N.Frye And The Study On "the Bible And Literature

The studies of N. Frye have been carried on in mainland China for quite a long time. However, the seemingly rich fruits, because of a scarcity of materials and the lack of open-mindness, are often lost in a tunnel vision, which is especially true in the search of N. Frye's study on "the Bible and literature" or biblical literature. Therefore, this paper, on the one hand, aims to evaluate N. Frye's works concerning biblical literature, while on the other, to construe his ideological system from a brand-new angle of view.This paper mainly consists of three parts, i. e. the preface, the text proper and the epilogue, which will be briefly illustrated as follows:The preface first makes a comprehensive study of past research on N. Frye as well as the status quo , from which the theoretical center of this paper has been fixed on?Frye's study of biblical literature; then, it summarizes the developing results on biblical literature. With a view to N. Frye's unique idea about the Bible and literature, this author demarcates the concept of biblical literature as used in this paper.The text proper includes three relevant sections:Section one, Influence: tlie neglected W. Blake. This section, instead of giving an all-sided evaluation of Frye's achievement in the study of Blake, intends to deduce Blake's three essential factors (the biblical literature model, visional poetics and the Gnosticism) and points out his enlightenment and influence on Frye's investigation of biblical literature. Blake gathers up Romanticism's influence on Frye by not only reca-pitulating its common features but also bearing a sense of emphatic irony.Section two, Method: the understanding of myth-archetypal criticism from another [joint of view. Noting the significance of myth-archetypal criticism in providing a methodology for the study of biblical literature, this paper analyzes from the perspective of biblical literature the theory and demonstration of myth-archetypal criticism, revealing the essence of biblical literature study underlying myth-archetypal criticism. This is proved by the following four points.Firstly, the Bible serves as a starting point where myth-archetypal criticism develops its theory. Frye claims with no equivocacy the literary archetype's reliance on the Bible's symbolic system, and his literary interpretation of the Bible deviates from the traditional one. Acknowledging the superiority of the Bible over other cultural classical works in its contribution to myth-archetypal criticism, he admits the Bible's prerequisite tolerance of other cultural classical works.Secondly, the myth of the Bible determines the classification and the symbolic meaning of an archetype which is subdivided into imageries of the apocalyptic, the demonic, and the analogical. The A/xxalypse indicates the apocalyptic imagery' s basic principle, i.e. concrete uni-verscil, which is mutualy illuminating with the concept of Trinity. The hell and the nether world are signs of demonic imagery, and the demarcation of the analogical imagery is carried along with the mode of Jacob's ladder.Thirdly, Frye is under the double influence of Jacob's ladder and God's resurrection in the formation of his theory of archetypal inytlios . Above all, this theory, conforming to the thinking mode and the mode of the universe, is capable of demonstration through a spatial graph. Jacob's ladder is an important literary image in the Bible, and its two derivative thoughts, namely, the Chains of Being and Ptolematic system,are innately inseparable from literature. Besides, the two orientations in the archetypal mytlios , namely, the ups and dowixs or the comedy and tragedy, is identical with the changes of seasons and god's resurrection.Then comes the last point. In Anotomy of criticism , Frye views the Bible to be a literary work in the encyclopedic form, which brings about the unification of the western literature and its culture. Frye is indebted to exegesis from which he gains insights, resulting in his anagogic crticism theory.Section t...