Northrop Frye

"Carter's music poses struggles of opposition, for instance in timbre (Double Concerto), space (String Quartet No. 3) or pulse (String Quartet No. 5). His preference for the all-interval tetrachords, 4–Z15 [0, 1, 4, 6] and 4–Z29 [0, 1, 3, 7], is also well known. From these facets of Carter's music, I develop a narrative interpretation of his Petrarch sonnet–inspired solo flute piece, Scrivo in Vento (1991). Specifically, I forge narrative pathways by imagining the two tetrachords as active agents opposed in competition. Previous Scrivo analyses (Capuzzo 2002; Childs 2006) stress continuity by revealing Q-transforms and common-note voice leading between the tetrachords. While acknowledging such features, my analysis emphasises oppositional struggle by tracing the tetrachords as separate entities which cooperate and conflict as they manoeuvre to outdo each other.

The analysis advances three theses: (1) it guides listening to and reading Scrivo in a way which resonates with Carter's concern for the aesthetics of oppositional struggle, his choice of a sonnet as inspiration and his affinity for all-interval tetrachords; (2) it shows that music-analytical detail can be organised into dramatic narratives by (a) projecting dramatic roles onto categories asserted by a formal theory and (b) treating the formal theory's relations metaphorically as actions performed by each role as the musical work unfolds; and (3) it shows how detailed pc-set analysis can support a Heraclitean view of music: a flux of opposing forces seeking and resisting unity."

Illustrious is the roll of those who have made prescriptions and predictions declaring that poetry has had its day. Plato wanted to keep poets out of his ideal republic. Love Peacock, Shelley's friend, thought poetry has little place in the modern age of progress and reason. Literary critics like Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman theorize about the demise of poetry after the unsurpassable achievements of Wordsworth and Blake. Theodor Adorno declared that there could be no poetry after Auschwitz, and today many hold that new poets cannot make themselves heard or read amid the cacophony arising from today's World Wide Web, popular culture and advertising trivia. Somehow poetry hangs on. Why? Ultimately this question boils down to the issue of the connection, if any, between literature, especially poetry, and life. This issue in turn cannot be extricated from a study of methods of interpreting literary texts

John Donne thought it a wild extension of the imagination when he wrote, in his "Valediction: of the Booke" that "in the Bible some can finde out Alchimy." But many authors attempted it during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This paper explores the logic behind their excesses, and establishes a link to explorations in archetypal literary criticism.

Although Frye and Bachtin seem to ignore each other's writings, there is more than one evidence that their thinking and ideas about literature can be compared and partially superposed. Focusing on Anatomy of Criticism this paper stresses the similarity with bakhtinian concept of satire and carnivalesque (in a Christian sense), with dialogism and intertextuality; moreover the two thinkers share a comparatistic and anthropological approach to western literature.

This paper examines Jung’s rebirth archetype in two popular fairy tales, focusing on how it is described, how it specifically functions within the narratives, and on underlying mythopoeic imagery from which the narratives are constructed. The preliminary study combines formalist intertextual literary analysis of Fitcher’s Bird (better known as Bluebeard) and Little Red Cap (better known as Little Red Riding Hood) with a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and transmedial hermeneutical perspective grounded in the theories of Carl G. Jung, Arnold van Gennep, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas, and other major interpreters. The paper provides a Theoretical Overview and applies the theory to archetypal interpretation in the two tales.  The findings hold practical implications for the contemporary relevance of fairy tales as tools of psychological analysis, wisdom tales, and repositories of mythopoeic symbols.  The findings also contribute to an increasingly wide-ranging multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective in the social sciences, arts, and humanities.

