Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays - Softcover

Frye, Northrop

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691069999 ISBN 13: 9780691069999

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2000

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Northrop Frye was University Professor in the University of Toronto and Professor of English in Victoria College, University of Toronto. His books include Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton).

Review:

"An attempt to give a synoptic view of the scope, theory, principles, and techniques of literary criticism. . . . The book is continuously informed by original and incisive thought, by fine perception, and by striking observations upon literature in general and upon particular works." (Modern Language Review)

"Does literary criticism need a conceptual universe of its own? Professor Frye has written a brilliantly suggestive and encyclopedically erudite book to prove that it does; and he has done his impressive best to provide a framework for this universe. His book is a signal achievement; it is tight, hard, paradoxical, and genuinely witty. . . . [Professor Frye] is the most exciting critic around; I do not think he is capable of writing a page which does not offer some sort of intellectual reward." (Hudson Review)

"This is a brilliant but bristling book, an important though thoroughly controversial attempt to establish order in a disorderly field.... Mr. Frye has wit, style, audacity, immense learning, a gift for opening up new and unexpected perspectives in the study of literature.... It would be hopeless to attempt a brief summary of Mr. Frye's dazzlingly counterpointed classifications." (The Nation)

"Simply overpowering in the originality of its main concepts, and dazzling in the brilliance of its applications of them. Here is a book fundamental enough to be entitled Principia Critica." (Commonweal)

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0691069999
• ISBN 13: 9780691069999
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400