Summary of Chapter 1
The “First Essay” of the Anatomy of Criticism is titled, “Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes.” Frye derives his definition of “mode” from the second paragraph of Aristotle’s Poetics, in which Aristotle seems to classify kinds of fiction according to how powerful the hero of the story is. In particular, Frye says, Aristotle seems to be interested in how powerful heroes are, in comparison to their environments and in comparison to the average reader or “man.” For instance, in myths, the hero is a god who is stronger than both his environment, and other men. In contrast, a romance like King Arthur has a hero who is stronger than his environment but is still a man, like the reader, rather than a god. Frye would call these different “modes”: in a mythic mode, the hero is more powerful than everything, whereas in the romantic mode, he is only more powerful than the other characters within the story.
Frye thinks there are five modes, or powers of action. The mythic and the romantic are the first two: both characterized by a hero more powerful than their environment. Then there is the “high mimetic,” in which the hero is more powerful than other men, but not more powerful than his environment, like in the epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Then there is the “low mimetic,” in which the hero is an everyman, equal in power to everyone; this characterizes most novels. And, finally, there is the “ironic,” in which the hero is weak and inferior. Rather than identify with or admire the hero, we pity him. All in all, five modes, moving from the most powerful of heroes to the least: mythic, romantic, high mimetic, low mimetic, and ironic. Moreover, according to Frye, literature has tended to move, historically, from mythic to ironic. We started off with stories about gods, then stories about strong men and leaders, moving our way to the everymen like us, to the pitiful men beneath us. The five modes name a spectrum of character agency at the same time that they are steps in a historical trajectory.
In the rest of the chapter, Frye looks at each of the five modes in one of four different forms. The four different forms are tragic, comic, episodic, and encyclopedic. Tragic and comic forms are “fictional” forms. That means they deal primarily with the stories of people. They are driven by plot. Episodic and encyclopedic forms, in contrast, are “thematic forms.” That means they are primarily interested in “themes” or ideas. Tragic forms deal with plots in which characters are separated from their societies, whereas comic forms deal with plots in which they are integrated. Similarly, in episodic forms, the writer expressed an individualistic idea, whereas in encyclopedic forms, he expresses social ideas, acting as a kind of cultural spokesman. Tragic and episodic forms are more individualistic, and comic and encyclopedic forms are more collective.
Now, Chapter 1 is essentially a description of all the different possibilities of combining modes and forms. Modes, we have seen, are about power, and because each mode belongs to a different time in history, they also refer to a particular epoch. When you look at the five modes within a particular form, then, you are looking at different configurations of power, and different historical tendencies within a particular kind of story. Frye starts with tragedy. A mythic tragedy is “Dionysian,” dealing with the death of gods, including the death of Christ. A romantic tragedy is “elegiac,” dealing with the death of admirable men, like in Beowulf. High mimetic tragedy refers to classic tragedies like Othello or Oedipus, in which we experience pity and fear on behalf of the hero. In low mimetic tragedy, in contrast, we experience pathos at the fate of everyday characters, in novels like Madame Bovary. And, finally, in ironic tragedy, such as in the modernist stories by Franz Kafka, we experience not so much pity for the heroes, but ridicule.
Next, Frye turns to comic modes. Mythic comedy refers to “Apollonian” stories about the community of gods, including Hercules. Romantic comedy is about the goodness of nature; it is idyllic and pastoral. High mimetic comedies are about people who build a social world. Here, Frye includes Shakespeare’s classic comedies. Low mimetic comedies are about the social climbing of characters, usually resulting in marriage. This is the story of Cinderella, for example. Finally, ironic comedies satirize society or give us the worst characters in order to symbolically identify and expel them from society.
