Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Questioning Northrop Frye’s Adaptation of Vico
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Questioning Northrop Frye’s Adaptation of Vico
M a rc o A n dr e ac c h io
marcoandreacchio@ymail.com
Preliminary Assessment of Frye’s Contentions
The late Northrop Frye (1912-1991) stands out as one of
the most acclaimed and influential literary critics of the twentieth century.
Among the authors from whom Frye acknowledged to have drawn inspiration
we find the political philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). But
Frye’s appreciation of Vico came with significant reservations. While Frye
found Vico useful to the extent that the Italian philosopher could be very
freely adapted to Frye’s literary vision, beyond that point Frye would not
“buy” what Vico had to say. While being fully aware that his adaptation of
Vico did not coincide with the philosopher’s overall theoretical position, Frye
set out to put some elements of Vico’s work to use outside of their original
argumentative setting.
that Vico:
In his volume Words with Power (Frye 1992), Frye contends
(1) discovered “the principle that all verbal structures
descend from mythological origins” so that “what is true for us is what we
have made”: “What is true for us is a creation in which we have participated,
whether we have been in on the making of it or on the responding to it” (82;
cf. xii, 24, 29, 37, 135, 185);
(2) taught that “communication from an unknown world
began with a thunderclap, taken by early men (then giants) to be the voice of
God. They dashed terrified into caves, dragging their women behind them,
and thereby instituting private property” (112);
(3) believed that history is cyclical, or that it moves in a
“cyclical rotation” (121, 164).
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