ABSTRACT
Humanist criticism, which has as its object the quality of life as well as works of art, no longer has authority. The triumph of modernism is the defeat of criticism. The critical spirit is the spirit of resistance, and "traditional" art has the critical spirit built into it. It is precisely because modernism has evacuated the critical spirit from art that there is an urgent need for a virile humanist criticism. Modern criticism has in effect become a nonresistant imitation of modern art—in spirit and in some cases in form. Northrop Frye's view of criticism is, of course, un-Marxist, except for the fact that both Frye and the Marxists wish to put literary study on a scientific basis. In his book The Critical Path, which is an account of literature in its social and historical context, Frye shows some understanding of the predicament of humanism.
