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Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Atheneum (1966), Edition: College, Paperback, 383 pages
Description
The description for this book, Anatomy of Criticism, will be forthcoming.
User reviews
LibraryThing member slumberjack
It's no exaggeration to say that this is one of the books of criticism that changed my (intellectual) life. Though its vein of Structuralism has largely been supplanted by Deconstruction (as have other veins of Structuralism), and though its theories are no longer fashionable, the Anatomy of
Frye is different from most Structuralists, in a chicken and the egg sense. The founders of Structuralism believed in a Jungian collective unconcious which served to generate certain literary and narrative modes across all cultures at all times. Frye believed the reverse: that initial narrative modes had impressed themselves upon the literary unconcious, thereby causing themselves to be replicated. So which came first, the narrative forms or the unconcious drives? That question lies at the heart of the divide between the Canadian Frye and the French.
But it hardly matters, in a practical sense. What Frye proposes, over four long essays, is a massive expansion of Aristotle's Poetics, ranging from the mythical to the absurd, from tragedy and comedy to satire, and everywhere in between.
Though his schemes are a bit too schematic at times, and though it feels at certain moments that he is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole (especially in the essay on narrative arcs), his overall theory is if not entirely persuasive then at least an excellent way to begin thinking about literary genres, to see the continuities in literature. And once the continuities can be seen more clearly, the differences can more easily be brought into relief.
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Criticism stands out as being one of the finest overarching theories of literary genres ever.Frye is different from most Structuralists, in a chicken and the egg sense. The founders of Structuralism believed in a Jungian collective unconcious which served to generate certain literary and narrative modes across all cultures at all times. Frye believed the reverse: that initial narrative modes had impressed themselves upon the literary unconcious, thereby causing themselves to be replicated. So which came first, the narrative forms or the unconcious drives? That question lies at the heart of the divide between the Canadian Frye and the French.
But it hardly matters, in a practical sense. What Frye proposes, over four long essays, is a massive expansion of Aristotle's Poetics, ranging from the mythical to the absurd, from tragedy and comedy to satire, and everywhere in between.
Though his schemes are a bit too schematic at times, and though it feels at certain moments that he is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole (especially in the essay on narrative arcs), his overall theory is if not entirely persuasive then at least an excellent way to begin thinking about literary genres, to see the continuities in literature. And once the continuities can be seen more clearly, the differences can more easily be brought into relief.
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LibraryThing member stillatim
Well, this is pretty dense in a way that books usually aren't these days. Not dense in a Frenchified theory way, and not dense in a flowery language kind of way. Just conceptually dense. Which is fine, but not all of the concepts are useful. Density aside, the first two essays - on historical
One thing that's odd is that people say this seems 'dated' thanks to Marxist or feminist or postcolonial theory, or deconstruction. Not really, though. Frye's aware of all those trends already in 1957 (not counting postco, I guess); and his work isn't dated by deconstruction. It's just the opposite side, handily summarised in Harold Bloom's (awful) foreword: for Bloom and his ilk, literature is all about indeterminacy, and more or less a brawl among self-loathing geniuses. For Frye, literature is a "cooperative enterprise," part of the attempt to make life better for ourselves. Not dated, then, but one side of an ongoing argument. Frankly, I hope Frye's side wins. Then there'll be no need to re-read this book.
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criticism and 'symbols,' (which for Frye doesn't really mean, well, symbol) - are pretty good, if overly schematic. The third essay is horrific. Really, you just need a diagram for it, but we get over 100 pages instead. The fourth essay, on genres, is occasionally interesting but also too schematic and way too long. I'd stick to the introduction and first two essays, and skim the rest. One thing that's odd is that people say this seems 'dated' thanks to Marxist or feminist or postcolonial theory, or deconstruction. Not really, though. Frye's aware of all those trends already in 1957 (not counting postco, I guess); and his work isn't dated by deconstruction. It's just the opposite side, handily summarised in Harold Bloom's (awful) foreword: for Bloom and his ilk, literature is all about indeterminacy, and more or less a brawl among self-loathing geniuses. For Frye, literature is a "cooperative enterprise," part of the attempt to make life better for ourselves. Not dated, then, but one side of an ongoing argument. Frankly, I hope Frye's side wins. Then there'll be no need to re-read this book.
