If we stayed with the oracular world of charm, everything would seem solemn, awful, portentous, and the least breath of humour or irreverence would destroy the mood. If we stayed with the world of riddle, we should be subjected to an endless stream of irresponsible wisecracks.
“Cycle and Apocalypse in Finnegans Wake” (1987), Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature (2010), CW, 29.
Chaucer, Geoffrey
By looking at Chaucer’s pieces we see an exceedingly clever versifier: by looking at his completed structures we see the greatness of his mind in something like its true perspective.
“Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1936), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Chess
A chess move is a decisive choice that may not abolish chance, but sets up a train of consequences that forces it to retreat into the shadows.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 313, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Chicago
It is such a cheerful, hospitable, adolescent city. They tell me that the clothing advertisers urge Chicagoans to get a metropolitan cut to their clothes to impress the hick visitors. This is typical Chicago.
“NF to HK,” 17 Jun. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Chicago World’s Fair
It’s a World’s Fair all right, and very like the world — huge, pretentious, artificial, mostly vulgar, partly beautiful, and, in spite of everything, magnificent.
“NF to HK,” 18 Jun. 1933, The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939 (1996), CW, 1.
Children
I was brought up in a middle-class, non-conformist environment. I have been more or less writing footnotes to the assumptions I acquired at the age of three or so ever since.
“Music in My Life” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The adult tends to think of the child’s vision as ignorant and undeveloped, but actually it is a clearer and more civilized vision than his own.
“The Imaginative and the Imaginary” (1962), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Whatever literature we learn early, from pre-school nursery rhymes to high-school Shakespeare and beyond, provides us with the keys to nearly all the imaginative experience that it is possible for us to have in life. The central part of this training consists of the Bible, the Classics, and the great heritage of our mother tongue.
“Culture and the National Will” (1957), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Again, if the child is an undeveloped human being, the parent, the complement of the child, is an imperfect one.
Entry, Notebook 3 (1946–48), 66, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The child is born civilized: he assumes that the world he is born into has a human shape and meaning, and was probably made for his own benefit.
“Introduction to Selected Poetry and Prose of William Blake” (1953), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
You drop out of poetry as soon as you drop out of the child’s timeless world.
“Frye’s Literary Theory in the Classroom” (1980), discussing the loss with age of the appreciation of poetry, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Living with children is recognized to be purgatorial, differing from hell only in having some sort of end.
Entry, Notebook 18 (1956–62), 148, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.
The sound of children playing is a cliché of innocent happiness. I have listened to it, and what I hear is mainly aggressiveness and hysteria.
Entry, Notebook 18 (1956–62), 148, Notebooks for “Anatomy of Criticism” (2007), CW, 23.
I once read a book on the language of children which remarked that children seem endlessly fascinated by the fact that a word can have more than one meaning. The authors should have added that they ought to keep this fascination all their lives: if they lose it when they grow up they’re not maturing, just degenerating.
“Introduction,” Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
As the older aristocracies declined, it became clearer that the real natural aristocracy, the group of those who really have a right to be fed and sheltered and cosseted by the rest of society, are the children.
“Convocation Address, Franklin and Marshall” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
China
The creatures in China cannot “reform” anything, because to reform is to introduce the unpredictable, and they’ve proved they can’t deal with that. They can only repress: that’s all they know, and they will devote their entire energies to repression until their devils call for them.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 757, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
China will probably have the next century pretty well to itself as far as culture, & perhaps even civilization, are concerned.
Entry, 19 Aug. 1942, 63, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Chinese painting, for example, will influence Western painting purely through its merits as painting, not through any Western attempt to understand Chinese cultural traditions for political reasons.
“F.S.C. Northrop’s The Meeting of East and West” (1947), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
I know this sounds like an obsession, but for anyone living in 1967, the thought of millions of Chinese yelling their guts loose & waving the little red books of Chairman Mao’s thoughts in the air ought to be pretty central. Anything can happen, but one thing that certainly can happen is that China will unify itself around the “thought” of Mao, & become strong enough to wipe us out with the back of its hand in a very few years.
Entry, Notebook 19 (1964–67), 408, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
Chosen People
Every people is the chosen people: that’s what a translated Bible means.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 821, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
Christ
Christ is both the
