Best Selling Books by Northrop Frye

"Northrop Frye''s The Well-Tempered Critic is a brilliant take on writing, academia, and culture as a whole. His book is unique from other critiques on literary theory as he emphasizes the importance of the language spoken and not just language written. Frye writes in his first chapter, "Good writing must be based on good speech, it will never come alive it is based on reading alone." "Frye divides language into a three-part model and walks the reader through each little nook-and-cranny of his idea. He divides language into the Poetic (rhythm caused by the beat of the words), Prose (rhythm caused by the sentence), and Associate (informal, everyday kind of talk.) Frye also divides the written language into his last chapter: Hieratic (High style) and Demiotic (low style). "Frye''s work is full of insight and intellectualism, and void of the intimidation factor which might be associated with a piece by Keats, Bloom, Eagleton, and other big name critics. Frye''s diction is invitingly instructive, docilely dense, and meekly meticulous. His attention to detail and organization of thought work well to ensure the reader?s comprehension of Frye''s obvious intellect." -- By D.A. Wetherell

This brilliant outline of Blake''s thought and commentary on his poetry comes on the crest of the current interest in Blake, and carries us further towards an understanding of his work than any previous study. Here is a dear and complete solution to the riddles of the longer poems, the so-called "Prophecies," and a demonstration of Blake''s insight that will amaze the modern reader. The first section of the book shows how Blake arrived at a theory of knowledge that was also, for him, a theory of religion, of human life and of art, and how this rigorously defined system of ideas found expression in the complicated but consistent symbolism of his poetry. The second and third parts, after indicating the relation of Blake to English literature and the intellectual atmosphere of his own time, explain the meaning of Blake''s poems and the significance of their characters.

Words with Power is the crowning achievement of the latter half of Northrop Frye''s career. Portions of the work can be found in Frye''s notebooks as far back as the mid-1960s when he had just finished Anatomy of Criticism, and he completed the book shortly before his death in 1991. Beyond summing up his ideas about the relation of the Bible to Western culture, Words with Power boldly confronts a host of questions ranging from the relationship between literature and ideology to the real meaning of words like ''spirit'' and ''faith.'' The first half of the ''double mirror'' structure looks at the language in which the Bible is written, arguing that it is identical to that of myth and metaphor. Frye suggests, therefore, that given this characteristic, the Bible should be read imaginatively rather than historically or doctrinally. However, he is also careful to point out the ways in which the Bible is more than a conventional work of fiction. The second half is an astonishing tour de force in which Frye demonstrates how both the Bible and literature revolve around four primary concerns of human life. This edition goes beyond the original in its documentation of Frye''s dazzlingly encyclopedic range of reference. Profound and searching, Words with Power is perhaps the most daring book of Frye''s career and one of the most exciting.

Describes the geography, plants and animals, history, economy, language, religions, culture, and people of the People''s Republic of China, home of one of the world''s oldest continuous civilizations.

"What good is the study of literature? Does it help us think more clearly, or feel more sensitively, or live a better life than we could without it?"Written in the relaxed and frequently humorous style of his public lectures, this remains, of Northrop Frye''s many books, perhaps the easiest introduction to his theories of literature and literary education.

A landmark work of literary criticism Northrop Frye''s Anatomy of Criticism is the magnum opus of one of the most important and influential literary theorists of the twentieth century. Breaking with the practice of close reading of individual texts, Frye seeks to describe a common basis for understanding the full range of literary forms by examining archetypes, genres, poetic language, and the relations among the text, the reader, and society. Using a dazzling array of examples, he argues that understanding "the structure of literature as a total form" also allows us to see the profoundly liberating effect literature can have.

Angela Esterhammer, a student of Frye''s in the 1980s, has provided annotation and an introduction that demonstrates the poets'' importance for Frye''s literary and cultural criticism and provides a twenty-first-century perspective on the legacy of his work.

In the Alexander Lectures for 1965-66 at the University of Toronto, Dr. Frye describes the basis of the tragic vision as "being in time," in which death as "the essential event that gives shape and form to life ... defines the individual, and marks him off from the continuity of life that flows indefinitely between the past and the future." In Dr. Frye''s view, three general types can be distinguished in Shakespearean tragedy, the tragedy of order, the tragedy of passion, and the tragedy of isolation, in all of which a pattern of "being in time" shapes the action. In the first type, of which Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet are examples, a strong ruler is killed, replaced by a rebel-figure, and avenged by a nemesis-figure; in the second, represented by Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida, authority is split and the hero is destroyed by a conflict between social and personal loyalties; and in the third, Othello, King Lear, and Timon of Athens, the central figure is cut off from his world, largely as a result of his failure to comprehend the dynamics of that world. What all these plays show us, Dr. Frye maintains, is "the impact of heroic energy on the human situation" with the result that the "heroic is normally destroyed ... and the human situation goes on surviving." Fools of Time will be welcomed not only by many scholars who are familiar with Dr. Frye''s keen critical insight but also by undergraduates, graduates, high-school and university teachers who have long valued his work as a means toward a firmer grasp and deeper understanding of English literature.

First published in 1970, this collection is made up of a selection of essays composed between 1962 and 1968, written by distinguished humanist and literary critic Northrop Frye. The book is divided into two parts: one deals largely with the contexts of literary criticism; the other offers more specific studies of literary works in roughly historical sequence. One of the essays is Frye’s own elucidation of the development of his critical premises out of his early concern with the poetry of William Blake. Taken together, the essays offer a continuous and coherent argument, making a whole that is entirely equal to the sum of its parts.

