The Social Vision of Frye’s Criticism: The Scandal of Undiscriminating Catholicity

Abstract

This essay explores Frye’s highly debated views concerning the role of criticism. Frye does not grant value-judgement any place within criticism, rejects hierarchy, and states that negative criticism is futile. His works Anatomy of Criticism and The Critical Path illuminate his faith in the importance of positive literary theory, freedom from the shortcomings of class-bound conceptions, the conversion of pejorative critical terms into tools of analytical criticism, and ‘undiscriminating catholicity’ as openness to all products of human imagination. Critics from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Walter Benjamin and Erich Auerbach are examined in their relation to Frye’s arguments. The article defends Frye’s vision, specifically his theorization of historical, ethical, and archetypal criticism and the autonomy of literature, as well as his advocacy of an escape from negative evaluation as a way for criticism to achieve new capacities.