Northrop Frye "The Critical Path" Essay

In this passage from Northrop Frye the essay is entitled "The Critical Path", the author has introduced one of his main ideologies as the criticism in literature and in a text as a whole. He further gives more significance to criticism in the essay. According to Frye, his critical path was majorly on criticism as a theory. This will, therefore, narrate more on the prodigy of the experience in literary works. Thereafter, the guidance to various visions explaining more of literature in civilization as a whole (Frye, p.280)

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Moreover, Frye relates to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason where he states that dogmatism and skepticism have tenable philosophical positions and that "the critical path is alone open". In account to this, it also associated itself with a turning point in Frye's own development. Nevertheless, he narrates his own journey motif, 25 years ago I lost my way, in the Blake's prophesies. There were many paths that could lead me out but I chose not to, these paths include; the path leading to the social conditions of Blake's time, the path leading to the history of the time and the one leading to psychological factors in Blake's mind. However, the most critical path that Frye was more interested in was the path that led to Blake's symbolic code. It is through literature that he could only achieve this. He further explains on the most vital subjects that the literary critics are more interested in, one of them being the aesthetics subject as well as giving more emphasis in the archetype.

He also deduces that the poet's life is essentially the key to the deeper understanding of the poetry (p.281). such that, the poets are assumed to have a sensitive litmus-paper response to the social trends, therefore, literature as a whole is taken to be something that the historical processes act on and we have still not escaped from a documentary and allegorical procedure, one of the conclusions made in Blake's notion is that there is no private symbolism but I believe there must be private allusions that everybody makes. Each poet has a different view and description of imagery; in most cases this emanates from their earliest works which can be rarely amended.

Marxist is one of the new critics had condemned the Russian criticism called "formalism" because they realized that if they began conceding literary form, as the basis for the literary significance. The assumptions on which Marxist bureaucracies rationalized their censorship of the arts would be greatly weakened. Moreover, he also took a social view on literature: (Frye, p.281) says that it is associated with some limitations; one being that the poetic and metaphorical use of language is not largely used when it comes to the field of literary work.

Frye gave a definition of new criticism to be, a rhetorical form of critic that deals with rhetoric in the former sense and established a counterweight to the biographical approach. This approach treated poetry as a personal rhetoric. Criticism, however, should build or establish some historical relationship on the past events, such that these events can be incorporated into the literary field of literature, this can be incorporated through the short stories in literature. However, criticism according to Frye is the knowledge structure that comes with its uniqueness; consequently, this uniqueness is not well known.

Frye stipulates that in the modern literature there has been a strong emphasis demanding a response from the reader of the text which then minimizes everything that is "naive" and everything with the connected suspense. He also points out inter-textuality as used in the critical theory with the modern literature.

Work Cited

Northrop Frye, The Critical Path, Indiana University, (1971), pp.279-287