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Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.

Northrop Frye

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Northrop Frye
Age: 78 †
Born: 1912
Born: July 14
Died: 1991
Died: January 23
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Literary Critic
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
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Universe
Directly
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Developed
Nature
Beliefs
Nakedly
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Animals
Mythological
Men
Concern
Assumptions
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Concerns

More quotes by Northrop Frye

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Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination.
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We must reject that most dismal and fatuous notion that education is a preparation for life.
Northrop Frye
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[Science fiction is] a mode of romance with a strong inherent tendency to myth.
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A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.
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Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.
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Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.
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This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.
Northrop Frye
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We notice as the Bible goes on, the area of scared space shrinks.
Northrop Frye
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Read Blake or go to hell, that's my message to the modern world.
Northrop Frye
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The Bible is not interested in arguing, because if you state a thesis of belief you have already stated it's opposite if you say, I believe in God, you have already suggested the possibility of not believing in him. [p.250]
Northrop Frye
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There is a curious law of art... that even the attempt to reproduce the act of seeing, when carried out with sufficient energy, tends to lose its realism and take on the unnatural glittering intensity of hallucination.
Northrop Frye
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Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the last judgement of mankind.
Northrop Frye
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No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become distinguished from other aspects of life: it's still embedded in religion, magic and social ceremonies.
Northrop Frye
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I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society.
Northrop Frye
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The simplest questions are the hardest to answer.
Northrop Frye
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The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.
Northrop Frye
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In literature, questions of fact or truth are subordinated to the primary literary aims of producing a structure of words for its own sake, and the sign-values of symbols are subordinated to their importance as a structure of interconnected motifs.
Northrop Frye
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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.
Northrop Frye
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Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself.
Northrop Frye
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Writing: I certainly do rewrite my central myth in every book, and would never read or trust any writer who did not also do so.
Northrop Frye