The Well-Tempered Critic.

Frye, Northrop.

Published by Bloomington, Indiana University Press., 1963

About this Item

First Edition. 20.7cm x 14cm. 160 pages. Original hardcover in original price-clipped illustrated dustjacket. In protective Mylar. Fine in publisher's cloth-covered boards and like save a small closed tear to the bottom dust jacket. Presentation copy, signed and inscribed by Northrop Frye to Helen Randell on the title-page. Few lovers of literature, students, or even scholars are trained in the art of criticism. While our universities emphasize research and specialization, the student, as a critic, is largely self-taught. In this book Mr. Frye established some basic tools for criticism because "without the possibility of criticism as a structure of knowledge, culture, and society with it, would be condemned to a morbid antagonism between the supercilious refined and the resentful unrefined." These critical principles may enable the well-read layman as well as the literary researcher to respond to worls of literature of widely divergent styles and allow his critical judgement to relate them to literary culture as a whole. Mr. Frye begins by noting a problem in elementary and undergraduate education which illustrates the need for intensive critical training: namely the average undergraduate's use of an entirely different language in speaking than in writing. In today's educational effort "ordinary speech is left to original sin" and cannot normally be committed to paper. On the other hand, "if we write in a way that we never speak, the first that disappears is the rhythm.the second. the colour, and the third.the sense of personality. Prose is therefore not successfully defined as the language of ordinary speech. How much more is required of it is demonstrated in Mr. Frye's subsequent discussion. Distinguishing between high, middle, and low style, he points out that there are primary rhythms of verbal expression: the rhythm of prose, the rhythm of ordinary speech and the rhythm of poetry. Singly or in combination these may be found on any of the levels of style. Low style need not be substandard, but can be literature, as in "Huckleberry Finn." Conversely, high style is not "high-flown style" but "the voice of the genuine individual reminding us of our genuine selves, and of our role as members of a society, in contrast to a mob." Mr. Frye enriches his discussion of the basic rhythms as they appear in these three styles of writing with a wealth of examples ranging from Alexander Pope and Darwin to Ogden Nash and college freshman themes.

Seller Inventory # 40816AB

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Well-Tempered Critic.
• Publisher: Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
• Publication Date: 1963
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Weight: 1200 grams
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Varia