In 1933, Northrop Frye was a recent university graduate, beginning to learn his craft as a literary essayist. By 1963, with the publication of The Educated Imagination, he had become an international academic celebrity. In the intervening three decades, Frye wrote widely and prodigiously, but it is in the papers and lectures collected in this installment of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye, that the genesis of a distinguished literary critic can be seen. Here is Frye tracing the first outlines of a literary cosmology that would culminate in The Anatomy of Criticism (1958) and shapeThe Great Code (1982) and Words with Power (1990). At the same time that Frye garnered such international acclaim, he was also a working university teacher, lecturing in the University of Toronto''s English Language and Literature program. In her lively introduction, Germaine Warkentin links Frye''s evolution as a critic with his love of music, his passionate concern for his students, and his growing professional ambition. The writings included in this volume show how Frye integrated ideas into the work that would consolidate the fame that Fearful Symmetry (1947) had first established.

Northrop Frye discusses with David Cayley his life as a teacher and scholar, focusing on the university as "the engine room of society." This fascinating book concludes with Frye''s thoughts on religion and his writings on the Bible.

"This volume of essays, talks, reviews and papers span some fifty years of his long writing career." (Midwest)

Offers fresh insights into ten of Shakespeare''s most popular plays, relating each of these works to others and discussing many of the central elements of Shakespearean drama

Northrop Frye’s Uncollected Prose, which features twenty-one pieces in the form of notes, prefaces, reviews, and talks, is the latest addition to the impressive body of writing by and about Frye. Among the highlights of the collection are Frye’s “Notes on Romance,” written in preparation for the lectures that eventually became The Secular Scripture; a newly discovered early notebook, parts of which may date from his second year as an undergraduate at Victoria College; and a pair of previously unavailable interviews. Expertly introduced by Robert D. Denham, one of the leading editors of Frye’s papers, Northrop Frye’s Uncollected Prose offers valuable insight into Frye’s early life, his research methodology, and thought process, and is further proof of the remarkable depth and range of his work.

Preface xi Credits xv Abbreviations xvii Introduction xix The Modem Century 1 The Modern Century 3 I City of the End of Things 5 II Improved Binoculars 27 III Clair de lune intellectuel 48 The Arts 2 Current Opera: A Housecleaning 73 3 Ballet Russe 76 4 The Jooss Ballet 79 5 Frederick Delius 83 6 Three-Cornered Revival at Headington 87 7 Music and the Savage Breast 88 8 Men as Trees Walking 92 9 K.R. Srinivasa’s Lytton Strachey 96 10 The Great Charlie 98 11 Reflections at a Movie 103 12 Music in the Movies O08 13 Max Grafs Modern Music 112 14 Abner Dean’s It’s a Long Way to Heaven 113 15 Russian Art 114 16 Herbert Read’s The Innocent Eye 115 17 The Eternal Tramp 116 18 On Book Reviewing 123 19 Academy without Walls 126 20 Communications 134 21 The Renaissance of Books 140 22 Violence and Television 156 23 Introduction to Art and Reality 167 Politics, History, and Society 24 Pro Patria Mori 175 25 Wyndham Lewis: Anti-Spenglerian 178 26 War on the Cultural Front 184 27 Two Italian Sketches, 1939 I88 28 G.M. Young’s Basic 194 29 Revenge or Justice? 195 30 F.S.C. Northrop’s The Meeting of East and West 197 31 Wallace Notestein’s The Scot in History 201 32 Toynbee and Spengler 202 33 Gandhi 209 34 Ernst Jiinger’s On the Marble Cliffs 211 35 Dr. Kinsey and the Dream Censor 215 36 Cardinal Mindszenty 220 37 The Two Camps 222 38 Law and Disorder 224 39 Two Books on Christianity and History 226 40 Nothing to Fear but Fear 232 41 The Ideal of Democracy 235 42 The Church and Modern Culture 237 43 And There is No Peace 244 44 Caution or Dither? 246 45 Trends in Modern Culture 248 46 Regina versus the World 262 47 Oswald Spengler 265 48 Preserving Human Values 274 49 The War in Vietnam 282 50 The Two Contexts 283 51 The Quality of Life in the ‘7os 285 52 Spengler Revisited 297 53 The Bridge of Language 315 Notes 331 Emendations 381 Index 383

In the third published volume of Canadian literary critic Frye''s (1912-91) 77 holograph notebooks, the material is mostly from the 1970s, when he was writing the first of his books on the Bible, The Great Code. However, it begins with Notebook Three from the late 1940s in which he writes primarily on religious themes. It concludes with Notebook 23 from the middle 1980s, written between his first and second book on the Bible; and one from the 1960s devoted largely to his reading of Dante''s Purgatorio and the first ten cantos of the Paradiso. Altogether the volume contains 11 notebooks, three sets of typed notes, and a transcription of 24 lectures on The Mythological Framework of Western Culture in 1981-82. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

"A world-renowned critic and scholar examines the continuing cultural importance of the Bible as the single most important influence in the imaginative tradition of Western art and literature. Frye rejects both dogmatic and literal interpretations while celebrating the uniqueness of the Bible as distinct from all other epics and sacred texts. His highly original analysis shows the Bible as redeeming history with a visionary poetic perspective that complements science in the understanding of man''s nature."--Book cover.

World-renowned critic and scholar Northrop Frye examines the Bible as the single most important influence in the imaginative tradition of Western art and literature. Frye rejects both the dogmatic and literal interpretations while celebrating the uniqueness of the Bible as distinct from all other epics and sacred texts. His highly original analysis shows the Bible as redeeming history with a visionary poetic perspective that complements science in the understanding of man’s nature.

Here is a specialized dictionary of quotations based on the thoughts and writings of a single person. It is evidence that there is a Canadian writer of whom it may be said that we as his readers can grow up inside his work "without ever being aware of a circumference."