Anatomy of Criticism

This article is about the book by Northrop Frye. For the book by Henry Hazlitt, see The Anatomy of Criticism.
Anatomy of Criticism
A scan of the front cover of the first edition. The cover reads: "Anatomy of Criticism, four essays by Northrop Frye. Princeton University Press".
Cloth front cover of the first edition
AuthorNorthrop Frye
LanguageEnglish
SubjectLiterary criticism; rhetoric
PublisherPrinceton University Press
Publication date
1957
Publication placeCanada
Media typePrint
Pages383
OCLC230039

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 1957) is a book by Canadian literary critic and theorist Northrop Frye that attempts to formulate an overall view of the scope, theory, principles, and techniques of literary criticism derived exclusively from literature. Frye consciously omits all specific and practical criticism, instead offering classically inspired theories of modes, symbols, myths and genres, in what he termed "an interconnected group of suggestions." The literary approach proposed by Frye in Anatomy was highly influential in the decades before deconstructivist criticism and other expressions of postmodernism came to prominence in American academia circa 1980s.[1]

Frye's four essays are sandwiched between a "Polemical Introduction" and a "Tentative Conclusion." The four essays are titled[2] "Historical Criticism: Theory of Modes", "Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols", "Archetypal Criticism: A Theory of Myths", and "Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres."

  1. ^ See Frank Lentricchia, After the New Criticism (1980), in which Chapter One, 'The Place of Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism ', begins by calling the book 'monumental'.
  2. ^ Frye, Northrop (1971). Anatomy of criticism; four essays. Internet Archive. Princeton, Princeton University Press.