{"id":5704,"date":"2009-11-29T15:11:52","date_gmt":"2009-11-29T19:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=5704"},"modified":"2009-11-29T15:11:52","modified_gmt":"2009-11-29T19:11:52","slug":"more-on-frye-and-alter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/11\/29\/more-on-frye-and-alter\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Frye and Alter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Marc

Marc Chagall, White Crucifixion<\/p><\/div>\n

I have found several passages in an interview between Northrop Frye and the Australian scholar David Lawton entitled \u201cArchetype and History\u201d (1986) that are relevant to the relationship between the work of Frye and Robert Alter, the subject of a recent discussion on this blog.<\/p>\n

Responding to a question about biblical form-criticism, Frye says \u201cI always feel there is something getting away from me in all this, that Robert Alter and his kind know things that I don\u2019t know\u2014I don\u2019t know what, I haven\u2019t yet discovered what they are from their books.\u201d\u00a0 In relation to this rather double-edged passage, Jean O\u2019Grady draws attention to a less polite comment in the Late Notebooks<\/em>: \u201cThe Art of Biblical Narrative my ass: there\u2019s no such thing as Biblical narrative: there\u2019s only the Bible\u2019s narrative with a lot of sub-narratives.\u201d\u00a0 (Robert Alter published The Art of Biblical Narrative<\/em> in 1981.)<\/p>\n

Lawton asks Frye whether he distinguishes sharply between the Christian Bible and the Jewish Bible, and Frye replies:<\/p>\n

In imagery and in metaphor it seems to me that Judaism and Christianity are identical.\u00a0 But doctrinally a religion which accepts incarnation is very different from a religion which does not, and while I think I can come to terms with the Jewish conception of the Bible, it\u2019s just possibly the prejudices of my upbringing that I feel that the Bible is beheaded if it doesn\u2019t have the New Testament.\u00a0 I just can\u2019t get over that. . . .<\/p>\n

I think I managed to get over the gap in the course on the Bible I taught at Harvard, where I had something like four hundred and twenty students and a fair number of them were Jews.\u00a0 I tried to explain something of the difference between the two conceptions and the way in which Christianity had used Jewish conceptions in ways that Jews would think intolerable but nevertheless did fit consistently the structure of Christianity.\u00a0 They went off and held special sessions themselves to discuss the Christian interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, and they\u2019d come out shaking their heads and saying, \u201cClever buggers these Christians.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have found several passages in an interview between Northrop Frye and the Australian scholar David Lawton entitled \u201cArchetype and History\u201d (1986) that are relevant to the relationship between the work of Frye and Robert Alter, the subject of a recent discussion on this blog. Responding to a question about biblical form-criticism, Frye says \u201cI […]<\/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":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible"],"yoast_head":"\nMore on Frye and Alter - 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\/11\/29\/more-on-frye-and-alter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More on Frye and Alter - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have found several passages in an interview between Northrop Frye and the Australian scholar David Lawton entitled \u201cArchetype and History\u201d (1986) that are relevant to the relationship between the work of Frye and Robert Alter, the subject of a recent discussion on this blog. 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