Key words: rebirth, archetype, mythico-ritual, individuation, initiation, fairy tales, folk tales, mythopoetics, depth psychology, hermeneutics, literature, shamanism, symbolism

This paper examines archetypal, initiatory symbolism in interconnected Biblical narratives, the Old Testament story of Jonah and the Fish (or Whale) and the apocryphal story known as the Harrowing of Hell, a metaphorical relationship alluded to in Jesus Christ’s cryptic reference to the “sign of Jonah.”  An amplification of the imagery indicates the symbolic identity of these two mythico-ritual, structural motifs and relates the imagery in both stories to widely distributed primordial rebirth symbolism common to aboriginal people across the world.  The interpretive framework for this literary analysis is grounded in a cross-cultural, trans-medial, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective derived from the psychological criticism of Carl G. Jung and scholars influenced by Jung’s archetypal theories, including Joseph Campbell (comparative mythology/literary mythology), Mircea Eliade (history of religions), Northrop Frye (archetypal literary criticism), and others.  The study contributes to an interdisciplinary hermeneutic of archetypal, mythico-ritual imagery found in dreams, fairy tales, and religious myths and rituals, as well as literary and film narratives.

    Keywords: literary analysis, hermeneutics, myth-criticism, mythopoeic, mythopoetic, archetypes, amplification, theology, mythology, initiation, rebirth, monomyth, night-sea journey, individuation

I integrate evolutionary biology with ideas from the traditional humanist paradigm; critique poststructuralism and construct a biocultural alternative; critique many individual theorists (with the most extensive attention given to Derrida, Foucault, and Northrop Frye); and critique narrow forms of evolutionary psychology. Main constructive influences include Darwin and Huxley, ethologist Konrad Lorenz, developmental psychologist John Bowlby, and personality psychologist Hans Eysenck.

Este artigo procura ofertar uma reflexão crítica sobre o
conjunto de textos escritos pelo poeta anglo-americano Wystan
Hugh Auden referentes à obra de J.R.R. Tolkien, tentando precisar
suas linhas de força. Dentre estas, nosso foco analítico privilegia a
noção de demanda heroica e a constituição de seu protagonista,
assim como a natureza do bem e do mal em O Senhor dos Anéis.
Com base nas observações de Auden, procuramos pensar a relação
entre a presença singular dos hobbits e a construção de um
realismo particular e, complementarmente, a importância da
imaginação na composição de um ethos tolkieniano marcado por
uma dimensão subversiva em constante tensão com a noção de
alegoria.

In Middle-earth, even evil suffers a steady decline from the cosmic to the petty over the course of “the long defeat” of Arda. In this paper I will use terms from Northrop Frye’s The Great Code—metaphoric, metonymic, demotic, and ricorso—to examine the path of the Ring/power/naming complex through its long diminution as the Ring moves from metaphor, to magic, to degradation and destruction—from Morgoth’s Ring of all Arda, through Sauron’s Ruling Ring, to Saruman’s pale imitation of Sauron, and Gollum’s struggle for mere subsistence. The hobbit Ringbearers—Bilbo, Frodo, Sam—are a coda to the Ring’s diminishment, aborting the attempted ricorso and bringing about its ultimate end.

This book, concentrating on the works of one of the most outstanding literary critics of the 20th-century, serves three main purposes, as reflected in the three parts of the study.
The first is to examine Northrop Frye's mental relationship with William Blake, and explore the ways in which Frye's reading of Blake's poetry influenced Frye’s concept of creative imagination, a central tenet of his criticism. In the course of this process, the book assesses Frye's religious background and his sudden experiences of insight, and examines the problem of perceiving reality as being inside and outside of language. The second part explores how the Bible formed Frye's critical views as represented in The Great Code, Words with Power and The Double Vision, and the process in which he shifted from an esoteric theory to a morally and socially open one. The third part investigates patterns of ideas that connect Frye's theoretical writings to various critical traditions and schools, from Aristotle through T.S. Eliot to deconstruction, reader-response criticism and cultural studies. Kenyeres also examines Frye's language, which in itself gives rise to his diverging critical reception. The study outlines the typical variations in Frye's recognition by the critical world from the 1950s and 60s to our day. The author reveals that Frye has contributed theoretical input to a number of critical approaches, and thereby, at least partially, achieved the otherwise idealistic goal of his critical writings in promoting some sense of unity among critical schools.
While the first two parts of the book demonstrate that Frye's reading of Blake and the Bible sets out a pattern of interrelations, stretching well into the realm of both intertextuality and extratextuality, the third part concludes that Frye's concepts are of a generally applicable character, provoking response from a number of critical approaches.

