Summary of the Introduction
Frye begins The Anatomy of Criticism with a “Polemical Introduction,” which in turn is primarily focused on defining his central term: criticism. According to Frye, this word means “the whole work of scholarship and taste concerned with literature.” He dismisses a “parasitic” view of criticism that thinks criticism simply imitates or copies the literature it engages. Instead, Frye argues, criticism is essential to our understanding of what literature even is. Without criticism, we would not even know to study and learn from Shakespeare, for instance; it is criticism that directs our attention to the importance of Shakespeare and helps us understand what messages he has to offer civilization.
That does not mean criticism is completely autonomous from, or has power over, literature. Frye warns against criticism that he calls “deterministic.” This kind of criticism says the meaning of literature is completely caused, or determined, by something else, in particular a special field of knowledge. A geographer might say the meaning of a play by Shakespeare is to be found in where it was written and where it takes place. A Marxist philosopher might say the meaning of a play is to be found in the class dynamics that it expresses. And a psychoanalyst like Freud might say the meaning is explained by psychological factors like dreams and repressed desires. In each of these cases, literature is reduced and subordinated to “an externally derived critical attitude.” Instead, Frye argues, criticism should develop from the actual object it studies: literary works themselves.
Criticism, for Frye, is a subject of study with literature as its object. You can’t learn literature directly, but you can learn how to interpret literature. Frye makes this comparison: “Criticism … is to art what history is to action and philosophy to wisdom.” That means criticism is a knowledge about something, rather than the thing itself. You can considering something historically and you can consider something philosophically. Similarly, you can consider something critically, which means that, for Frye, criticism is a distinct mode of inquiry in the same way that history and philosophy are. History explores relations among events; philosophy among ideas. Criticism studies the relations among works of literature.
Two important things follow from thinking of criticism in this way. First, criticism achieves a kind of autonomy. It has its own sphere of knowledge, just like history and philosophy, and it should not be subordinated to schools of thought like Marxism and psychoanalysis. Second, criticism is like a science. In studying the relations among works of literature, criticism assumes literature has a system. There is an order to the features that works of literature can have in common, for instance. The task of criticism is in part to reveal this order, in the same way that physicists, studying the movements of objects, reveal the underlying laws of force and gravity that order objects.
Frye spends some time discussing what it means to think of criticism as a science. It does not mean we study literature quantitatively, or that we run experiments with literary texts. Instead, the scientific nature Frye is interested in is the relation between texts and the larger system. Every time you see a ball drop, you are witnessing an example of gravity. Similarly, every time you read a text, you might be witnessing some larger process to which the text belongs. Connecting a text to this larger process is thinking scientifically or, more specifically, thinking inductively. You work towards larger categories through examples.
The ambition of The Anatomy of Criticism, Frye announces, is to provide a roadmap to some of these categories. That means considering a large survey of literature, just like a physicist would observe multiple balls dropping: from different heights, with different weights, etc. After surveying a lot of literature, we can name the most important categories operating through literature. Frye cautions, however, that the system of categories he will provide is just one offering. This is why he calls the chapters to follow “essays,” a word which originally meant “attempts” (from the French word essayer, to try). These are attempts at providing a scheme for organizing literature. He will offer four essays, or attempts, at four different types of categories: modes, symbols, myths, and genres.
Frye concludes the Introduction by addressing the “strong emotional repugnance felt by many critics toward any form of schematization in poetics.” Others argue that talking about categories of literature—whether modes, symbols, myths, or genres—reduces the art of literature. A work of art is supposed to exceed classification. But Frye reminds us that art and criticism are not the same thing. A work of art can be unique even while criticism or interpretation of it still draws upon traditions and categories to which the work of art belongs. Considering the system of literature does not mean we give up our appreciation of literature.
Analysis of the Introduction
To understand Anatomy of Criticism and its impact on literary criticism in the 1950s, it is useful to put the book in its social and historical context. Frye was writing in the decade after WWII, and this had two important consequences. One was the Cold War, which among other things saw a rise in public interest in the sciences. The public was obsessed with science given the anxieties surrounding the atomic bomb, one of man’s most impressive, and dangerous, technological developments. In this period in which science was associated with so much destruction, Frye calls for a scientific literary criticism that moves in the opposite direction. He wants to humanize the sciences, and literary study is a central component of the humanities. He taps into a scientific zeitgeist, but redirects it to other purposes.
A second consequence of the post-WWII period was a significant increase in the number of students entering universities and colleges in North America. This was in part because of the GI Bill in the United States, and similar types of legislation elsewhere, which covered the tuition of returning veterans. In this period, it was important to have literary methods that could be taught to a large number of students. One such method was associated with what came to called New Criticism, which focuses on the close reading of literary texts. The idea behind New Criticism was that a text could be understood completely by itself, if you looked closely at patterns of language within it, and did not require outside information, such as biography or history. Frye’s book supports this enterprise, because it is looking for the principles common to literary works themselves. His book also acts as a sort of literary textbook for the new generation of students entering the university. He provides both a synoptic view of Western literature and some keywords and concepts for dissecting literature.
Most importantly, like the New Critics who advocated for the autonomy of the literary work, Frye advocates for the autonomy of literary study. He wants literature to be its own thing—unique and separate from, for instance, philosophy and history. In making such a massive study of literature, Frye is protecting his home turf. With so many students coming into the university, he wants to remind people of the fundamental importance of literary study.
This is also why Frye rejects strands in literary study that are home-based in other disciplines, such as Marxism, which belongs to political economy, and psychoanalysis, which belongs to psychology. Drawing on other disciplines to study literature dilutes literary study, in Frye’s account. Frye’s turn to science also defends against this. Although calling literature a science would seem to give up literature’s autonomy, the lesson Frye draws from the natural sciences is that, in order to explain a phenomena, you need look no further than the phenomena. Thus, science helps to close off literature once more. All you need are literary texts in order to do literary study.
The scientific distinction Frye offers can also be extended even further than he sometimes goes. For instance, he concludes the Introduction by defending a systematic criticism against the charge of being reductionist or anti-art. He is saying that we can study categories without losing respect for individual examples. Here he might have provided an example from physics, which he refers to so frequently throughout the Introduction. Physics can explain how rainbows are formed, for instance, as drops of water in the air; just as botany can tell us how plants grow and evolve. But understanding the science of rainbows and forests does not prevent us from recognizing the beauty of a rainbow or standing in awe of a particular forest. So, too, might we love Shakespeare, while also gaining knowledge of the fundamental forms in which Shakespeare participates.
