Assignment 1

By reading the first lecture titled “The Motive for Metaphor” written by Northrop Frye for the first time it seemed confusing till I read it again and figured it out.

One of the most important quote that Northrop Frye had mentioned in this lecture was “Literature doesn’t evolve or improve or progress.” By saying this Northrop Frye tries to convince the audience that literature will never change for good or bad although other categories might. The example that Northrop Frye had used was how science has come a long way, and how it has evolved and progressed since there is better technology for us to use which allows us to experiment which was not available in the past “Science learns more and more about the world as it goes on.”(pg.9). He also tells us that even the greatest scientist back then like Newton may not be smarter than a average scientist now.

I think that Frye is trying to prove that literature will never be better now or in the future than it was in the past. If anything in my opinion he could argue that literature in the past was better than it is now. I argue this because it has been over a hundred years and yet there is no better play writer than Shakespeare himself. His plays are still performed not because there a classic but there also the best that can be enjoyed today and by many generations after. Unlike science techniques that keep on changing sometimes even yearly. So what I am trying to say here is that I do agree with Frye.

It seems to me that McCullough and Frye are on the same page about how they agree on literature. The point that was made by McCullough was that “even a old book is new to the person who opens it for the first time.” What he tries to say is that it doesn’t matter when the book was published but it matter when it was read, because there nothing else like it in the world.

In my opinion this is why even till this day we read plays and novel written many years ago, because to our generation they are still new and this is why they will be read for years to come.