THE IMAGINATION AS A SANCTION OF VALUE: NORTHROP FRYE AND THE USES OF LITERATURE

• Published in: The Centennial review 1977-04, Vol.21 (2), p.105-117
• Main Author: Fischer, Michael R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Critic/Critics/Critical (see also Criticism); Cultural values; Literary; Literary criticism; Literature; Modern art; Moral/Morals; Morality; Poetry; Reality; Romantic poetry; Romanticism; Social ethics; Theory/Theories/Theorem/ Theorizing; Truth; Value/Values/Valuation/ Valuations; Writers
• ISSN: 0162-0177; 2375-4869

N. Frye's defense of literature is within the Romantic tradition of literary theory. Like his Romantic predecessors, Frye defends the moral & social value of literary works on the grounds of their radical autonomy, or their transcendence of the external world as we know it rationally. Unlike the Romantic writers, however, he does not claim that literature provides genuine knowledge even though it departs from the conclusions reached by reason. Instead, Frye argues that literary works furnish infinite imaginative possibilities which admittedly "swallow" or transcend the objective world. Out of these possibilities we choose our moral values. Literature is, thus, useful because it expands our vision of morally meaningful possibilities; unlike rational discourse, it does not merely disclose neutral & valueless facts. This defense of literature, however, has serious ethical shortcomings because it so radically distinguishes imagined moral possibilities from rationally discovered, meaningless facts. Moral choice becomes an arbitrary, purely personal decision to affirm one possibility rather than another & not a judgment which can claim foundation in reason or objective fact. Frye's premises make his own decision to value literature a purely personal choice, not a preference which is defensible in any collective, rational way. His defense of literature undercuts its central contention that literary works are ethically worthwhile. AA.