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LibraryThing member jsburbidge
This is a massively well-informed, highly readable work. Frye intended to follow in the footsteps of Aristotle's Poetics and expand its coverage of tragedy to cover all the major forms of (Western) literature with a general theory of its various forms and major themes. It is a major achievement and
However... as a tool of a critic it's nearly useless: it may say something about a book that you can slot it in as a Fryeian Romance, but most of the interesting things to say about a work are about its particularities rather than its generalities, and the Anatomy (like many works of theory) is all about generalities, commonalities which connect works together, so at best it can provide only a context for the actual work of criticism. In this sense it (unavoidably) failed at Frye's ultimate goal, which was to establish Literary Criticism as its own independent discipline.
In many ways it's the opposite of New Historicism: the latter tends to absorb the study of the work into the study of its historical background, using the work as an illumination on social history, whereas the Fryeian project was to extract a taxonomy of works which was independent of "local" cultures but held up across the 2,800 years of western literary genres. Nor can Frye's work be considered a branch of Structuralism: it antedates by 15 years Levi-Strauss' Structuralism and Ecology and it betrays no visible influence of Saussure.
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well worth reading.However... as a tool of a critic it's nearly useless: it may say something about a book that you can slot it in as a Fryeian Romance, but most of the interesting things to say about a work are about its particularities rather than its generalities, and the Anatomy (like many works of theory) is all about generalities, commonalities which connect works together, so at best it can provide only a context for the actual work of criticism. In this sense it (unavoidably) failed at Frye's ultimate goal, which was to establish Literary Criticism as its own independent discipline.
In many ways it's the opposite of New Historicism: the latter tends to absorb the study of the work into the study of its historical background, using the work as an illumination on social history, whereas the Fryeian project was to extract a taxonomy of works which was independent of "local" cultures but held up across the 2,800 years of western literary genres. Nor can Frye's work be considered a branch of Structuralism: it antedates by 15 years Levi-Strauss' Structuralism and Ecology and it betrays no visible influence of Saussure.
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LibraryThing member jburlinson
I suppose this is one of the canonical works in the genre of "lit crit": in the sense that any aspiring critique professionnelle would feel compelled to have grappled with it at one point or another in his/her ascent of Parnassus. It claims to eschew "practical criticism" and pretty much succeeds
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in that, except that Frye flags a little in Section 4 when he talks about genres and deigns to make some pertinent comments about specific works. The entire thing seems to be an effort to construct scaffolding that would enable the practitioner to situate any given work within a four-dimensional schema of modes, symbols,, myths and genres. All this to aspire to a "scientific" approach to the study of literature; and I suppose it is scientific in the sense of being taxonomic. Be sure to bookmark the glossary at the back of the book, because you will have frequent recourse to reminding yourself of the significance of such terms as epos, opsis, melos, anagogic, and a bunch more. Show Less
LibraryThing member octoberdad
"Evil may yet be good to have been and yet remain evil." That's how I feel about having read this book.
If you hover over the stars of Goodread's rating system, each rating is described in terms of how much one "likes" a given book. These descriptions are inadequate. I chose 3 stars for this book
As has been my wont with works upon which I don't feel wholly equipped to offer meaningful commentary, I will simply provide below some enjoyable, or at least useful, quotes from the book itself.
p. 33: In literary fictions the plot consists of somebody doing something. The somebody, if an individual, is the hero, and the something he does or fails to do is what he can do, or could have done, on the level of the postulates made about him by the author and the consequent expectations of the audience. Fictions, therefore, may be classified, not morally, but by the hero's power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same.
p. 74: Literary meaning may best be described, perhaps, as hypothetical, and a hypothetical or assumed relation to the external world is part of what is usually meant by the word "imaginative."
p. 82: Aristotle speaks of mimesis praxeos, an imitation of action, and it appears that he identifies this mimesis praxeos with mythos.... Human action (praxis) is primarily imitated by histories, or verbal structures that describes specific and particular actions. A mythos is a secondary imitation of an action, which means, not that it is at two removes from reality, but that it describes typical actions, being more philosophical than history. Human thought (theoria) is primarily imitated by discursive writing, which makes specific and particular predictions. A dianoia is a secondary imitation of thought, a mimesis logos, concerned with typical thought, with the images, metaphors, diagrams, and verbal ambiguities out of which specific ideas develop.
