Herman Northrop Frye  (July 14, 1912 - January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), which led to the reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The American critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that Anatomy established Frye as "the foremost living student of Western literature."
The recurring primitive formulas Frye noticed in his survey of the "greatest classics" provide literature with an order of words, a "skeleton" which allows the reader "to respond imaginatively to any literary work by seeing it in the larger perspective provided by its literary and social contexts" (Hamilton 20). Frye identifies these formulas as the "conventional myths and metaphors" which he calls "archetypes" (Spiritus Mundi 118). The archetypes of literature exist, Frye argues, as an order of words, providing criticism with a conceptual framework and a body of knowledge derived not from an ideological system but rooted in the imagination itself. Thus, rather than interpreting literary works from some ideological 'position' -- what Frye calls the "superimposed critical attitude" (Anatomy 7) -- criticism instead finds integrity within the literary field itself. Criticism for Frye, then, is not a task of evaluation -- that is, of rejecting or accepting a literary work -- but rather simply of recognizing it for what it is and understanding it in relation to other works within the 'order of words'  (Cotrupi 4). Imposing value judgments on literature belongs, according to Frye, "only to the history of taste, and therefore follows the vacillations of fashionable prejudice" (Anatomy 9). Genuine criticism "progresses toward making the whole of literature intelligible" (Anatomy 9) so that its goal is ultimately knowledge and not evaluation. For the critic in Frye's mode, then, . . . a literary work should be contemplated as a pattern of knowledge, an act that must be distinguished, at least initially, from any direct experience of the work, . . . [Thus] criticism begins when reading ends: no longer imaginatively subjected to a literary work, the critic tries to make sense out of it, not by going to some historical context or by commenting on the immediate experience of reading but by seeing its structure within literature and literature within culture (Hamilton 27).

Q: What is the order of words meaning?
A: to respond imaginatively to any literary work by seeing it in the larger perspective provided by its literary and social contexts

Q: Was his work praised?
A: unknown
What contribution did his work make to the literary world?
Frye identifies these formulas as the "conventional myths and metaphors" which he calls "archetypes" ( what Frye calls the "superimposed critical attitude" (Anatomy 7) -- criticism instead finds integrity within the literary field itself. The recurring primitive formulas Frye noticed in his survey of the "greatest classics" provide literature with an order of words, a "skeleton"
The recurring primitive formulas Frye noticed in his survey of the "greatest classics" provide literature with an order of words, a "skeleton"