on guard,” like the sentry in Pompeii about to be covered up with lava. I understand that the repetitions of this phrase have recently been cut from five to three, but it’s still pretty fatuous.
“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on Television … November 1971–March 1972” (1972), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Anthologies
In any case anthologies ought to have blank pages at the end on which the reader may copy his own neglected favourites.
“Canada and Its Poetry” (1943), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Anthropology
… anthropologists in particular are fond of reminding us that some societies will believe anything, including no doubt some societies of anthropologists.
Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The Golden Bough purports to be a work of anthropology, but it has had more influence on literary criticism than in its own alleged field, and it may yet prove to be really a work of literary criticism.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Anthropology is the history of law, as law is the articulated form of custom.
Entry, 4 Jun. 1950, 394, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Anthropomorphism
Nowhere does the Bible seem to be afraid of the word “anthropomorphic.”
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Man can only make things in his own image. He’s stuck with that. There’s nothing else he has material for.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Anti-Intellectualism
Dictatorships try to suppress the critical intelligence wherever they can; our own society is profoundly and perversely anti-intellectual; some religious groups think that only blind faith can see clearly. All such attitudes are dangerous to civilized life and abhorrent to the gospel.
“To Come to Light” (1986), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Anti-Semitism
The sources of anti-Semitism are very complex. I myself think that anti-Semitism among Christians is always, sooner or later, a disguised form of anti-Christianity. It’s your own religion you hate, and you project it on something else.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The fact that every tribal group is or appears to be potentially conspiratorial accounts for certain aspects of anti-Semitism, the Jews being scapegoats for the Nazis who could project their own tribalism on them.
Entry, Notebook 27 (1986), 520, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
AntiChrist
Thus from the point of view of any one of the three great Biblical religions, our age seems to be an age of a consolidating Antichrist.
“The Church and Modern Culture” (1950), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
There is no alternative to Christ except Antichrist, and the form of Antichrist is the form of the society of power incarnate in a divine king, an inspired dictator, or an infallible counsellor.
“The Church: Its Relation to Society” (1949), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The Jesus about whom a biography can be written is dead and gone, and survives only as Antichrist.
“Part Three: The Final Synthesis,” interpreting Blake’s insight, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Antiques
Nowadays, the expanding of the antique market and the growing sense of the possible commercial value of whatever is no longer being produced has considerably shortened this process. The sojourn in a period of unfashionable limbo has to be very brief when an “antique” can be an object twenty years old.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Antitheses
Antitheses are usually resolved, not by picking one side and refuting the other, or by making eclectic choices between them, but by trying to get past the antithetical way of stating the problem.
“The Archetypes of Literature” (1951), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Antony and Cleopatra
I don’t know what the central Shakespeare play will be in the twenty-first century, assuming we reach it, but I’d place a small bet on Antony and Cleopatra.
“The Stage Is All the World” (1985), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28. Frye argues that Hamlet made possible the Romantic movement, and in the twentieth century King Lear came into the foreground.
Anxiety
Those who are not capable of faith have to settle for anxieties instead.
“The Knowledge of Good and Evil” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
As long as man is capable of anxiety he is capable of passing through it to a genuine human destiny.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
… in fact all our really urgent, mysterious and frightening questions have to do with the burden of the past and the meaning of tradition.
“Address on Receiving the Royal Bank Award” (1978), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
After the three R’s, the three A’s: anxiety, alienation, absurdity.
“The University and Personal Life: Student Anarchism and the Educational Contract” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Apartheid
Amiable apartheid, not a word I’d use for anything I approved of, but there are degrees.
Entry, Notebook 42b: Notes III (1980s), 4, referring to attitudes in his youth in Moncton, N.B., Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Apathy
But apathy, on the part of a majority, means that democracy is no longer a matter of majority rule, but is simply a state of enduring the tyranny of organized minorities.
“Convocation
