BOO KS
285
strictly personal capacity, never
In
regard to literary matters.) For
James's utter silence concerning what is supposed to have been the
dominant influence upon his novels--indeed, the conceptual system
he
"used"
in structuring them-Mr. Anderson has a remarkable
explanation: "the novelist was incapable of conveying information
simply
as
information; he had to give a dramatic form
to
everything." In
regard to literary topics this is hardly true, since James was avid for,
and loved to note down, such information. But suppose it were true: why
then did the novelist not give "dramatic form" to his memories–
surely they would have been affecting-of having worked with his
father's "emblems," just as he gave "dramatic form" in the prefaces
and Notebooks to his memories of having worked with so many other
elements of his experience and observation?
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of Mr. Anderson's method is
his treatment of those
novels--The Europeans, Washington Square,
The Bostonians, What Maisie Knew
and
The Awkward Age-which,
he admits, cannot be squeezed into his scheme. He simply puts them aside,
casts them off: they do not behave according to the rules laid down for
"the American James." But when you are proposing a revolutionary
approach to a great writer like James, an approach which renders
Anatomy of Criticism
By Northrop Frye
In this book, Northrop Frye attempts to construct a theory of criticism
the principles of which could apply to the whole of literature and account
for every valid type of critical procedure. In the words of one advance
reader, it is "a sort of Summa, or Baconian
Nouum Organum,
for literary
criticism." The book is divided into four parts, each dealing with a different
type
of criticism-historical, ethical, archetypal, and rhetorical. The author
defines criticism as "the whole work of scholarship and taste concerned
with literature which is a part of what is variously called liberal education,
culture, or the study of the humanities" and starts from the principle that
"criticism is not simply a part of this larger activity, but an
essential
part
of it."
404 pages. $6
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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton, New Jersey
