Metaphors of unity and integration take us only so far, because they are derived from the finiteness of the human mind. Northrop Frye More Quotes by Northrop Frye More Quotes From Northrop Frye Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself. Northrop Frye apocalypse screens men The poet, however, uses these two crude, primitive, archaic forms of thought (simile and metaphor) in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind. Northrop Frye mind jobs two 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 atheism understanding intellectual The operations of the human mind are also controlled by words of power, formulas that become a focus of mental activity. Northrop Frye operations focus mind 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 limits essence culture A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas. Northrop Frye suffering believe people 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 belief opposites believe Our country has shown a lack of will to resist its own disintegration .. . Canada is practically the only country left in the world which is a pure colony; colonial in psychology as well as in mercantile economics. Northrop Frye psychology country world In literature, questions of fact or truth are subordinated to the primary literary aims of producing a structure of words for its own sake, and the sign-values of symbols are subordinated to their importance as a structure of interconnected motifs. Northrop Frye poetry literature art War appeals to young men because it is fundamentally auto-eroticism. Northrop Frye young men war The simplest questions are the hardest to answer. Northrop Frye hardest answers knowledge One of the most obvious uses of literature, I think, is its encouragement of tolerance... Bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them also as possibilities. Northrop Frye tolerance use art Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I don't know of any other country where the accountant enjoys a higher social and moral status. Northrop Frye making-money moral country Those who do succeed in reading the Bible from beginning to end will discover that at least it has a beginning and an end, and some traces of a total structure. Northrop Frye succeed structure reading 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 science art moving Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for. Northrop Frye work children thinking Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model. Northrop Frye nature artist art Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have "really happened,"or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths. Northrop Frye special together fall It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question "Who am I?" than by some such riddle as "Where is here? Northrop Frye important problem identity The ups and downs of this cosmos may sometimes be acknowledged to be metaphorical ups and downs, but until about Newton's time most people took the "up" of heaven and the "down" of hell to be more or less descriptive. Northrop Frye cosmos heaven people
