{"id":2053,"date":"2009-09-08T13:58:35","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T17:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=2053"},"modified":"2009-09-08T13:58:35","modified_gmt":"2009-09-08T17:58:35","slug":"the-greatest-critic-of-his-time-potentially","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/09\/08\/the-greatest-critic-of-his-time-potentially\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Greatest Critic of His Time (Potentially)”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GerardManleyHopkins\"<\/p>\n

Re: Bob Denham’s “Frye’s Superlatives<\/a>“<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf Hopkins could only have got rid of his silly moral anxieties, his perpetually calling Goethe a rascal and Whitman a scoundrel and the like, he\u2019d have been the greatest critic of his time.\u201d [RN, 325]<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks, Bob, for an intriguing post.<\/p>\n

When I worked on my article on “Frye and Catholicism<\/a>,” the Notebooks on Romance<\/em><\/a> had not been published (in fact, the article and Notebooks<\/em> both appeared in 2004). It would have been nice to have been able to use the following passage, one of the most interesting statements Frye makes about Catholicism:
\n\u201cBy the way, I must get rid of my fear of Catholicism long enough to distinguish the kinds of it that are purely Fascist & therefore factional (the paranomasia of national & natural religion as the Satanic analogy should be noted) from a cosmopolitan & liberal residue. In Dante the former is Antichrist, the Avignon Pope. In Dickens there is a real catholicity of the latter kind.\u201d (RN 28)<\/p>\n

I wonder whether Frye didn\u2019t feel a degree of anxiety about the fact that some of the writers he admired most, and who play a significant role in his theory of literature, were Catholic Christians, like Dante<\/a>, Hopkins or T. S. Eliot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reference to Hopkins\u2019s \u201csilly moral anxieties\u201d recalls a number of comments he makes about Chesterton<\/a> and Ruskin<\/a> (I intend to pursue the former in a future post). Gerard Manley Hopkins<\/a> as the greatest critic (potentially) of his time is a truly surprising statement. Hopkins certainly makes some very influential and significant comments concerning his sacramental theory of poetry. Concepts such as \u201cinscape\u201d give rise to many fascinating classroom discussions, in my experience. But Hopkins was also a dreamer, someone who concocted large intellectual and literary projects that he was never able to bring to fruition (rather like Coleridge<\/a> in that respect). It is hard to imagine him producing enough significant work to be a truly great critic. As for calling Whitman a scoundrel, he nevertheless registered his influence in his own poetry, I think.<\/p>\n

A major critical influence on Frye was Oscar Wilde<\/a>, author of \u201ctwo almost unreasonably brilliant\u201d critical dialogues (NFR 87), \u201cThe Critic as Artist<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe Decay of Lying<\/a>.\u201d The conclusion of Wilde\u2019s De Profundis<\/em><\/a> is another place where he anticipates Frye\u2019s ideas. My teacher at the University of Toronto, W. David Shaw, argued that by the end of De Profundis<\/em> the regimentation of time and space in Reading Gaol<\/a> have become metaphors for the categories of time and space in general, which can be overcome by the poetic imagination. A couple of years ago I was inspired by a comment Michael Dolzani made in a CBC Ideas programme about Frye to explore the affinities between Frye and Wilde. Both critics shared a preference for the idea of literature as a visionary new creation to the idea of literature holding the mirror up to nature.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting that there has been some lively recent scholarship on Wilde and Catholicism. (I have myself shocked several people, at least some of them evangelical Christians, by including Wilde in a course on the Catholic tradition in English literature. I like to tell them the story about how he was baptized three times: the details are in Richard Ellman\u2019s biography<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I wonder who was the greatest of all English critics of any period for Frye, to indulge in some more \u201cliterary chit-chat,\u201d if not \u201csonorous nonsense.\u201d William Blake, who was his preceptor in all things? Frye\u2019s marginalia seem to emulate Blake\u2019s sometimes. Sir Philip Sidney<\/a>, Protestant humanist and intellectual, might be another candidate (with his visionary golden world<\/a> as opposed to the brazen world of nature). And Frye, of course, uses Sidney and Aristotle<\/a> as key elements in his own theory of literature in the Anatomy<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re: Bob Denham’s “Frye’s Superlatives“ \u201cIf Hopkins could only have got rid of his silly moral anxieties, his perpetually calling Goethe a rascal and Whitman a scoundrel and the like, he\u2019d have been the greatest critic of his time.\u201d [RN, 325] Thanks, Bob, for an intriguing post. When I worked on my article on “Frye […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-criticism"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Greatest Critic of His Time (Potentially)" - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/09\/08\/the-greatest-critic-of-his-time-potentially\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""The Greatest Critic of His Time (Potentially)" - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Re: Bob Denham’s “Frye’s Superlatives“ \u201cIf Hopkins could only have got rid of his silly moral anxieties, his perpetually calling Goethe a rascal and Whitman a scoundrel and the like, he\u2019d have been the greatest critic of his time.\u201d [RN, 325] Thanks, Bob, for an intriguing post. 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