Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays

Review
Simply overpowering in the originality of its main concepts, and dazzling in the brilliance of its applications of them. Here is a book fundamental enough to be entitled Principia Critica.
(Commonweal )

An attempt to give a synoptic view of the scope, theory, principles, and techniques of literary criticism … the book is continuously informed by original and incisive thought, by fine perception, and by striking observations upon literature in general and upon particular works.
(Modern Language Review )

Does literary criticism need a conceptual universe of its own? Professor Frye has written a brilliantly suggestive and encyclopedically erudite book to prove that it does; and he has done his impressive best to provide a framework for this universe. His book is a signal achievement; it is tight, hard, paradoxical, and genuinely witty. . . . [Professor Frye] is the most exciting critic around; I do not think he is capable of writing a page which does not offer some sort of intellectual reward.
(Hudson Review )

This is a brilliant but bristling book, an important though thoroughly controversial attempt to establish order in a disorderly field…. Mr. Frye has wit, style, audacity, immense learning, a gift for opening up new and unexpected perspectives in the study of literature…. It would be hopeless to attempt a brief summary of Mr. Frye's dazzlingly counterpointed classifications.
(The Nation )