238 Quotes by Northrop Frye

Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of story-telling, its mythical concepts, sun-gods and the like, become habits of metaphoric thought. In a fully mature literary tradition the writerenters intoa structure of traditional stories and images.

Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.

Even the human heart is slightly left of centre.

War appeals to young men because it is fundamentally auto-eroticism.

We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us.

Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.

This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.

I see a sequence of seven main phases: creation,revolution or exodus (Israel in Egypt), law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse.

Teaching literature is impossible; that is why it is difficult.