Northrop Frye Myth Criticism Research

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) is the representative of the genre myth criticism, at the same time he is one of the Western literary theorist of the 20th century landmark as well. Frye began to embark on the road of criticism from "new criticism" of refuting, and attempt by the "Myth" of this essential concept to construct a criticism system of combining independent and scientific. "Myth" is not only the core theory of Frye's criticism but also is easy to ignored and misunderstand at the current research about Frye. This dissertation aims to set "myth" as a starting point, in order to a comprehensive interpretation and specific analysis for Frye myth criticism system.Firstly, the first part begins from the "theoretical origin" and "realistic context". The background theory of Frye's criticism is elaborated thoroughly, and laid the foundation for subsequent detailed analysis; The second part is on the basis of the book Anatomy of criticism, combining with the theoretical meaning of "myth", Frye's criticism theory, archetype theory, and cyclical theory are interpreted and analyzed particularly. Therefore, the main theory of Frye can be comprehended directly. In addition, in his later works, with the expansion and extension of the theory, Frye established the second dimension which is beyond literature dimension-the culture dimension. In third part of this article, the cultural significance of the myth criticism is discussed in depth; Finally, as for the fourth part, it discusses the practical meaning of myth criticism through analyzing the current trend of new mythicism. And thus it is beneficial to evaluate Frye's Utopian idealism, as well as to look forward the future of the move-moment of myth renaissance.