Best Selling Books by Northrop Frye

Highlighting aspects of his scholarship seldom given sufficient emphasis, this new volume of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye documents Frye''s writings on the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (apart from those on William Blake, which are featured in other volumes). The volume includes Frye''s seminal 1956 essay "Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility" and the highly influential 1968 book A Study of English Romanticism. With these pieces and the other published and unpublished works contained in the volume, Frye changed the way the transition from the major Augustan figures to the Romantics was viewed. These works are a central part of Frye''s long and radical rethinking of the relation of romance and Romanticism and, through them, he emerges as a meticulous textual critic, teasing out the fine brushstroke effects in writers as varied as Boswell and Beddoes, Dickens and Dickinson. Imre Salusinszky''s introduction and annotation illuminates Frye''s writing and guides the reader along the path of Frye''s five-decade development of thought on Romanticism. This volume is an invaluable contribution to studies on Frye, as well as to Romantic and Victorian literature.

This volume in the Collected Works provides a transcription of the seven books of diaries that Frye kept intermittently from 1942 until 1955.

Northrop Frye''s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) is widely regarded as a masterpiece of literary theory. The product of years of reading and reflection, the book''s value extends far beyond its impact on criticism as a whole; ultimately, it must be viewed as a synoptic defense of liberal learning by one of the twentieth century''s most distinguished critics. In this, the twenty-third volume of the Collected Works, editor Robert D. Denham presents the notebooks to the Anatomy, blue-prints, as it were, for Frye''s comprehensive account of literary conventions. Composed from the late 1940s to 1956, the notebooks document the struggle Frye underwent to provide a structure for his work. This involved incorporating previously published essays and developing new material that would maintain the continuity of his argument. This fully annotated volume contains seventeen holograph notebooks, each illuminating some aspect of the grand structure that eventually emerged. Altogether, the notebooks offer an intimate picture of Frye''s working process and a renewed appreciation for his magisterial accomplishment.

In this outstanding collection of sixteen essays, the world-renowned critic and scholar discusses various works in the central tradition of English mythopoeic poetry, paying particular attention to the centrality of Romanticism.

Discusses the future of liberal education in an increasingly technological society.

his new edition in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series brings The Secular Scripture together with thirty shorter pieces pertaining to literary theory and criticism from the last fifteen years of Frye''s life.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"I am talking about Milton because I enjoy talking about Milton," This statement made by Northrop Frye at the beginning of The Return of Eden sets the tone for the entire book. Presented informally, it is filled with the vast learning and demonstrates the imaginative magnitude we have come to expect of this distinguished critic: the brilliant argument and the pleasantly witty presentation will inform and delight. The first four essays in the volume deal with Paradise Lost. Frye discusses the form and tradition of the epic, the rôle of the Son of God, a construction of the cosmology of the poem as a framework for its imagery, the reasons for Milton''s presentation of the behaviour of Adam and Eve (and by analogy of human society) before and after the fall. He also deals with Milton as a revolutionary who, disillusioned with the failure of the English people a free commonwealth, was finally compelled to find the true revolution within the individual. These four chapters are based on the Centennial Lecture Series which marked the one-hundredth anniversary of Huron College, University of Western Ontario. The fifth essay in the book, "Revolt in the Desert," discusses the structure and content of Paradise Regained.

Presents a series of lectures on the theological and sociological aspects of creation doctrine.

A World in a Grain of Sand is a collection of twenty-two interviews with Northrop Frye from the early 1960s through the 1980s. Frye responds to a wide range of questions about the media, education, religion, literary theory, language, music, and literature itself - from Plato and the Bible to Milton, Blake, Shelley, and Melville. Half of the interviews, transcribed from tape recordings, are published here for the first time. Throughout the collection the reader will discover a richly stored mind, often expressing itself in an ironic mode, arguing for the value of both the liberal tradition and the visionary imagination. What emerges finally from the interviews is Frye''s own broad vision of the social function of words.

Michael Dolzani divides these notes into three categories: those on Spenser and the epic tradition; those on Shakespearean drama and, more widely, the dramatic tradition from Old Comedy to the masque; and those on lyric poetry and non-fiction prose.

"This book is an anthology. It covers the forms and varieties of fiction, poetry, and drama, moving from the simple elements to the more subtle and complex, with introductory principles and questions to guide the student''s progress ... "--Preface, page xix.

"Although Northrop Frye''s first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), elevated the reputation of William Blake from the status of a minor eccentric to that of a major Romantic poet, Frye in fact saw Blake as a poet (and, consequently, himself as a critic) not of the Romantic period, but of the Renaissance. As such, Frye''s meditations on the Renaissance are particularly valuable. This volume collects six of Frye''s notebooks and five sets of his typed notes on subjects related to Renaissance literature." "Michael Dolzani divides these notes into three categories: those on Spenser and the epic tradition; those on Shakespearean drama and, more widely, the dramatic tradition from Old Comedy to the masque; and those on lyric poetry and non-fiction prose. The organization of this volume reflects the comprehensive study of Renaissance symbolism in three volumes that Frye proposed to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1949. Frye received a Guggenheim fellowship, but never completed this work; nevertheless, his application, part of which is also included here, is an important document. It not only reveals the outlines of Frye''s thinking about literature, it also uncovers his plans for his future creative life during the crucial period between his completion of Fearful Symmetry and his absorption in the writing of Anatomy of Criticism." "In addition to providing insight into Frye''s thinking process, the material collected here is of unique importance because much of it touches on topics not fully explored in his other published works."--Jacket.

Frye maintains that Shakespeare''s comedy is widely misunderstood and underestimated, and that the four romances-- Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter''s Tale, and The Tempest--are the inevitable culmination of the poet''s career.