American Critical Essays
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American Critical Essays edited by Norman Foerster
and elsewhere, lists Prosser Hall Frye as a humanist who arrived at his position largely independently. A reading of Literary Reviews and Criticism (1908), Romance and Tragedy (1922), and Visions and Chimeras (1929) makes perfectly clear that he and Babbitt especially had much in common. Frye speaks of life and literature being "vindicated against naturalism/' of Zola lacking "moral sense," and of "these modern scientific self-complacent humanitarianisms." Frye's manner is usually academic, disinterested, and assured, but when he undertakes to examine the characteristics of romantic literature he can rise to satiric barbs worthy of Babbitt. German romanticism is a work of "degeneration, deformation, and disease," and "it bears on its front the stigmata of its infirmitiesabsurdity, folly, inanity, and confusion." When Frye was not giving rein to his prejudices, he could write with acuteness, moderation, and clarity. "The Idea of Greek Tragedy," in Romance and Tragedy, furnishes an excellent account of the general differences between Elizabethan and Greek tragedy and the development from Aeschylus to Euripides.
Norman Foerster (1887-1972)
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