as the Home of Human Life” (1985), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Advertising
Advertising as a socially approved form of drug culture: imaginary world, promises us magical powers within that world.
“On Education II” (1972), 18, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
Advertisers are very well aware that man participates in society through his imagination, and consequently advertising is addressed entirely to what you might call a passive imagination: that is, its statements are so outrageous that they stun and numb the reason.
“Breakthrough” (1967), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Advertising implies a competitive market and an absence of monopoly; propaganda implies a centralizing of power. If advertising is selling soap we know that it is only a soap, not the exclusive way of cleanliness. Hence the statements of advertising contain a residual irony.
The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism (1971), “The Critical Path” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963–1975 (2009), CW, 27.
Democracies seem to depend on advertising, and dictatorships on propaganda. The difference is not so much in the rhetoric, as in the fact that advertising is more open to the spirit of criticism.
“Criticism in Society” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
We have here a type of irony which exactly corresponds to that of two other major arts of the ironic age, advertising and propaganda. These arts pretend to address themselves seriously to a subliminal audience of cretins, an audience that may not even exist, but which is assumed to be simple-minded enough to accept at their face value the statements made about the purity of a soap or a government’s motives.
“First Essay: Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
One cannot read far in advertising without encountering over-writing, a too earnestly didactic tone, an uncritical acceptance of snobbish standards, and obtrusive sexual symbolism. These are precisely the qualities of inferior literature.
“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Advertising implies an economy which has some independence from the political structure, and as long as this independence exists, advertising can be taken as a kind of ironic game.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Our reaction to advertising is really a form of literary criticism. We don’t take it literally, and we aren’t supposed to: anyone who believed literally what every advertiser said would hardly be capable of managing his own affairs.
“The Vocation of Eloquence,” The Educated Imagination (1963), “The Educated Imagination” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933–1963 (2006), CW, 21.
Television advertising is entirely a monologue relying on the power of a visual medium to hold the body motionless and, if possible, spellbound.
“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on November 5th” (1970), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
The fiction need not be his own creation: anyone who believes advertising literally, for example, would be for all practical purposes a lunatic.
“On Teaching Literature” (1972), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Advertising is halfway between: its conventions may be accepted by a ten-year-old but must be greatly weakened by twenty if one is to retain any self-control at all in a consumerist society. (That’s why it’s so important to break the hold of the rhetoric of advertising as soon as possible.)
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 600, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
The two words practical and useful do not of course mean quite the same thing: some forms of verbal technology, like preaching, may be useful without always being practical; others, like advertising, may be practical without always being useful.
“Humanities in a New World” (1958), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Advertising, propaganda, the speeches of politicians, popular books and magazines, the clichés of rumour, all have their own kind of pastoral myths, quest myths, hero myths, sacrificial myths, and nothing will drive these shoddy constructs out of the mind except the genuine forms of the same thing.
“Elementary Teaching and Elementary Scholarship” (1963), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
For the deeply disaffected in our society, advertising is propaganda, and one’s response should be that of an enemy of “the system” and not of any player of games.
“Reviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission: Reflections on November 5th” (1970), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
Aesthetics
Every art, however, needs its own critical organization, and poetics will form a part of aesthetics as soon as aesthetics becomes the unified criticism of all the arts instead of whatever it is now.
“Polemical Introduction” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Africa
The revolt of Africa hasn’t yet come, but is certainly coming.
Entry, 23 Jan. 1949, 116, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Afterlife
So many people are repelled by the idea of a life after death that if there is a life after death a lot of people are going to be damn mad. But then a lot of people are damn mad about having been born into this world, though few of them, and those mostly suicides, get to the point of formulating it in those terms.
Entry, Notebook 21 (1969–76), 293, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
There even used to be a version, or perversion, of Christianity which asserted that real life began after death. This is not much in fashion now, but in its day it doubtless encouraged some people to die without ever having come alive.
“Baccalaureate Sermon” (1967), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Aging
The only thing that keeps me reconciled to life in my seventies is my realization that everything goes in cycles.
“Criticism in Society” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The body must go helplessly from youth to age: the imagination, though of course it is influenced by this, may be contemplative at ten or youthful at eighty.
“Part
