole, are best taught when they are centralized, and the humanities when they are decentralized.
“Installation Address as Chancellor” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Victoria College is a churchrelated arts college … and such a college in my view permits more and not less academic freedom than a college that has to adopt a prudish and selfcensoring avoidance of religious issues.
“Preface” (1987), No Uncertain Sounds (1988).
Yet Victoria has kept its church connection, where so many Protestant colleges have cut themselves away from their founding church, leaving behind only a vague religious atmosphere, like a nostalgic smell of mildew in the basement. Victoria, in short, has always taken the practical view that the only really secure way of having one’s cake is to eat it.
“By Liberal Things” (1959), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
I am deeply grateful for the good will, the friendliness, and the courtesy shown me tonight, and expect to remember them as long as I live. Apart from that, however, I am a little startled to find myself being installed: I should have thought that an honour reserved for more massive pieces of equipment, like presidents and refrigerators.
“By Liberal Things” (1959), an address on the occasion of his installation as Principal of Victoria College, Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Violence
Controlling violence means, first of all, raising the level of society. The people who produce and sell socially irresponsible programs are thinking of their viewers as a mob rather than a community.
“Violence and Television” (1975), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Violence, however long it lasts, can only go around in the circles of lost direction. There is a vaguely Freudian notion that there is something therapeutic in releasing inhibitions; but it is clear that releasing inhibitions is just as compulsive, repetitive, and hysterical an operation as the repressing of them.
“Communications” (1970), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Violence is often the only means of emotional release from a sense of unreality, in which even wantonly destructive or sadistic acts help to create a sense of identity in their perpetrators.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
In all scenes of violence there is the choice of identifying either with the agent or with the victim of violence. Consequently, it is a very important step in emotional education whether we identify with the agent or with the victim of violence.
“Violence and Television” (1975), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
The only real justification for violence is self-defence, and of course society has a right to self-defence as well as the individual.
“Violence and Television” (1975), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Virgil
… for instance, Virgil is a vastly greater name in English literature than the Beowulf poet.
Entry, Notebook 42a (1942–44), 7, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
Virgin Birth
Hence, though the Virgin Birth is scriptural, there is another sense in which it is apocryphal, & so, while Protestantism accepts it, it tends, in striking contrast to the Catholic doctrine, to become unfunctional.
Entry, 12 Mar. 1949, 263, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
… I don’t “believe in” the Virgin Birth as a historical fact, but I “believe in” it as a poetic myth. That could mean (though it doesn’t) that I don’t take historical facts seriously. It certainly does mean that I take myth (and literature) very seriously indeed. That doesn’t mean (once again) that I take seriously what they say: what I take seriously is the structure of what they present.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 495, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Virgin Mary
The Virgin Mary represents the expansion from sex into spiritual love: she’s the mother of the Word but the bride of the Spirit.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 617, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Virtues
Hope is the virtue of the past, the eternal sense that maybe next time we’ll do better. The projection of this into the future is faith, the substance of things hoped for. Love belongs to the present, & is the only force able to cast out fear.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 146, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Vision
The quest for unmediated vision, then, is really a quest for the recovery of myth, the word hoard guarded by the dragons of ideology.
“Framework and Assumption” (1985), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Once again, my interest is not in doctrines of faith as such but in the expanding of vision through language.
“Metaphor II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.
Well, the habit of vision is creative: the habit of seeing what’s there is repetitive.
Entry, Notebook 32 (late 1946–51), 101, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
The glimpses I have had of the imaginative world have kept me fascinated for nearly half a century, and no one life can begin to exhaust the fascination.
“The View from Here” (1980), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
I’m really building everything around a highly personal vision, a vision that I think I’ve had since I was a child. Consciousness of it came in various stages. I suppose it began to take its present form in my undergraduate years at university.
“Canadian Energies: Dialogues on Creativity” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Doubtless the world we see and the world we create meet somewhere at some point of identity, but keeping the two eyes of knowledge focused on that point seems better than a Cyclopean single vision.
“The Instruments of Mental Production” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
This effort of vision, so called, is to be conceived neither as a human attempt to reach God nor a divine attempt to reach man, but as the realization in total experience of the identity of God and Man in which both the human creature and the superhuman Creator disappear.
“General Note: Blake’s Mysticism,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
In the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present, every moment we have lived through we have also died out of into another order. Our life in the resurrection, then, is already here, and waiting to be recognized.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Vision is relative to the choice of a point of view: this has always been true, of course, but never before so obviously true.
“Academy without Walls” (1961), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Just as a new country cannot become a civilization without explorers and pioneers going out into the loneliness of a deserted land, so no social imagination can develop except through those who have followed their own vision beyond its inevitable loneliness to its final resting place in the tradition of art.
“Lawren Harris” (1969), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Your time here was a mixed experience, but at the centre of it were those brief flashes of insight, often not reaching full consciousness, when you felt, not perhaps that you had got it all together, but that there was something there that was all together, and that you were part of it.
“Convocation Address: McGill University” (1983), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
May our vision be thy vision in us.
“Undated Prayers (13)” (1992), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
… the end of vision is the living form of humanity, not the mathematical form of nature. But how does one get from one to the other? What relation has the physical appearance of nature to the real mental form or body of Man?
“Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Art, the spiritual vision of a culture, harrows the hell of human misery.
Entry, Notebook 24 (1970–72), 235, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
A visionary creates, or dwells in, a higher spiritual world in which the objects of perception in this one have become transfigured and charged with a new intensity of symbolism.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Vocabulary
Where should we be today if we had been offered blood, toil, tears, and perspiration?
“Reflections at a Movie” (1942), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Voice
After that, perhaps, the terrifying and welcome voice may begin, annihilating everything we thought we knew, and restoring everything we have never lost.
“Fourth Variation: The Furnace,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26. The book concludes with this sentence.
Traditionally, the Bible speaks with the voice of God and through the voice of man.
“Language II,” The Great Code (1982), The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (2006), CW, 19.