is, I know that what is called a pastoral myth is operating — that at one time people were much better taught than they are now. I simply don’t believe that.
“The Scholar in Society” (1983), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Ballet
The ballet cannot remain permanently in fairyland — the satiric attitude is too important and essential to contemporary art for that.
“Ballet Russe” (1935), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Baptism
Just as the Eucharist in Christianity is founded on the metaphorical basis of food and drink, so baptism becomes the physical image of spiritual cleanliness, the separating of the true individual from the excreta of original sin.
“Third Variation: The Cave,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
Baseball
There is certainly no evidence that baseball has descended from a ritual of human sacrifice, but the umpire is quite as much of a pharmakos as if it had: he is an abandoned scoundrel, a greater robber than Barabbas; he has the evil eye; the supporters of the losing team scream for his death.
“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Beat Movement
The beat philosophy may be wrong — that is, it may be crazy itself instead of merely making use of craziness — but its symbolism is a contemporary cultural force to be reckoned with.
“World Enough Without Time” (1959), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Beauty
The beautiful has the same relation to the diminutive that the sublime has to bigness, and is closely related to the sense of the intricate and exquisite.
“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego.
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The progress of criticism has a good deal to do with recognizing beauty in a greater and greater variety of phenomena and situations and works of art. The ugly, in proportion, tends to become whatever violates primary concern.
“Second Variation: The Garden,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (2008), CW, 26.
The cult of beauty, then, is reactionary: it is continually setting up barriers to the conquest of experience by art, and limits the variety of expression in art wherever it can.
“Yeats and the Language of Symbolism” (1947), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Identity is love; difference beauty.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 77, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
When we speak of the human body as beautiful we mean a body of someone in good physical condition between about eighteen and thirty, and when Dégas expresses interest in thick-bottomed matrons squatting in hip-baths, we confuse the shock to our sense of propriety with a shock to our sense of beauty.
“Yeats and the Language of Symbolism” (1947), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
The notion that thinking the world is beautiful has actual survival value may have nothing in it, but it’s worth thinking about. Otherwise, why do we call both art and nature beautiful? It seems absurd on the face of it to apply the same term to a Mozart divertimento and some cutie in a bathing suit.
Entry, Notes 53 (1989–90), 50, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 6.
Beauty Contests
A beauty contest is a narcissistic middle-class ritual: the contestants have the immobility, the fixed smiles, the mechanical responses, the sense of remoteness, of wax mannequins in a shop window, which have much the same social function.
“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.
Because
… as I have tried to show elsewhere, nothing can follow “because” except some kind of pseudo-critical moral anxiety.
“Criticism, Visible and Invisible” (1964), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Beckett, Samuel
The dramatic convention parodied in Waiting for Godot is clearly the act that killed vaudeville, the weary dialogue of two faceless figures who will say anything to put off leaving the stage.
“The Nightmare Life in Death” (1960), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
Beethoven, Ludwig van
I would like to hear the 9th as the only thing on the programme, with the Ode sung in some language I don’t understand.
“NF to HK,” 18 Apr. 1934, describing a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
The master of comedy gets little reward for not being sententious. Because what was a profound truth to Beethoven was only a platitude to Mozart, Beethoven is listened to with awestruck reverence and Mozart indulgently smiled at as charmingly superficial.
“Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Behaviour
Behaviorism is senility. When an organism has reached its adjustment, it stops evolving, & a man who has stopped evolving in this world is still only an ape.
Entry, 2 Mar. 1953, 8, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Most of our behaviour is mechanical; that of some people wholly so. I think there is a point at which one breaks through this & forms a kernel of autonomy or free will. Total liberation completes what this starts.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 213, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
Being
Now, how is Being related to God? Theologians say Being is an analogy of God, philosophers say that God is an analogy of Being.
Entry,
