Striking out at the conception of criticism as restricted to mere opinion or ritual gesture, Northrop Frye wrote this magisterial work proceeding on the assumption that criticism is a structure of thought and knowledge in its own right. In four brilliant essays on historical, ethical, archetypical, and rhetorical criticism, employing examples of world literature from ancient times to the present, Frye reconceived literary criticism as a total history rather than a linear progression through time.
Literature, Frye wrote, is "the place where our imaginations find the ideal that they try to pass on to belief and action, where they find the vision which is the source of both the dignity and the joy of life." And the critical study of literature provides a basic way "to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in."
Harold Bloom contributes a fascinating and highly personal preface that examines Frye's mode of criticism and thought (as opposed to Frye's criticism itself) as being indispensable in the modern literary world.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
A Marvelous Book:
I bought this book in 1999, under the influence of a prominent professor of English literature; I waited until now to read it, and wish I hadn't. So might you, even if eminence in literary studies is not an aspiration of yours, as it wasn't for me. In the "Polemical Introduction" to this book Northrop Frye wishes for a systematic literary criticism, and says that one proof of its existence would be "an elementary textbook expounding its fundamental principles" -- but the four "essays" he goes on to deliver... more info
Erudite musings:
The book is moderately curious but very overrated. Btw, the author himself doesn't pretend it is more than it is: he freely admits in the preface that his book is incomplete and, for example, cannot be taken as an exposition of his theory. It is, he says, an essay in the original meaning of this word: and incomplete attempt. Bloom -- tactfully but even more crisply -- conveys this same idea in his foreword; this, he says, is a period piece, not a timeless book, and, I quote, it "will survive because it is... more info
Essential:
It really is of no importance, whether you agree with Frye, or you do not. After all, such things only matter if you are yourself literature historian, and you already developed your own viewpoints of the literature or culture and what does it look like. But, if you are only begining your own path upon that winding road, you shouldn't walk right past Frye without stopping and looking at least for some time. Amongst the books to which I return often, which fuel over and over again mine desire for things... more info
sweeping vision:
In this classic work Frye takes a long view of literature, and discerns deep structural patterns. In Essay I he charts a progression in the history of western literature from myth through romance through realism to irony in which the hero becomes increasingly human. Essay III envisions different archetypal literary forms (comedy, romance, tragedy, satire) as continuous phases of a central quest-myth that recurs throughout the history of western literature, and lays out a rich and resonant typology of their... more info
Privacy policy: we don't collect information
about visitors except for the standard technical server logs. We don't send unsolicited emails. We don't
sell the information that we don't collect about you to anyone. When you follow
links to other sites, their privacy policies apply. Thanks for visiting!
