Northrop Frye

Title: Northrop Frye

Artist(s): Darren Byers and Fred Harrison

Date:

Latitude: 43.66658

Longitude: -79.39233

ANALYSIS: THE STATUE

The Northrop Frye statue is located at Victoria College. The sculpture portrays Frye sitting on a bench, legs crossed, surrounded by books while he reads one himself. The statue is greatly detailed. The wrinkles on his pants and sweater are almost lifelike, and he has a convincing expression on his face that supports his studious behaivour. The different colours on his skin, shoes and jacket are a neat contrast that breaks uniformity. The statue's placement on a bench is a very clever idea. It invites people to come sit and interact with the statue while they relax, as opposed to most statues which are free-standing silhouettes meant to only be looked at. Comparing Northrop Frye to a hero we have learned about in class, he is most similar to Achilles. Achilles was deemed the best warrior of his time and he elevated the level of war. His comrades depended on him during crucial parts of the war. Northrop, like Achilles, was also a warrior but this time, in the war against literature. With a pen as his sword, Northrop is most remembered for his Anatomy of Criticism and the theory of literary criticism. Creating a name for himself through his first book in 1947, Fearful Symmetry, Northrop only flourished and became stronger from that moment forward. Studying out of the University of Toronto, Northrop was Toronto’s ‘Achilles’ in literary criticism.

HISTORICAL INFORMATION: THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH

Herman Northrop Frye, a Quebec-born literary critic, was an influential force throughout much of the 20th century. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Frye is often remembered for his literary theories and critiques of famous Canadian texts. For his life-long contribution to the University of Toronto, his legacy is both celebrated and memorialised. Not only was Frye an educator but he also became an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada in 1936. Frye’s many critiques looked at the underlying meaning of the texts he read, instead of simply addressing the superficial. Among his most prominent of works was a published critique of William Blake. In this, he used his revolutionary theories to challenge Blake’s visionary symbolism. Another famous critique was his analysis of the Bible and its affect on Western society in his book The Great Code. His work was revolutionary as he critiqued literature as a whole through the analysis of archetypes and overarching themes, not just through the examination of individual works. All in all, Herman Frye published over twenty books in his lifetime as well as hundreds of shorter articles and papers. His internationally recognized skill as a critic and writer earned him many honourary degrees from universities the world over. He even spent a year as a poetry professor at Harvard. His work influenced many later Canadian writers, including Margaret Atwood, Jay Macpherson and James Reaney. He died in 1991 after teaching at the University of Toronto for nearly fifty years.