Notes from Northrop Frye´s seminal volume in archetypal/anthropological criticism, "Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays" (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1957. Rpt. 1971. 383 p). Notes taken by J. A. García Landa c. 1985, edited with illustrations for online publication 2018-20. Parenthetical pagination numbers refer to the quotations and text following the page number; notes by JAGL added in italics. Frye´s book was the most quoted literary study some forty years ago; for today´s literary students it is virtually unknown.

Anthropology, Criticism, Literary theory, Myth criticism, Archetypes, Northrop Frye,

This paper explores the interface between the media ecological theories of Marshall McLuhan and the Indian philosophical system known as Pratyabhijñā (recognition). It is argued that our contemporary media environment composed of digital networked electronic media forms reorients human perception, expanding our normal awareness to spatial and temporal ranges of extension that are, metaphorically and in some senses actually, universal in scope. This massive extensivity is further compressed into a single, resonating sphere of electronic interpenetration, rendering all individuals simultaneously present. In this "discarnate condition" our metaphysical state approximates the condition of divinity itself as conceptualized in the pratyabhijñā. This is further indicative of more general transformations effected by the mediated environment in the sphere of religion, in which subjectivity itself becomes the locus of religious recognition and the site for the irruption of the sacred, due to its having become electronically externalized in the pervasive forms of media use.

Published in Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels: The Gospel of Matthew (ed. Thomas R. Hatina; Library of New Testament Studies 310; London: T. & T. Clark, 2008) 98-118.

In this contribution I aim to explain why, in Matthew 2, Scripture was connected with Jesus’ journey of escape from Bethlehem to Nazareth via Egypt. One of the most unusual features of the infancy travel story is that each of the three geographical locations (Bethlehem, Egypt, and Nazareth) is associated with a fulfillment quotation. Matthew uses place names elsewhere, and even on one occasion refers to six locations (Syria, Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and ‘beyond the Jordan’ in 4.23-25), but these are not depicted as fulfillments. I attempt to explain the use of Scripture in Matthew 2 within the broader process of mythmaking which in general terms begins with some kind of historical (or factual) event, is then interpreted within a cosmic structure, and is finally legitimized historically. It is the last two phases in the process which are of concern. I respectively divide the essay into two parts by first drawing attention to the literary artistry of chapter two, namely the mythmaking phase, and then focusing on the historical legitimization of the travel story via the embedding of Scripture. More specific to method, in the first part of this essay Matthew’s literary artistry is explored in light of Northrop Frye’s theory of mythmaking which brings attention to Jesus’ portrayal as a divine child who miraculously escapes death from a paranoid tyrannical king whose rule in turn is subverted by his intended victim. It is a narrative that contains all too many familiar features, such as revelations through dreams, a miraculous birth, divine parentage, cosmic portents, and the battle between good and evil, all of which are reminiscent of hero myths that would have been known in various forms throughout the Hellenized/Romanized Diaspora in the latter part of the first century. The second part of the essay concentrates on how the quotations containing fulfillment formulae function in the travel narrative. The term ‘function,’ is here again limited to Northrop Frye’s literary-critical insights into myth and ideology. I argue that Matthew’s appeal to scriptural quotations can be explained as an exercise in historicizing myth for the purpose of legitimization, which inevitably leads to ideology.

Few theoretical statements about comic drama and fiction can match the influence of Northrop Frye’s essay, “Mythos of Spring: Comedy.” Particularly for scholars interested not only in classic comic literary forms such as stage comedy, but also in the popular forms of contemporary films as well as television sitcoms, Frye’s theory continues to be useful for understanding basic structures within large quantities of examples. In this essay, I challenge Frye’s model for comic art. Although a quasi-Oedipal plot dominates extant New Comedy, the model suppresses the fact that it is only one significant plot among others capable of generating variations. More importantly, when one examines plays structured by the quasi-Oedipal plot, Frye’s summary – a generational struggle that ends in the son’s triumph – misrepresents the material: the son’s triumph is not a foregone conclusion. New Comedy’s function as the symbolic womb of the Western comic tradition is thus far from unproblematic. My challenge has serious consequences, not just for those critics who have organized their analyses on it, but also for those critics who might theorize about literary and popular art forms, as well as for scholars who would write a history of comic forms in the West.

