Definition of Motif
Frye discusses motifs, symbols, and allegories in the Second Essay of Anatomy of Criticism. The entire essay is on symbols, and he discusses different kinds of symbol, of which motif and allegory are two. Here is his definition of a motif:
Verbal elements understood inwardly or centripetally, as parts of a verbal structure, are, as symbols, simply and literally verbal elements, or units of a verbal structure. … We may, borrowing a term from music, call such elements motifs. (74)
Later, he goes on to describe an example of a motif:
The word's meaning is therefore, from the centripetal or inward-meaning point of view, variable or ambiguous, to use a term now familiar in criticism, a term which, significantly enough, is pejorative when applied to assertive writing. The word "wit" is said to be employed in Pope's Essay on Criticism in nine different senses. In assertive writing, such a semantic theme with variations could produce nothing but hopeless muddle. In poetry, it indicates the ranges of meanings and contexts that a word may have. The poet does not equate a word with a meaning; he establishes the functions or powers of words. (78)
In these passages, Frye is describing the motif as the lowest or most primitive type of symbol. A motif refers only to the context within a work of literature, rather than referring to things outside the literature like objects, people, and society. That means that a motif is concerned with the sound of a word and the rhythm of language more than it is in referencing something in the world.
Definition of Sign
In Frye’s discussion of symbols, a motif is primarily distinguished from the next level of symbolism, which is the level of signs. Here is his discussion:
But when we look at the symbols of a poem as verbal signs, the poem appears in a different context altogether, and so do its narrative and meaning. Descriptively, a poem is not primarily a work of art, but primarily a verbal structure or set of representative words, to be classed with other verbal structures like books on gardening. In this context narrative means the relation of the order of words to events resembling the events in "life" outside; meaning means the relation of its pattern to a body of assertive propositions, and the conception of symbolism involved is the one which literature has in common, not with the arts, but with other structures in words. (74)
Think of the difference between a motif and a sign this way. When we look at the word “cat” (another example Frye gives) as a word, thinking about how it sounds and how that sound works within the flow of a poem, we are looking at it as a motif. But when “cat” makes us think of cats in the real world, bringing to our mind an image of something from real “life,” then we are treating the word as a sign. Signs are descriptive, pointing to something in the world they describe. In contrast, a motif points inwards at the pure sound of its own language.
Definition of Allegory
The third level of symbolism, in Frye’s account, is the level of an image. In contrast to a sign, which simply describes something in the real world, an image has an added dimension of feeling. In the last example, we made a distinction between looking at “cat” as a word and “cat” as a description of an animal. Now, imagine a reference to a black cat, which symbolizes bad luck. We aren’t just describing a cat, but also invoking a feeling of dread for which the cat stands. That means we’re in the realm of images, which Frye explains is also the realm of allegory. Here is his discussion:
We have actual allegory when a poet explicitly indicates the relationship of his images to examples and precepts, and so tries to indicate how a commentary on him should proceed. A writer is being allegorical whenever it is clear that he is saying "by this I also mean that." If this seems to be done continuously, we may say, cautiously, that what he is writing "is" an allegory. In The Faerie Queene, for instance, the narrative systematically refers to historical examples and the meaning to moral precepts, besides doing their own work in the poem. Allegory, then, is a contrapuntal technique, like canonical imitation in music. Dante, Spenser, Tasso, and Bunyan use it throughout: their works are the masses and oratorios of literature. Ariosto, Goethe, Ibsen, Hawthorne write in a freistimmige [free-style] style in which allegory may be picked up and dropped again at pleasure. But even continuous allegory is still a structure of images, not of disguised ideas, and commentary has to proceed with it exactly as it does with all other literature, trying to see what precepts and examples are suggested by the imagery as a whole. (90)
To recap the first three levels of symbolism: in motifs, language refers to itself, and the meaning is literal; in signs, language refers to something in the world, and the meaning is descriptive; now, in images, language refers to something in the world but is invoking something beyond that thing, and the meaning is allegorical.
