"What if criticism is a science as well as an art?" Vigorous, encyclopaedically erudite and genuinely witty, Northrop Frye's seminal masterpiece of critical theory was the first work to argue for the status of literary criticism as a science, a true discipline whose techniques and approaches could be systematically - and beneficially - evaluated, quantified and categorized. Frye's 'polemical introduction' states the aims and limitations of his project and demonstrates why criticism is necessary ("A public that tries to do without criticism ... brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory ... Criticism can talk, and all the arts are dumb"). The four essays that follow focus on the theory of modes; different uses of symbolism; the myths and seasonal stories that underlie comedy, romance, tragedy and satire; and, finally, rhetoric and rhythm. Whether discussing Aristophanes or Jane Austen, Browning or the Bible, Chaucer or Conrad, Wagner or Wordsworth, Frye emphasizes the importance of using a variety of critical tools. His Anatomy "attacks no method of criticism ... what it attacks are the barriers between the methods."