Northrop Frye and Structuralism: Identity and Difference

DONALD R. RICCOMINI Northrop Frye and Structuralism: Identity and Difference On the cover of Northrop Frye's recent book, The Secular Scripture, there appears a drawing of a series of concentric, expanding seashells. Despite the outward movement of each larger shell, each shell has the same stable centre of origin. Each expansion of the image is identifiable with every other image, yet every image is separate from all the others in its determinate individuality. The whole arrangement resembles a variation on Silenus's boxes, or even on Emerson's circles. As depicted in two dimensions, the drawing of the seashell reveals the structural, or purely lateral and synchronic, orientation of Frye's theory. Yet because of the perspective created by the concentricity of the images (one is almost moved to say 'a natural perspective'), the observer has not only a sense of a lateral or, more precisely, radial distribution of structure , but also a feeling of depth, of a linear movement projecting outward from the centre of the drawing towards the observer. This feeling of depth or linear movement may be said to represent the diachronic, or historical, aspect of Frye's system. Taken together, the synchronic and diachronic movements inscribe the single figure of a spiral. The observer is situated at the centre of this spiral, so that the spiral can be seen spinning simultaneously outward and inward, that is, from a point onto a plane and from a plane onto a point. This spiral image delineates visually the essence of Frye's theory: the relationship between identity and individuality, which may also be understood as the relationship between (1) the structural correspondence of every work of literature to the archetype (and, therefore, to every other work), and (2) the historical uniqueness of every text. The spiral also encapsulates Frye's own organizational methods in his critical texts, the constant circling back towards a central concern, the associative and circular, rather than logical and linear, development of his arguments. On another more expansive level the spiral image captures in space Frye's maturation as a critic. The Secular Scripture, published twenty years after the Anatomy of Criticism, retains the core of interest announced in the earlier work, yet expands outward in its development of that interest. Frye has circled back to the preoccupation with romance, but he is twenty years removed from that preoccupation. In that time a major new school of criticism, structuralism, has apUNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUM E XLIX , NUMBER 1, FALL 1979 0°42-024717911000-0033$01.5°/0 © UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS peared. As is well known, the structuralists tend to emphasize the synchronic rather than diachronic aspects of language and literature.' Indirectly at least this is a strong challenge to Frye, whose system is founded on a fusion of diachrony and synchrony. And so it is natural to ask whether Frye has been outdated or superseded by the advance of the hydra-headed structuralism.2 In attempting to answer this question I shall adopt a dialectical method of analysis, laying the two critical systems against each other and letting them interact as a means of tracing, first, their areas of agreement, and, second, their areas of difference. The third movement of the essay will reveal within the provisional difference between these two schools of criticism an even deeper identity, and within that identity a final difference. This deeper identity involves a common participation by both systems in what Jacques Derrida has called the metaphysics of presence. What matters, however, is the different attitude each critical school takes toward the metaphysics of presence - and it is on the basis of this difference that an assessment can be made concerning the relative power of each critical system as a practicable tool for literary study. Let us begin with the more obvious correlations between Frye and the structuralists. For each school of criticism system is an essential element. And in each case system derives from a model. For Frye the model is mythic, the archetype; for the structuralists the model is linguistic, based on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Both schools proceed by analogy to the model. The structuralists, for instance, follow de Saussure and...