Northrop Frye: Quotes about literature

Northrop Frye was Canadian literary critic and literary theorist. Explore interesting quotes on literature.

Northrop Frye: 274 quotes3 likes

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

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction

“No matter what direction we start off in, the signposts of literature always keep pointing the same way, to a world where nothing is outside the imagination. If even time, the enemy of all living things, and to poets, the most hated and feared of all tyrants, can be broken down by the imagination, anything can be.”

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

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

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 4: The Keys To Dreamland

“We relate the poems and plays and novels we read and see, not to the men who wrote them, nor even directly to ourselves; we relate them to each other. Literature is a world that we try to build up and enter at the same time.”

The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

“In literature you don't just read one poem or novel after another, but enter into a complete world of which every work of literature forms part. This affects the writer as much as it does the reader.”

The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time

“The kind of problem that literature raises is not the kind that you ever 'solve.'”

Whether my answers are any good or not, they represent a fair amount of thinking about the questions. <br class="br">The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 1: The Motive For Metaphor http://northropfrye-theeducatedimagination.blogspot.ca/2009/08/1-motive-for-metaphor.html