{"id":14001,"date":"2010-07-18T00:02:34","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T04:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=14001"},"modified":"2010-07-18T00:02:34","modified_gmt":"2010-07-18T04:02:34","slug":"frye-and-comparative-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/07\/18\/frye-and-comparative-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Frye and Comparative Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/07\/norrie.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14005\" src=\"http:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/07\/norrie.jpg\" alt=\"norrie\" width=\"170\" height=\"175\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/2010\/07\/17\/centre-for-comparative-literature-globe-mail-editorial\/\" target=\"_blank\">editorial<\/a> in the <em>Globe and Mail <\/em>for 17 July begins by claiming that<em> \u201c<\/em>Northrop Frye was not much attached to the term \u2018comparative literature,\u2019 and it would be a mistake to gather, from a controversy at the University of Toronto about the merger into a larger entity of that university\u2019s Centre for Comparative Literature, which he founded, that his legacy is embodied in any academic institution.\u201d\u00a0 I am not aware of anything Frye wrote that would affirm his attachment to the phrase, and whether he harbored some secret dislike of the phrase, we can never know.\u00a0 But in the thirty volumes of his Collected Works there is never a hint that he was not attached to the term.\u00a0 Far from it: his writings are replete with all manner of references to comparative literature, comparative morphology, comparative religion, comparative mythology, the morphology of comparative symbolism and other forms of comparative study.\u00a0 To be sure, Frye\u2019s presence is too large to be confined to any institution, such as the Centre for Comparative Literature.\u00a0 But this does not gainsay his support of the institutions of comparative literature\u2013\u2013its journals and yearbooks, its conferences and colloquia, and its professional organizations.\u00a0 Frye published in the journal <em>Comparative Literature<\/em> and the <em>Yearbook of Comparative Literature<\/em>.\u00a0 In 1958 he attended the Second Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, where he delivered a paper.\u00a0 He also presented papers at the eleventh and fifteenth triennial congresses of the F\u00e9d\u00e9ration Internationale des Langues et Litt\u00e9ratures Modernes (1969, Islamabad; 1981, Phoenix, AZ).\u00a0 In 1974 he delivered a paper at the Comparative Literature Colloquium at the University of Toronto.\u00a0 In 1978 he gave a lecture on \u201cComparative Literature: What Gets Compared?\u201d at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.\u00a0 Frye may not have been attached to the term \u201ccomparative literature,\u201d but he was clearly supportive of its institutions, including a number outside of the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>Aristotle says that the ability to discover likenesses in the mark of genius, and Frye, who was an analogical thinker of the first order, was forever discovering comparable conventions in mythology, literature, and religion.\u00a0 \u201c[E]very problem in literary criticism,\u201d he wrote, \u201cis a problem in comparative literature\u201d (\u201cLiterature as Context: Milton\u2019s <em>Lycidas<\/em>\u201d).\u00a0 In his <em>Diaries<\/em> he says that \u201can exhaustive comparative study of symbolism\u201d is part of the job he must complete.<\/p>\n<p>The editorial writer for the <em>Globe and Mail<\/em> says that what we should pay attention to are Frye\u2019s books rather than to such institutions as the Centre for Comparative Literature.\u00a0 One of those books, <em>Fearful Symmentry<\/em>, concludes with this appeal: \u201cBlake\u2019s doctrine of a single original language and religion implies that the similarities in ritual, myth and doctrine among all religions are more significant than their differences. It implies that a study of comparative religion, a morphology of myths, rituals and theologies, will lead us to a single visionary conception which the mind of man is trying to express, a vision of a created and fallen world which has been redeemed by a divine sacrifice and is proceeding to regeneration. In our day psychology and anthropology have worked great changes in our study of literature strongly suggestive of a development in this direction, and many of the symbols studied in the subconscious, the primitive and the hieratic minds are expanding into patterns of great comprehensiveness, the relevance of which to literary symbolism is not open to question.\u201d\u00a0 What better way to understand these symbolic patterns than in an program devoted to comparative study.\u00a0 Frye then adds, \u201cmyths and dreams are crude art\u2011forms, blurred and dim visions, rough drafts of the more accurate work of the artist. \u00a0In time the communal myth precedes the individual one, but the latter focuses and clarifies the former, and when a work of art deals with a primitive myth, the essential meaning of that myth is not disguised, or sublimated, or refined, but revealed. A comparative study of dreams and rituals can lead us only to a vague and intuitive sense of the unity of the human mind; a comparative study of works of art should demonstrate it beyond conjecture.\u201d\u00a0 This is not the voice of one who wants to detach himself from comparative study.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">*<\/p>\n<p>Save the Comp Lit Centre Facebook here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.savecomplit.ca\/Protest.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.savecomplit.ca\/Protest.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Petition here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.petitiononline.com\/complit\/petition.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.petitiononline.com\/complit\/petition.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An editorial in the Globe and Mail for 17 July begins by claiming that \u201cNorthrop Frye was not much attached to the term \u2018comparative literature,\u2019 and it would be a mistake to gather, from a controversy at the University of Toronto about the merger into a larger entity of that university\u2019s Centre for Comparative Literature, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bob-denham","category-centre-for-comparative-literature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - 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