Από τους τέσσερεις-πέντε αρχετυπικούς μυθικούς κύκλους, που εμπνέουν διαχρονικά την ποιητική φαντασία των λαών σύμφωνα με τις τυπολογίες των ειδικών (Μπόρχες, Νόρθροπ Φράι), τρείς τουλάχιστον έχουν βαθιές ρίζες στην αρχαία ελληνική παράδοση και καθοριστική σημασία για τη συγκρότηση της ποιητικής μυθολογίας του Σεφέρη. Ο μεγάλος πόλεμος (θέμα της Ιλιάδας) ιστορείται όχι με τρόπο επικό και ηρωικό αλλά από σκοπιά τραγική: ο ποιητής εστιάζει στη μοίρα των θυμάτων, των αιχμαλώτων και των αμάχων, στην οδύνη και στην καταστροφή. Το μακρινό και περιπετειώδες ταξίδι (θέμα του Οδυσσέα, του Σεβάχ και του Μεγαλέξανδρου της Φυλλάδας) αποτελεί τον κεντρικό άξονα ολόκληρου του σεφερικού έργου. Ο ταξιδιώτης περιπλανιέται σε παράξενους τόπους σε βορρά και νότο, αντιμετωπίζει εξωτικά, αλλόκοτα ή τερατώδη θεάματα, βασανίζεται, αλλά βιώνει και πρόσκαιρες εμπειρίες παραδείσιας ευτυχίας. Ο περιπλανώμενος ήρωας του Σεφέρη μοιάζει κατεξοχήν με τον Οδυσσέα του Δάντη, ο οποίος με τη σειρά του κατάγεται από την προομηρική παράδοση: νοσταλγεί μιαν ειδυλλιακή πατρίδα, όταν όμως επιστρέφει εκεί, ο τόπος του αποδεικνύεται στενός και γεμάτος απογοητεύσεις, ανίκανος να τον κρατήσει· ο ταξιδευτής αναγκάζεται να ξαναρχίσει τις περιπλανήσεις, για να γλυτώσει από το αίσθημα του πνιγμού.

Η πορεία του ταξιδιού κορυφώνεται (όπως στην Οδύσσεια και στη Φυλλάδα) με τη Νέκυια, την κατάβαση στον κόσμο των νεκρών, πεμπτουσία κάθε περιηγητικού μύθου. Ο ταξιδιώτης αντικρίζει τις τυφλές ψυχές που λιμνάζουν στο λίμπο, τους καταδικασμένους που παγιδεύονται στην αιώνια επανάληψη ή μεταμορφώνονται σε άψυχη ύλη. Όμως συναντάει και αφουγκράζεται μια μαγική καθοδηγητική μορφή (Τειρεσία, Πρωτέα, Σωκράτη), που του χαρίζει γνώση και δύναμη για να συνεχίσει. Συναφής είναι ο μύθος της αναζήτησης (quest, θέμα των Αργοναυτών και του ιερού Γκράαλ), η οποία παρακινεί τις περιπλανήσεις και τις περιπέτειες του ήρωα. Στη μυθολογία του Σεφέρη η αναζήτηση στοχεύει σε κάποιο είδος μυστικής εμπειρίας, ερωτικής ή πνευματικής, η οποία ανανεώνει την ύπαρξη (όπως κάνει παραδοσιακά το αντικείμενο της αναζήτησης στους θρύλους, το Γκράαλ, το βότανο του Γιλγαμές, το αθάνατο νερό του Μεγαλέξανδρου ή το καζάνι της Μήδειας). Το επίμοχθο δρομολόγιο της αναζήτησης περιλαμβάνει πολλά πισωγυρίσματα και ατυχίες, όπως όταν οι ιππότες-Αργοναύτες βρίσκουν το κάστρο της Ασίνης έρημο και τον βασιλιά μεταμορφωμένο σε νυχτερίδα. Εντέλει, όμως, ο επίμονος ήρωας αξιώνεται να αντικρίσει το ποθητό αντικείμενο στην καθαρότερη μορφή του, εκείνην του φωτός — από τη μικρή φλόγα όπου προσηλώνεται ο νεαρός Στρατής Θαλασσινός ώς τη φωταψία στο φινάλε της Κίχλης.

