Krishna
In fact, this small (less than a hundred pages) book is a series of lectures Northrop Frye, an ex Principal of Victoria College at the University of Toronto, given at Massey Hall. (By the way, he could not look more like a professor even if he set out to design his looks from scratch!)
The above summary should be enough to make you throw the book out of your To Read pile, but tarry a minute, and hear me out.
Though this is a series of lectures by a University Professor, the intended audience was the general public, and like `An Inconvenient Truth‘, the topic may be serious and out of the ordinary, but it is presented in a very interesting way.
The book attempts to answer the question, “Why do students need to study literature? What use is poetry and fiction in the real world? Ican understand a student taking up Chemistry, Mathematics or even (shudder) Economics, but how will you use literature in the workplace? I understand that Reading and Writing are important skills but that should be enough, right?”
To convince sceptics of the value of literature, Northrop asks us to imagine a family shipwrecked in an uninhabited island, like Robinson Crusoe. But unlike the eponymous book, here we are not interested in the tools crafted by the family. Here we explore the family’s mental needs. In a brilliant set of logical steps, Northrop `proves‘ that the mind craves literature after most basic of the needs have been satisfied.
He talks about the world we live in, and an idealized world that everyone aspires to, and relates how literature fills the gap between the two. He contrasts the practical skills like science and engineering to the imaginative skills of poetry and fiction, and gives amazing insights into the evolution of both.
Particularly fascinating are the passages that talk about how all fiction is the same, running through the same grooves – even supposedly radical ones that crop up from time to time. He also argues that literature does not change as science changes. He shows how the myths and legends form the basis of all learning in literature and how the basic patterns of literature are woven into it. His arguments about the historical figure of Achilles, the mythical figure of Achilles in Literature and the difference between the two are absorbing. And so are his descriptions on how religious figures pass into mythology when that religion dies (say, Ancient Roman religion) and take on a literary quality to survive and even thrive.
A lot more material is covered in the lectures, including how the literature covers `what I want it to be‘ and the other sciences cover `what is‘; why literature has tragedies if the world is about `what I want it to be‘; and so on.
He concludes the lectures with why and how literary training will help in everyday situations, even if you are in a non related profession like an accountant, a conference convener, an advertisement executive or whatever.
A really fascinating book, full of `Wow, I did not think about it!’ insights, and worth reading.
I will give it a 8/10
— Krishna