New Releases by Northrop Frye

Em Anatomia da crítica, Northrop Frye deseja revelar a possibilidade de uma visão ampla e unificadora da literatura. Nascida de suas palestras em Princeton, em 1954, esta obra encarna o sentido mais pleno de "ensaio": uma tentativa ousada de compreender os princípios, alcances e técnicas que estruturam o trabalho crítico. Seu propósito central é mostrar que a crítica possui uma lógica interna, uma estrutura conceitual própria, capaz de coordenar a imensa variedade de formas literárias. A literatura, para Frye, forma um sistema coerente de imagens e ideias; é tão progressivo quanto qualquer ciência. Assim, ao crítico não caberia perguntar "para que serve a literatura?", mas "o que decorre de ser ela possível?". Cabe-lhe desvendar os padrões recorrentes que atravessam modos, símbolos, mitos e gêneros e conferir unidade e universalidade a essa tradição cultural. Reconhecer esse sistema é entender o poder libertador da arte, que expande a imaginação humana em face à realidade. Sem uma teoria abrangente, também adverte Frye, a crítica se dispersa e se acomoda às disciplinas vizinhas; mas uma estrutura unificada poderia fornecer as bases de uma ciência do crítico público, oferecendo à disciplina a coerência tão almejada. Publicado em 1957, Anatomia da crítica permanece uma das obras fundamentais da teoria literária: um gesto intelectual luminoso que afirma a imaginação como força de compreensão e liberdade.

Os mitos e metáforas da literatura moldam e refletem o mundo em que se desenrola a vida humana. Este não é apenas o simples mundo natural, partilhado com os demais seres vivos. É antes um universo sutil e profundo, feito dos medos e esperanças dos homens, o mundo "mitológico", mas tão real que é compartilhado tanto por povos primitivos quanto por intelectuais refinados. Ao dar-se conta da existência dessa realidade, o renomado crítico literário Northrop Frye buscou responder a seguinte pergunta: não seria a literatura mais do que simples fruto da mentalidade de uma época, um fenômeno sociológico, político ou de origens psicológicas e inconscientes? Em Spiritus Mundi, Frye nos apresenta a sua grande descoberta: a literatura como continuação da mitologia, fruto do "hábito mitológico da mente". Nesta reunião de doze ensaios perpassando temas que vão desde as humanidades na vida universitária às ilustrações de William Blake para o livro de Jó, passando pelo papel do livro na sociedade, Northrop Frye revisita sua trajetória pessoal de maneira que o leitor pode acompanhar a origem de seu pensamento e encontrar uma síntese de suas ideias. O fio condutor da obra é o estudo do universo mitológico em que a literatura se desenvolve, sem o qual a liberdade humana não pode florescer.

Nenhuma sociedade humana é tão primitiva que não tenha alguma espécie de literatura. No entanto, é muito comum pensar no estudo literário como um métier elegante. Afinal de contas, o que é a literatura? De que adianta e como ensiná-la? Qual é seu valor social, político e religioso? Ajuda ela a pensar com mais clareza, a perceber com mais sensibilidade ou a viver melhor? Qual é o lugar da imaginação no processo de aprendizagem? E mais importante: é possível educar a imaginação? São estas e outras perguntas a que Northrop Frye, um dos influentes críticos literários do século xx, procura responder. Mais do que dicas pontuais, o leitor encontrará neste livro uma concepção abrangente de educação, de literatura e de mundo, capaz de orientar um processo pedagógico desde o início.

Originalmente publicadas sob o título Educated Imagination e dirigidas a todos os «consumidores de literatura», o conjunto de palestras que formam este volume explora o valor e usos da literatura no nosso tempo. Neste livro intemporal, Frye argumenta que a imaginação deve ser cultivada não só para podermos fruir as grandes obras de arte, mas para podermos reivindicar as mais básicas capacidades humanas em todo o seu esplendor. No entanto, a imaginação, tal como a liberdade, só é operacional se for treinada: só temos liberdade de expressão se tivermos aprendido a usar a linguagem; só temos liberdade de movimentos se tivermos aprendido a andar. Da mesma forma, só podemos valer-nos da imaginação se a tivermos treinado. O grande ginásio da imaginação é a literatura. As propostas de Frye para o ensino da literatura incluem uma ênfase precoce na poesia, a «forma literária central e original», o estudo intensivo da Bíblia e dos clássicos gregos e latinos, uma vez que estes incorporam todos os grandes temas duradouros do homem ocidental, e o estudo das grandes formas literárias: tragédia e comédia, romance e ironia.

Em O Codigo dos Codigos, o critico literario Northrop Frye examina a Biblia como a mais importante influencia na tradic?o artistica e literaria ocidental. Neste estudo classico, Frye rejeita as interpretac?es dogmaticas e literais, preferindo celebrar a singularidade da Biblia como uma obra distinta dos restantes textos epicos e sagrados. A sua analise original apresenta a Biblia como historia redentora com uma perspetiva poetica visionaria que complementa a ciencia na compreens?o da natureza humana. Neste texto inexcedivel, Frye mostra que a Biblia pode e deve ser lida como uma das obras literarias mais elevadas da Humanidade. The Times Literary Supplement New York Times Book Review

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

In the early 1960s, Northrop Frye began keeping notebooks with the aim of creating a critical epic that he referred to as the ''Third Book''. Although ultimately abandoned, the ''Third Book'' remains an essential component of Frye''s works.

"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.

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

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