Compreendendo a crítica literária de Northrop Frye : uma síntese de classicismo, psicologia e mitologia

Abstract

The following paper presents a study of the canadian critic Northrop Frye’s literary criticism, specifically the concept of Literary System. Starting from the partial vision exposed by literature theory manuals published in portuguese, the following paper tracks back Frye’s criticism foundings, from literary and philosophical classicism, jungian psychology and compared myhtology. From classic literary tradition, Frye inherits the aristotelian observation that the poetics, which in turn is extended to literature, consists in mimesis, besides being higher than history. Moreover, the critic inherits from Eliot’s neoclassicism the notion itself from classic and literary tradition as a system. From classic philosophy, Frye inherits a mythological appreciation done by Vico and the notion of a priori structures of experience proposed by Kant, which the critic identifies the human capacity of metaphor use. From jungian psychology, the critic incorporates the notion of archetype and collective unconscious to substantiate the repetition and the sharing of literary images. From compared mythology, specifically the works of James Frazer, Robert Graves and W.B. Yeats, the critic inherits a series of imagery myths and patterns observed in literary system. The paper still demonstrate the conceptual crystallization done by the canadian critic about the analyzed material, starting from metaphor and identity uses on literature, to the concepts of primary and secondary mythology, in addition to concern’s and freedom’s myths (open and closed) and the author’s personal imagery. Given this explanation, considering that Frye believed that the literary criticism should interpenetrate itself with others matters and given the influence of these matters and the literary sistem in his own criticism, the following paper concludes that Frye’s criticism synthesize classicism, psychology and comparative myhtology.