Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye, CC FRSCwas a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth14 July 1912
CitySherbrooke, Canada
CountryCanada
speech use language
Nobody is capable of of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at. [p.93]
sleep fundamentals language
Wherever illiteracy is a problem, it's as fundamental a problem as getting enough to eat or a place to sleep.
imagination literature language
Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination.
way language mankind
There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.
language surrender metaphor
It seems clear that the Bible belongs to an area of language in which metaphor is functional, and were we have to surrender precision for flexibility.
philosophy literature mythology
The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.
criticism doe may
A snowflake is probably quite unconscious of forming a crystal, but what it does may be worth study even if we are willing to leave its inner mental processes alone.
reading incomplete incompetent
Failure to grasp centrifugal meaning is incomplete reading; failure to grasp centripetal meaning is incompetent reading.
art giving imagination
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
believe adventure mind
One doesn't bother to believe the credible: the credible is believed already, by definition. There's no adventure of the mind.
literature
To bring anything really to life in literature we can't be lifelike: we have to be literature-like
men criticism literature
Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the last judgement of mankind.
people mind literature
A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.
space centre
We do not live in centred space anymore, but have to create our own centres.