Bible and Literature in the Critical Theory of Northrop Frye

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The structuralist endeavor to place a work of art into a 'system' or 'framework' lacked a vital point - that is the prophetic design of the art, that a work of art not only does locate itself in the multitude of works existing prior to it, but also create a vision with it. This is why Northrop Frye (1912-1991) preferred himself to be called, rather, a schematic thinker and not a systematic one. In Anatomy of Criticism he writes that what literature and literary criticism need is a conceptual framework (6). Concepts are schematic because they are designed to achieve a conceived meaning and their being systematic is more mechanical than imaginative. The works of art, according to Frye, have a prophetic character, in the sense that they become operative in a cultural, social, religious and pre-eminently a literary universe, which are directly and indirectly shaped by the Great Code, which is undoubtedly the Bible. Blake calls Bible, the 'Great Code' of all arts. The clearest evidence to this is that it has proper beginning, the intended wish-fulfillment, suppression of the wish, and lastly the happy ending with wish-fulfillment.