A Reader Who Quarrels With Postulates, Who Dislikes Hamlet Because He Does Not Believe That There Are Ghosts Or That People Speak In Pentameters, Clearly Has No Business In Literature. He Cannot Distinguish Fiction From Fact, And Belongs In The Same Category As The People Who Send Checks To Radio Stations For The Relief Of Suffering Heroines In Soap Operas.

-Northrop Frye

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A Reader Who Quarrels With Postulates, Who

Northrop Frye

A Reader Who Quarrels With Postulates, Who Dislikes Hamlet Because He Does Not Believe That There Are Ghosts Or That People Speak In Pentameters, Clearly Has No Business In Literature. He Cannot Distinguish Fiction From Fact, And Belongs In The Same Category As The People Who Send Checks To Radio Stations For The Relief Of Suffering Heroines In Soap Operas.

Topic

Believe

People

Suffering

Poetry Is The Most Direct And Simple Means Of Expressing Oneself In Words: The Most Primitive Nations Have Poetry, But Only Quitewell Developed Civilizations Can Produce Good Prose. So Don't Think Of Poetry As A Perverse And Unnatural Way Of Distorting Ordinary Prose Statements: Prose Is A Much Less Natural Way Of Speaking Than Poetry Is. If You Listen To Small Children, And To The Amount Of Chanting And Singsong In Their Speech, You'll See What I Mean.

Children

Mean

Thinking