Sherry Chandler » Frye on Beauty

Frye on Beauty

I have never understood why the question of “beauty” should have a peculiarly close relationship to the arts. Beauty may be predicated on many things that are not works of art. Works of art seem to me to be concerned with a certain kind of structure, or process, found in them but not in other things. Structure if, with the Classical critics, we assert the priority of the hen; process if, with the Romantics, we assert the priority of the egg.

— from Northrop Fry Unbuttoned. Wit and Wisdom from the Notebooks and Diaries (Gnomon, 2004)

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