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Northrop Frye on Books

1912–1991 Canada

← All quotes by Northrop Frye

13 quotes

Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.

Words with Power : Being a Second Study of The Bible and Literature (1990)

Teaching literature is impossible; that is why it is difficult.

Failure to grasp centrifugal meaning is incomplete reading; failure to grasp centripetal meaning is incompetent reading.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

The Educated Imagination (1963)

The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination.

The Educated Imagination (1963)

Literature does not reflect life, but it doesn't escape or withdraw from life either: it swallows it.

The Educated Imagination (1963)

Literature is not a subject of study, but an object of study.

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957)

Those who do succeed in reading the Bible from beginning to end will discover that at least it has a beginning and an end, and some traces of a total structure.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)

This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.(pg.18)

The Educated Imagination (1963)

The real Bible is a sealed book, an apocryphon, a book not to be opened (mentally) until its time has come. (2:568)

Even the biggest book is fragmentary: to finish anything, you have to cut your losses. Nobody ever writes his dream book. (33.54)

The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology. (21.101)

Yesterday's kook book becomes tomorrow's standard text. (2:495)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Northrop Frye (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.