Teaching literature is impossible; that is why it is difficult. Northrop Frye More Quotes by Northrop Frye More Quotes From Northrop Frye 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 stupidkingssheep Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure; if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game. Northrop Frye black-and-whiteoppositescharacter Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of story-telling, its mythical concepts, sun-gods and the like, become habits of metaphoric thought. In a fully mature literary tradition the writerenters intoa structure of traditional stories and images. Northrop Frye principlesliteraturestories What if criticism is a science as well as an art? Not a pure or exact science, of course, but these phrases belong to a nineteenth-century cosmology which is no longer with us. Northrop Frye what-ifcriticismart 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 criticismmemoriesart We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us. Northrop Frye usewritinglooks The traveler from Europe edges into it like a tiny Jonah entering an inconceivably large whale, slipping past the straits of Belle Isle into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where five Canadian provinces surround him, for the most part invisible... to enter Canada is a matter of being silently swallowed by an alien continent. Northrop Frye europepasttravel Poetry can only be made out of other poems; novels out of other novels. Northrop Frye copyingnovelmade 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 mythwritingbook 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 usepeopleart Physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature, and a student of it says that he is learning physics, not nature. Art, like nature, has to be distinguished from the systematic study of it, which is criticism. Northrop Frye bodycriticismart Literature is not a subject of study, but an object of study. Northrop Frye subjectsstudyliterature No matter how much experience we may gather in life, we can never in life get the dimension of experience that the imagination gives us. Only the arts and sciences can do that, and of these, only literature gives us the whole sweep and range of human imagination as it sees itself Northrop Frye imaginationgivingart The first thing that confronts us in studying verbal structures is that they are arranged sequentially, and have to be read or listened to in time. Northrop Frye structurestudyfirsts A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that. Northrop Frye literaturemindpeople 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 magickindliterature Writers don't seem to benefit much by the advance of science, although they thrive on superstitions of all kinds. Northrop Frye superstitionsbenefitskind 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. Northrop Frye atheisminfinityreligion The twentieth century saw an amazing development of scholarship and criticism in the humanities, carried out by people who were more intelligent, better trained, had more languages, had a better sense of proportion, and were infinitely more accurate scholars and competent professional men than I. I had genius. No one else in the field known to me had quite that. Northrop Frye intelligentmenpeople Man is constantly building anxiety-structures, like geodesic domes, around his social and religious institutions. Northrop Frye anxietyreligiousmen