But the course ‘literary criticism’, the reason why I am writing this piece, was unsatisfactory and the contents only kept us ‘outmoded’. We had Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, Arnold’s ‘The Study of Poetry’, Wordsworth’s ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads’, Johnson’s ‘Preface to Shakespeare’ and Aristotle’s Poetics. I have heard that Shelley’s ‘A Defense of Poetry’, excerpts from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Dryden’s ‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’ and Sidney’s ‘An Apology for Poetry’ too were there in the syllabus, in the past years. But still, what is it really with our obsession for things no longer deemed ‘valid’? Training in classical thoughts is undoubtedly praiseworthy (and necessary too!), but if that happens without some knowledge of the contemporary, it will be difficult to stand on the same footing with the constantly improving world literatures and their critical literary manifestos.

The critics reference formalist/structuralist methods of criticism in today’s literary arena more and more with each passing day, especially in academic publication environments at contemporary literary products as well as Classic literature, Folklore and Folk literature, because of they were text-based. One of the most common methods of structuralist criticism is Academic Criticism. Anglo-Sakson New Criticism is affected from views of T. S. Eliot. Formalist criticism influenced with opinions of names such as Victor B. Shklovksy and Roman Jacobson. Archetypal Criticism is based on C. Jung’s and N. Frye’s opinions. On the other hand the principles of Semiotic Criticism are based on R. Barthes. Deconstructive Criticism is formed by J. Derrida’s views promise deeper, closer practical challenges and as the pioneer of Structuralism F. de Saussure’s opinions.

This essay studies the literary genre(s) of Middlemarch by applying to it Northrop Frye’s theory of the four basic forms of prose fiction. Its main contention is that the work is not a pure novel but rather a blend of the novel and the anatomy. This conclusion corrects and unifies two opposing tendencies in the literature: (1) taking for granted that the work is simply a novel, ignoring or effacing many of its non-novelistic or extra-novelistic features; and (2) classifying the work variously as didactic or moralistic fiction, a philosophical novel, a novel of ideas, or an encyclopedic novel, fragmenting its genre according to various partial lenses. The main argument consists of two unequal parts. The first and shorter part explains the nature of the anatomy as intellectualized, extroverted fiction. The second and longer part demonstrates that Middlemarch is an anatomy in three of those four ways: its consistently erudite epigraphs and scholarly dialogue present the whole work as (1) conceptually weighty, intellectualized fiction; the subtitle of the work (“A Study of Provincial Life”) and its resonances throughout the main text reveal Eliot’s (2) exhaustively detailed, systematic approach to her chosen intellectual pattern; and finally, her portrayal of Mr. Brooke, Casaubon, Bulstrode, and Lydgate exemplifies four distinct types of (3) intellectual satire, a typical feature of the anatomy form.

This article examines the history of interpretation of Hagar's story in Genesis 16 within debates over slavery through the narrative frame of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The character Mr Wilson echoes the hermeneutics of very real nineteenth-century apologists for slavery, a tradition that implicates Calvin. In contrast, George reflects the more sympathetic tradition of the abolitionists, which is traced back to Chrysostom and Philo. Drawing on modern literary genre theory, I propose that these different readings of Genesis 16 really begin as different conceptions about the kind of thing we are reading: its genre. The High Mimetic genre assumed by the Apologists, or the Low Mimetic mode of the abolitionists, changes what assumptions they make about characters, setting and what the gaps in characterisation mean. Apologists and Abolitionists cannot agree on what the Bible means, because first and fundamentally, they cannot agree on what the Bible is.