p. 243: The present book employs a diagrammatic framework that has been used in poetics ever since Plato's time. This is the division of "the good" into three main areas, of which the world of art, beauty, feeling, and taste is the central one, and is flanked by two other worlds. One is the world of social action and events, the other the world of individual thought and ideas. Reading from left to right, this threefold structure divides human faculties into will, feeling, and reason. It divides the mental constructs which these faculties produce into history, art, and science and philosophy. It divides the ideals which form compulsions or obligations on these faculties into law, beauty, and truth. Poe gives his version of the diagram (right to left) as Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense.... Similarly, we have portrayed the poetic symbol as intermediate between event and idea, example and precept, ritual and dream, and have finally displayed it as Aristotle's ethos, human nature and the human situation, between and made up of mythos and dianoia, which are verbal imitations of action and thought respectively.
p. 347: The ethical purpose of a liberal education is to liberate, which can only mean to make one capable of conceiving society as free, classless, and urbane. No such society exists, which is one reason why a liberal education must be deeply concerned with works of imagination. The imaginative element in works of art, again, lifts them clear of the bondage of history.
If you hover over the stars of Goodread's rating system, each rating is described in terms of how much one "likes" a given book. These descriptions are inadequate. I chose 3 stars for this book
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not because I liked it – in truth, much of it I despised while reading it, insofar as it evoked any emotion from me – but because I did find some useful portions within the somewhat absurdly complex system ... ahem, "anatomy" ... that Frye creates.As has been my wont with works upon which I don't feel wholly equipped to offer meaningful commentary, I will simply provide below some enjoyable, or at least useful, quotes from the book itself.
p. 33: In literary fictions the plot consists of somebody doing something. The somebody, if an individual, is the hero, and the something he does or fails to do is what he can do, or could have done, on the level of the postulates made about him by the author and the consequent expectations of the audience. Fictions, therefore, may be classified, not morally, but by the hero's power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same.
p. 74: Literary meaning may best be described, perhaps, as hypothetical, and a hypothetical or assumed relation to the external world is part of what is usually meant by the word "imaginative."
p. 82: Aristotle speaks of mimesis praxeos, an imitation of action, and it appears that he identifies this mimesis praxeos with mythos.... Human action (praxis) is primarily imitated by histories, or verbal structures that describes specific and particular actions. A mythos is a secondary imitation of an action, which means, not that it is at two removes from reality, but that it describes typical actions, being more philosophical than history. Human thought (theoria) is primarily imitated by discursive writing, which makes specific and particular predictions. A dianoia is a secondary imitation of thought, a mimesis logos, concerned with typical thought, with the images, metaphors, diagrams, and verbal ambiguities out of which specific ideas develop.
p. 243: The present book employs a diagrammatic framework that has been used in poetics ever since Plato's time. This is the division of "the good" into three main areas, of which the world of art, beauty, feeling, and taste is the central one, and is flanked by two other worlds. One is the world of social action and events, the other the world of individual thought and ideas. Reading from left to right, this threefold structure divides human faculties into will, feeling, and reason. It divides the mental constructs which these faculties produce into history, art, and science and philosophy. It divides the ideals which form compulsions or obligations on these faculties into law, beauty, and truth. Poe gives his version of the diagram (right to left) as Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense.... Similarly, we have portrayed the poetic symbol as intermediate between event and idea, example and precept, ritual and dream, and have finally displayed it as Aristotle's ethos, human nature and the human situation, between and made up of mythos and dianoia, which are verbal imitations of action and thought respectively.
p. 347: The ethical purpose of a liberal education is to liberate, which can only mean to make one capable of conceiving society as free, classless, and urbane. No such society exists, which is one reason why a liberal education must be deeply concerned with works of imagination. The imaginative element in works of art, again, lifts them clear of the bondage of history.
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LibraryThing member tungsten_peerts
Sure, I guess, it's an oversimplified model ...? But read it, because it might give you insights ... plus it hearkens back to a time when criticism was written to be consumed and understood by mortals & meaning wasn't willfully obscured because ... well, because the author *could*.
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1957
Local notes
OCLC = 2150