Episodic forms, remember, are individualistic and thematic. In other words, they are about ideas expressed by the poet for the poet. Mythic episodic forms, therefore, are prophesies, because this combines the mythic sense of the divine with the individualistic and thematic sense of the episodic. The romantic episodic form is about a poet’s movement between worlds or states of consciousness. High mimetic episodic literature looks outwards to someone admirable, whereas low mimetic episodic literature looks inwards at a state of consciousness. Finally, an episodic form in an ironic mode is about a fleeting moment in a poet’s life, like in much of the "decadent" poetry of late 19th century French symbolists, like Rimbaud.
That leaves the modes of the encyclopedic form, in which the poet speaks for his whole society. A mythic mode of this form is scripture: the voice of God rather than the voice of the individual prophet. In romantic encyclopedic literature, a poet remembers the history of his people or tells a story that seems mythical, except it is about men instead of gods. Here, Frye includes Dante’s Divine Comedy. High mimetic encyclopedic literature is about the leaders of a society, whereas low mimetic encyclopedic literature is about everyday people. Finally, ironic encyclopedic literature is about observing rather than interpreting, and it is often about the writing of literature itself. Here, Frye includes modernist writing such as T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the novels of Virginia Woolf, often told in a stream of consciousness.
Analysis of Chapter 1
It is not a surprise that Frye begins his discussion with Aristotle. In the Introduction, Frye argued that genre criticism has not progressed since Aristotle. This chapter isn’t about genres, which will have to wait until the last chapter, but it signals its debt to Aristotle nonetheless. There is something timeless about Aristotle that makes him a recurring point of departure. At the same time, Aristotle legitimates Frye’s project. Turning to a revered ancient philosopher is Frye’s way of assuring his reader that what follows will have wide legitimacy, accounting for literary works old and new, classic and modern.
There is a sense of transcending history that Aristotle provides, in other words. But on page two of this chapter, Frye also announces his interest in history. The modes aren’t just transcendent and timeless. They have a history; each mode dominates in a different epoch. In this way, Frye reconciles a sense of change with a sense of a permanent system. It’s important to see connections between the past and the present. But that doesn’t mean that the literary system can’t evolve and build upon itself. Indeed, that is how Frye argues for the literary system as its own system, distinct from, say, philosophy. It evolves on its own, assimilating new works while continuing to apply to old ones.
This chapter is the shortest chapter in Anatomy of Criticism, but it provides a model for all the others. Notice the general trajectory: Frye began with an insight, here an insight into defining modes according to a power of action. Armed with this insight, he made a list of the different kinds of mode that were logically possible, according to the different possible configurations of a hero’s actions in relation to his world; and then he filled in this list with examples drawn from Western culture. This is Frye’s method in a nutshell: derive a common principle for a given literary category, make a table of the possible species of that category, and go look for members of those species. Throughout, Frye’s method is logical and taxonomic.
Another part of Frye’s method is to repeat distinctions he makes in one context in another context. In this chapter, he starts by making a distinction between tragedy and comedy. That distinction has to do with the integration of a society: in tragedies, there is separation, and in comedy, cohesion. He then applies this in another context that at first seems to have nothing to do with it. In thematic literature, there are episodic modes, which are individualistic, and encyclopedic modes, which are social. Thus, we can see how the tragedy/comedy distinction within fiction repeats within thematic literature as a difference between individualism and collectivism. Throughout Anatomy of Criticism, Frye will make similar moves, adopting a pattern and re-applying it in order to make his system logically coherent and formally repetitive.
Another important part of his discussion here, which is characteristic of later discussions as well, is the idea that different categories are not mutually exclusive. Frye says fictions are plot-driven and thematic works are idea-driven, which at first would seem to suggest that they are completely separate. But Frye says that all works have ideas and narratives, so it’s more a matter of emphasis. Rather than exclusive categories, he prefers to think about “aspects”: different ways in which a text can be conceived. Similarly, future categories, such as the subgenres of fiction in essay 4, will be flexible. The point for Frye is that categories provide a set of keywords and ideas for understanding a text, but a work of literature doesn’t have to belong exclusively to one category in order to benefit from those tools.
