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person1947–1991

Northrop Frye

Disciplines:
mythology
culture/cultural theory
literary criticism
literary criticism/archetypal criticism

Summary

Canadian literary critic who developed a systematic archetypal criticism in Anatomy of Criticism, arguing that all literature derives from a small set of archetypal narrative patterns ultimately rooted in seasonal myth.

Core Contribution

Proposed that literary criticism can become a coherent science by identifying the archetypal narrative forms (comedy, romance, tragedy, irony) that structure all literature — connecting the mythological imagination to a systematic poetics.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Literature as Displaced Myth (argued that all secular literature represents a displacement of mythological and Biblical archetypes into naturalistic contexts — making literary criticism a branch of comparative mythology)

Notable Works & Achievements

Fearful Symmetry

Anatomy of Criticism

The Secular Scripture

The Great Code

Words with Power

Historical Influences

Carl Jung William Blake Edmund Spenser James George Frazer

Intellectual Lineage

Jungian Archetypal Psychology Comparative Mythology Structural Literary TheoryAnglican Theological Tradition

Contemporaries & Peers

T. S. Eliot I. A. Richards Marshall McLuhan Kenneth Burke

Minds Influenced

Harold Bloom Jonathan CullerSandra Gilbert

Intellectual Posterity

Anatomy of Criticism Archetypal CriticismThe Great Code Monomyth analysis as mainstream literary criticism

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Northrop Frye

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