Consideraciones sobre la teoría del desplazamiento de Northrop Frye

Abstract

Although the concept of displacement occupies a central place in the thought and criticism of Northrop Frye, it never received a coherent and unitary formulation because it was mentioned and discussed in different works in terms which not always fitted together. The first part of the paper is an attempt to outline a theory of displacement which Frye never systematized explicitly, bringing together the ideas provided by different texts and, in so doing, showing important discrepancies among them, especially between the Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and The Secular Scripture (1976)-which offers, in the author's view, a revised and more accurate description of displacement. The second part is both a demonstration of the validity of this view and an illustration of the theory which results from it, focusing on the evolution of a universal story pattern or plot-structure, the descent into the Underworld, from Sir Orfeo, through Chrétien de Troyes, to Richardson's Pamela and to the Gothic romance.