Two Major Voices of the 1950s: Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism and Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis

Abstract

In this chapter, I shall examine Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis (1953). Neither book is primarily concerned with the English novel, but both influenced the way that the novel has been taught in England and America for the past twenty-five years. These books represent opposing approaches to literature. While Auerbach assumes that literature reveals an a priori reality, Frye is, with Wallace Stevens and Harold Bloom, in the tradition of those for whom art builds vast imaginative alternatives to the real world.