This article draws together overlapping cognitive analyses of political thought, emotion, and language and shows how they can be supplemented with literary analyses of genre to illuminate the workings of the French Revolution debate of 1790s Britain. It focuses on enriching George Lakoff 's theory of the multiple levels of framing in discourse, concentrating on the interplay of argument and narrative frames. Studies of emotion and mood in narrative genres are adapted to refine Lakoff 's account of narrative , making it more complex, systematic, and sensitive to historical context. Applying the revised theory, the essay characterizes contrasts between Edmund Burke's and Thomas Paine's thought at all levels of framing. It shows how their lexical frames for "revolution" diverge as their main arguments craft opposing issue-defining frames for the central moral issue of revolution versus reform. Those arguments highlight different key figures and events yet draw on similar narrative genres to frame them. Importantly, high genres of heroic romance inspire elevation toward one's own side by celebrating victories and lamenting tragedies, and low genres of satire inspire contempt toward opponents by ridiculing deserved failures and absurd successes. Thus narrative genre ties surface-frame phrases like "rights of man" and "swinish multitude" to deep-frame assumptions about more fundamental concepts (human nature, society, government).

The full text is available here
http://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/article/view/4648

""Controversy has surrounded The Merchant of Venice. Although some critics believe the play is not anti-Semitic, the present study shows that Shakespeare could not go against the current of Elizabethan anti-Semitism. The play reinforced the dominant discourses and stereotypes working against the Jews. Few Shakespearean characters are more hotly debated than Shylock, the Jewish usurer in The Merchant. Although he has a relatively small part, this multifaceted and influential character governs the play and his multidimensional nature complicates the work significantly. The play depicts him as a cruel, crafty and wicked Jew just as Elizabethan Christians would demand. The playwright takes the stereotype character presented to him and makes it more complex, but he leaves its anti-Semitic qualities untouched. The Merchant of Venice represents and reinforces the dominant discourses of law, religion and nationality that support the Christians and work against the Jews. As a comedy, it made the audience identify with the winners of the trial scene, the Christians. Therefore, nothing remains of the resisting voices and what is heard more often and more powerfully is the dominant discourse of the time voiced by the winners of the play. Shakespeare made a clear distinction between “self” and “other,” did whatever at his disposal to defeat “the others” of the play, deprived them of genuine identity and form a homogenised community where no resisting voice could be heard.

Keywords: The Merchant of Venice; Shakespeare; anti-Semitism; discourse; Shylock
""

