Conducted 25 or 26 May 1979
From “La Sapienze del Lettore,” L’Unità, 11 June 1979, translated by Nella Cotrupi. Dated by Frye’s itinerary. L’Unità, a leftist Rome newspaper, was historically the organ of the Italian Communist Party. Frye was interviewed in Florence by Beppe Cottafavi.
[After preliminary remarks on Frye’s work, Cottafavi asks Frye about the relationship between literature, myth, and ritual.]
FRYE: Let’s say, for the sake of simplification, that myths are words arranged in a certain order. In primitive societies, all the myths were translated into stories because there was no other system for arranging words and also because abstract argument had not yet emerged. We are speaking about stories that usually dealt with gods and tended to stick together, giving birth to a complex mythology. It is this mythology which, in turn, handed down to later centuries a cultural heritage of allusions. From this literature then developed, and its function has always been to recreate mythology. In this sense, abstract arguments and descriptive narratives (roughly speaking, what we know as essays) operate outside literature. The distinction between myth and ritual is essentially one between a narrative and a dramatic form—even if these two forms later seem to unfold together and strengthen each other.
COTTAFAVI: What is the relationship between literature and science? Or rather, in what sense can literary criticism be defined as scientific?
FRYE: I would start from this assumption: if science, or at least the natural sciences, are concerned with nature’s workings, the study of the humanities, literature included, has always been perceived to operate in an existential key, that is, to focus on society and to be more directly involved in exploring the question of man. In some ways, however, the situation has changed—at least in the last century with the emergence of the social sciences, which try to be as objective and as quantitative as the natural sciences, even though they apply their methods to existential and human problems. From this perspective, I believe that literary criticism can be a form of social science even if by nature it can never become as scientific as some aspects of anthropology and psychology. These remarks of mine go back to 1957, the year in which Anatomy of Criticism was published; I would say that since then the development of structuralism has proved me right.
COTTAFAVI: And if we speak about criticism and psychoanalysis, or criticism and semiotics, or criticism and sociology, or criticism and linguistics … what connotations are evoked by these pairs?
FRYE: I’ve often considered criticism as an activity which indicates how various topics articulate themselves around a centre. For example, at the end of Anatomy of Criticism, I gave some suggestions on how linguistics, anthropology, and other disciplines can be grouped around the exercise of critical activity [350–4/325–30]. But in the 1950s I was still a pioneer and my advice today is certainly outdated. I cannot but rejoice over the progress that has been made since then. I have only one reservation: I would have wished that, in the course of this evolution, a deeper interest had emerged in literature itself. Everyone shows a great interest in language, grammatical metaphors, philosophical ideas, and social sciences. But, with only one or two exceptions—and one is certainly Roland Barthes—there is a certain reluctance to contend with literature in and for itself.
COTTAFAVI: Yes, literature that for you is one unique, grandiose organism endowed with constant forms. But what does “reading” mean? And who is the reader?
FRYE: Traditionally the author–reader relationship was seen as follows: an active agent—the book—and a passive recipient—the reader—who had nothing more to do than study the text in front of him. Many things have changed today. We have become aware that the reader is as active an agent as the author and that he never limits himself to reading a text but always translates it using his inner horizons of knowledge and experience. In other words, reading means recreating the text, and this to my mind explains numerous literary phenomena. Naturally the recreation of a text can be very faithful to its original intention or it can be the result of a total misunderstanding. But in each case the process is the same.
COTTAFAVI: In your latest book which has been translated into Italian, The Secular Scripture, you identify a secular scripture, typical of romance, which tells the epic of man, and you contrast this with a sacred scripture, found in the Bible, which tells the epic of God; the difference between fable and myth, however, is a difference of authority and social function, not of structure. In structure, fable and myth are similar; their distinction is rather the distinction between what one believes to be true and to be false. Now, how do we explain this point in relation to the difference between social mythologies and literary mythologies?
FRYE: 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 fact that this exists underlines the fact that we are all surrounded by a mythology which is for the most part false: that of publicity, advertising, propaganda, and all the other means which deceive man and reduce him to the role of a docile and obedient citizen. The role of the critical act, then, is that of tearing down the wall of false mythology to reach the structure of serious convictions that each of us must have in order to be a responsible member of society. Beyond any personal convictions, however, there is the vision of society which creates and shapes those convictions. This image is something that literature is meant to express, because social vision is derived from the imagination and the imagination is what is fundamental in literature.