2 Responses to Board Games from Northrop Frye

by Bob Pazehoski, Jr.

The time has arrived to allow the great Canadian voice of literary criticism to speak into our board gaming habits.


North of where?!
I know what you’re thinking: Two responses from who?! Northrop Frye (1912-1991) was one of the most influential literary critics of the 20th century. He authored several important works while serving as a professor of English at the University of Toronto for a half century (give or take a couple years).

As I shared when I began exploring Alexander Pope, I believe there is a connection between books and board games as works of human creativity—beyond the simple presence of authors, editors, and publishers. Though there are limits to the analogy, there are also sufficient connections to take heed when a brilliant scholar speaks with wisdom regarding how to engage products of the human imagination. I would include Northrop Frye among those deserving of our ears and eyes.



In his book, The Educated Imagination, Frye says:

“In all of our literary experience there are two kinds of response. There is the direct experience of the work itself, while we’re reading a book or seeing a play, especially for the first time. This experience is uncritical, or rather pre-critical, so it’s not infallible. If our experience is limited, we can be roused to enthusiasm or carried away by something that we can later see to have been second-rate or even phony.

Then there is the conscious, critical response we make after we’ve finished reading or left the theatre, where we compare what we’ve experienced with other things of the same kind, and form a judgment of value and proportion on it. This critical response, with practice, gradually makes our pre-critical responses more sensitive and accurate, or improves our taste, as we say. But behind our responses to individual works there’s a bigger response to our literary experience as a whole, as a total possession.”


Unbridled enthusiasm
Frye begins with the initial experience—the first time cracking the spine of a book, the wonder of a new theatrical experience, or in this case, the first taste of a game around the dining room table. He describes this experience as “uncritical, or rather pre-critical, so it’s not infallible.” This decidedly imperfect experience involves allowing some creative medium to take hold of our senses—the blissful smell of fresh ink, the immersive sounds of a symphonic score, the shared communal reactions of laughter and frustration—as well as our imagination.

We give ourselves over to these moments for the sake of joy and satisfaction. We so often want these experiences to knock our socks off that the surrender comes easy. This surrender is also what makes the experience fallible. We sit down to the table desiring something, and we abandon a touch of critical thinking which tarnishes our impression. Enthusiasm rules the day and colors our perspective.

I can only hope we’ve all walked this road. The thrill of tearing the shrink on a new arrival. Raising the upgraded box lid from its snug grip. Punching chits. Unsheathing several decks of cards. Opening the GameTrayz to examine the minis. Admiring the first player marker. And not a sticker in sight. Ah, that’s the good stuff. Who wouldn’t want to be carried away?

One game that mesmerized me from the box was PARKS. One of our local game stores came under hard times when the pandemic hit and was closing its doors. It was late spring when I spotted the Kickstarter box sleeve on the counter near the checkout. PARKS wasn’t due for retail release for a few months yet, so copies were not readily available. The store had already instituted a bold discount, which meant scoring the treasure at a remarkable discount.



I took it home and gave the rest of the day to getting familiar. To this day, PARKS boasts one of the most satisfying box layouts I’ve seen. We read the rules. We marveled at the production and we celebrated the find as the mechanics won us over without a thought in the world about criticism. Goodness, putting the game away is even satisfying! That right there is enthusiasm.

We were blinded by that enthusiasm. Had you asked me to write a review on the spot, I would have issued a firm 10/10 without thinking. And that’s the point: without thinking. The moment would have created the perfect ten. This is what Mr. Frye is talking about. We open ourselves to deception or misplaced affection when our sensibilities cannot offset our senses.

Experience, he suggests, is the lens cleaner on these deceptive goggles. If we have a certain level of experience, we are less likely to be roused to enthusiasm or carried away by something we can later see to have been second-rate or even phony. This sounds like the kind of advice hobby gamers can get behind. Play more games to avoid being duped by a less-than-stellar game.

But it’s not quite so simple.


Cool-headed reason
After a great night around the table, I’m often drawn to think again about the experience. Northrop Frye knows exactly what this is like:

Then there is the conscious, critical response we make after we’ve finished reading or left the theatre, where we compare what we’ve experienced with other things of the same kind, and form a judgment of value and proportion on it.

Eventually, our more seasoned experience begins to interact with our fresh experience. Countless hours well spent with the track movement of Tokaido begins to speak with the one hour of track movement of PARKS, deciphering the similarities and differences. We recognize the limits of that comparison so we move on to our other favorite worker placement or set collection games. We think about our favorite wooden resource tokens and our favorite card art.



We begin to form an opinion, but that’s not entirely where I believe Mr. Frye is taking us. He continues:

This critical response, with practice, gradually makes our pre-critical responses more sensitive and accurate, or improves our taste, as we say. But behind our responses to individual works there’s a bigger response to our literary experience as a whole, as a total possession.

There is little doubt in The Educated Imagination that Northrop Frye intends for the appreciator to be a lifelong student of the medium, recognizing his or her own place in the continuum of creativity and laboring to develop a deeper understanding. It would seem he is not encouraging opinions off the cuff, but rather boiled down, simmered consideration. Critical response, and the experience that can temper the foggy goggles of enthusiasm, comes with honest-to-goodness practice.

Practice means knowing the mechanics, chasing after titles big and small to gain the kind of experience that rightly develops a better critical sense during the first play. But it also means taking the time to actively consider what it is about a game that makes it great—or not so great—in the heights or in the shadows of the hobby.

A well-developed response to a new game is, in another sense, a response to every game that has come before. But behind our responses to individual works there’s a bigger response to our literary experience as a whole, as a total possession. Frye advocates for educating the imagination for a number of reasons, but one is simply to develop the uniquely human ability to think about creativity creatively; to be able to comprehend something beyond ourselves because we can go there with our imagination.

Around the New Year, we all read and watch all-time lists. We relish the opportunity to hold the thoughts of another up against our own. We’re eager to find the sorts of games that might unseat our favorites. We’re eager to evaluate our own lists—however deep they may be—against the lists of those we know have a wider experience. It’s fun, and I believe it’s all part of the process as we become critics of the critics with the critics.


We are headed North(rop)
I don’t know that every thought about board games should be published. I often wonder if my own are worth sharing. But I believe more words should be written about the hobby, if for nothing else than to make us all more astute thinkers about a hobby that so capably swallows so much of our time. I’m OK with giving Mr. Frye a chance and taking a moment here and there to critically engage my hours at the table—to celebrate the worthy, to question the questionable, and to be sure about any conclusion that casts a work of human creativity under a darker shadow.

Northrop Frye has an even greater paragraph to follow that specifically addresses the critic, but that will have to wait for another day.



This post was originally published at OrthogonalOdyssey.com