Jean Anouilh
French playwright (1910-1987)
Northrop Frye
Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.
Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), which led to the reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake.
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About the Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.
Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), which led to the reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The American critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that Anatomy established Frye as “the foremost living student of Western literature.” Frye’s contributions to cultural and social criticism spanned a long career during which he earned widespread recognition and received many honours.
9 Quotes by Northrop Frye
- 1.
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 FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 2.
The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.
Northrop FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 3.
The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego.
Northrop FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 4.
Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.
Northrop FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 5.
Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I know no other country where accountants have a higher social and moral status.
Northrop FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 6.
Advertising – a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.
Northrop FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 7.
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 FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 8.
It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.
Northrop FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist
- 9.
In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.
Northrop FryeCanadian literary critic and literary theorist