Tedesco di origine ebraica nato a Berlino nel 1892, Erich Auerbach scrisse il suo capolavoro, Mimesis, negli anni tragici della seconda guerra mondiale, dall’esilio di Istanbul, dove aveva fortunosamente trovato rifugio con la famiglia dalle persecuzioni naziste per insegnare filologia romanza nell’università. Nella generale penuria di libri occidentali, poté tuttavia consultare ripetutamente la Patrologia latina del Migne nella Biblioteca del convento domenicano di San Pietro in Galata, grazie al permesso del nunzio apostolico di allora, Angelo Roncalli, futuro Papa Giovanni XXIII. Morì negli Stati Uniti nel ’57, esattamente lo stesso anno in cui Northrop Frye pubblicava il suo, di capolavoro, quell’Anatomia della critica destinata a diventare il punto di riferimento per molti teorici e comparatisti d’oltreoceano. Nato nel 1912, e dunque di una ventina d’anni più giovane di Auerbach, Frye ha la fortuna di crescere  nel pacifico e opulento Canada e poi di formarsi nei prestigiosi college di Oxford; compie tra l’altro studi di filosofia e di teologia, divenendo ministro della Chiesa canadese nel 1939. Il grande codice, il libro su cui mi soffermerò maggiormente in questa conversazione, esce nel 1982, nove anni prima della morte dello studioso.
Difficile immaginare due personalità critiche più diverse. Auerbach, erede del grande storicismo tedesco, privilegia nel suo metodo la discontinuità e la rottura, e valorizza le partizioni di medio-lungo periodo; figlio sui generis della grande famiglia della critica stilistica, prende spunto nelle sue analisi dai fatti di stile ma poi dal particolare risale all’universale misurandosi con le grandi categorie della storia della cultura; diffida delle astrazioni e in Mimesis affronta lo stesso concetto di “realismo” non come un dato ontologico ma come qualcosa che si chiarisce ed assume una forma percepibile solo nel divenire storico. Frye, invece, adotta il procedimento esattamente inverso: dall’universale scende al particolare rintracciando le prove della continuità e persistenza nel tempo di alcuni grandi archetipi universali desunti a priori; trascura, spesso, la filologia e concepisce la storia letteraria come un’attività secondaria, subordinata alla deduzione di quelli che lui chiama “modi”, ed è al contrario di Auerbach di una puntigliosità certosina nel disegnare schemi, classificazioni e tabelle; concede ben poco all’analisi dello stile e assume di preferenza l’elemento tematico e antropologico come centro della sua riflessione. La sua curiosità per i fatti più diversi della cultura è tale da rendere vana ogni definizione sintetica del suo metodo. Ha ragione, probabilmente, Remo Ceserani quando scrive che in lui umanesimo tradizionalista e tendenza quasi spericolata all’innovazione radicale ed estrema convivono in modi che possono apparire persino contraddittori.
Difficile immaginare due personalità più distanti, dicevo, eppure, un confronto appare non solo possibile, ma direi quasi inevitabile; perché sia Auerbach che Frye sono stati probabilmente (insieme, forse, a René Girard) gli unici critici letterari di statura internazionale del Novecento che abbiano fatto i conti davvero con la Bibbia: entrambi hanno visto nelle Sacre scritture, per motivi in parte simili e in parte diversi, come vedremo, il più influente incunabolo della letteratura occidentale, e ne hanno indagato l’eredità non tanto sul piano dei contenuti dottrinali (che è il terreno della teologia e della storia delle religioni), ma su quello delle forme narrative e simboliche. Per entrambi la Bibbia è in primo luogo narrazione, mythos, e modello di altre narrazioni. E per entrambi il problema centrale è costituito da una parte dallo stile e dall’altra dal carattere “figurale” della narrazione biblica.
Auerbach pone particolare attenzione al dato stilistico e colloca, soprattutto per questo motivo, il testo biblico alle origini del realismo moderno. Quanto al figuralismo, esso è considerato dal filologo tedesco come un fenomeno di storia della ricezione del testo biblico e più esattamente come un momento di svolta dell’esegesi patristica, e dunque come elemento-chiave per comprendere l’intera cultura tardoantica e medievale, e non solo sulla produzione intellettuale di carattere strettamente religioso. Frye, al contrario, concentra la sua argomentazione sul versante dell’immaginario e sul carattere simbolico-archetipico della “figura”, e quindi sulla figuralità della trama. Anche il critico canadese scorge nel figuralismo l’aspetto qualificante del testo biblico, ma a differenza di Auerbach lo vede agire nel testo e non nell’interpretazione, ipotizzando una dimensione figurale, diciamo così, “immanente” alla Bibbia, presente in re e non limitata all’esegesi cristiana. Cosicché, il carattere tipologico delle singole figure che compongono l’immaginario biblico, così come il carattere tipologico della trama del racconto biblico, sono da lui considerate, diversamente da Auerbach, come elementi oggettivi e non come risultati di una appropriazione culturale. Infine, nel Grande codice, si fa solo occasionalmente menzione di quanto la Bibbia presterà alla letteratura futura: di fatto, l’affermazione blakeiana da cui è ricavato il titolo del libro («The Old and the New Testaments are the Great Code of Art») non è affatto dimostrata, o è dimostrata a un livello che non è quello dell’arte o della letteratura ma quelle delle categorie conoscitive (e in particolare per ciò che concerne la nuova nozione di temporalità inaugurata dal testo biblico).

NB: questo file contiene solamente le pagine iniziali del saggio.