Northrop Frye and the Defence of Literature

Abstract

N O R T H R O P F R Y E A N D T H E D E F E N C E O F L I T E R A T U R E DEANNE BOGDAN Ontario Institute for Studies in Education S in ce publishing The Educated Imagination almost fifteen years ago, Northrop Frye has continued to expand his ideas on the social context of literature and the arts. Works like The Stubborn Structure, The Critical Path, and Spiritus Mundi bespeak Frye’s almost evangelical fervour about literary values and their importance to the preservation of civilization. Even Frye’s practical criticism— for example, his conception of Milton’s epics or Shakespeare’s romances — is never wholly divorced from his trenchant views about the social, moral, and educational value of literature. Taken in its entirety, his writing can be seen as one great apology for poetry (I use “poetry” and “ literature” interchangeably as generic names for a work or works of the Active literary imagination) in the tradition of Sidney and Shelley. Implicit in it is a reaffirmation of humanism and its ideal of a liberal education, with the study of literature at its core. From Ben Jonson and Dryden to Matthew Arnold and Eliot, English poets have engaged in critical discussion of their art.1 The apology for poetry forms part of this history. Although neither an Englishman nor a poet, Northrop Frye is a theorist of literature whose thought is, however, informed by British poetic tradition, and who equates criticism with creation as a firstorder verbal activity. With his doctrine of “ the educated imagination” Frye becomes one of our most passionate apologists for poetry. Whether he speaks of the defence as combatting “the perversion and abuse of art,” or of “ the social anxieties which work against the poet in every age,” Frye’s basic concern is for “man’s right to create his world.” For him a defence of poetry is essential as a reflection of the practical bent of “ engaged knowledge. Adam may explore his world, but the most important thing for him to know is how to defend it.” 2 Frye inherits from Blake the idea that the social value of literature has nothing whatever to do with the opposition of what the world calls “moral good” to “moral evil.” Neither does it turn on its efficacy in teaching what the world calls “writing skills.” For Frye the censors and bureaucrats who would demand accountability in these terms are, as they were for Blake, E n g l is h St u d ie s in C anada, v iii, 2, June 1982 Urizen authority-figures who “cannot distinguish the release of energy from the release of chaos.” 3 What has to be safeguarded is not poetry or literature as a form of morality or knowledge, but the kind of knowledge and morality of man to which poetic creation attests. Thus art and literature are judged to be the cause rather than the effect of civilization. It is within this context that Frye defends literature, not as raw material for fostering literacy or inculcating personal and social values, but as a kind of moral and rhetorical education that is intrinsic to literature itself. All apologists for poetry are confronted with the philosophical problem of the Platonic paradox, or Socratic dilemma, which underlies all attacks on poetry. The Platonic paradox is simply Plato’s challenge to the poets in the Republic to demonstrate how the “ lie” of fiction can make a claim to truth. Plato insists that the argument (which must be “in prose” in order to coun­ teract the insidious sway of poetry’s rhetorical power) prove that poetry “is no mere source of pleasure, but a benefit to society and to human life.” If this dichotomy can be resolved, he contends, “we shall all be the gainers.” 4 Literary critics appear to take more interest in the Platonic paradox than do philosophers. The American apostle of poetic apologetics, Murray Krieger , notes that the Platonic paradox is one of the most difficult and crucial problems in contemporary criticism. For Krieger, unriddling the dilemma involves “an attempt to reconcile the autonomy of the...