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Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye Quotes

Literary critic

Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, renowned for his extensive work on the Bible, mythology, and the literary imagination. His theories have had a significant impact on the field of literary criticism and have influenced many scholars and critics.

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Famous Northrop Frye Quotes

“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.”

Writing Humans Looks Stills Use Problem Realizing Figures Speech Symbols Aliens Human Life Staring Complexity Haunting Uneasy Figures Of Speech Complexity Of Human

Book:The Educated Imagination

Source: The Educated Imagination

“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.”

Art Use Action Literature Belief Possibility Art Is Tolerance Fanatics Bigots Belief And Action

Author:Northrop Frye

“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.”

Knows Use Language Know How Speech Capable Free Speech

Author:Northrop Frye

“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.”

World Way Mind Humans Two Use Shows Jobs Form Poet Metaphor Human Mind Possessed Primitive Simile Crude

Book:Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963

Source: Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963

“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.”

Source: Anatomy of Criticism

“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.”

People Art Use Values Asks Answers Impossible Concerned Rate Sympathetic

Book:Anatomy of Criticism

Source: Anatomy of Criticism

About the Author

Born: July 14, 1912
Died: January 23, 1991
Known for: Literary critic
Quotes: 123

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Literature Art Humans Men World People Criticism Imagination Language Structure Mind Ifs Knows May Metaphor Myth Study Thinking Use Writing

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Books & Sources

Anatomy of CriticismRelated source material

Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962Related source material

The Great Code: The Bible and LiteratureRelated source material

The Educated ImaginationRelated source material

The Northrop Frye Quote BookRelated source material

Northrop Frye on CanadaRelated source material

Biblical and Classical Myths: The Mythological Framework of Western CultureRelated source material

Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963Related source material

Northrop Frye's Late Notebooks, 1982-1990: Architecture of the Spiritual WorldRelated source material

Northrop Frye on Milton and BlakeRelated source material

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