The Motive for Metaphor, by Northrop Frye

"The Motive for Metaphor" is the first essay in Northrop Frye's collection "The Educated Imagination". Metaphor is the basic building block of all literary work, hence "The Motive for Metaphor" is an essay justifying the place Literature has in society. As Frye says, “Every child realises that literature is taking him in a different direction from the immediately useful, and a good many children complain loudly this.” (15) Haha! Adults complain loudly too.

In this essay, Frye proposes that there are three levels of the mind, and three languages for each of them. There is the level of consciousness and awareness. The English of this level is that of ordinary conversation, full of adjectives and nouns, the language of self-expression. Then there is the level of social participation, and the English of this level is the working language of teachers and preachers and politicians and advertisers and lawyers and journalists and scientists. Then, there is the level of the imagination, which produces the literary language of poems and plays and novels. (22-23)

Science starts with the world we live in, and moves towards the imagination. Art, on the other hand, begins with the world we construct in our minds, and moves towards reality. The closer they get to the middle, the more alike they are: "A highly developed science and a highly developed art are very close together, psychologically and otherwise." (24) Just think about the quark and you will see what I mean.

However, this different starting point means that while science is constantly evolving and discovering new and wonderful things about the world we live in — an average scientist today knows more than Isaac Newton; it is different from art because art begins in the imagination, and so nothing is ever completely new. As far as tragedy is concerned, Oedipus Rex is it. It can't get any better than that.

This collection is really quite good. I'm tempted to buy it.