The Reception of Northrup Frye takes a thorough accounting of the presence of Frye in existing works and argues against
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The Reception of Northrop Frye
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The Reception of Northrop Frye
Compiled by Robert D. Denham
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2021 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4875-0820-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-3775-3 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-3774-6 (PDF) Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: The reception of Northrop Frye / compiled by Robert D. Denham. Names: Denham, Robert D., compiler. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210190787 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210191074 | ISBN 9781487508203 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781487537746 (PDF) | ISBN 9781487537753 (EPUB) Subjects: LCSH: Frye, Northrop – Bibliography. | LCSH: Frye, Northrop – Appreciation – Bibliography. | LCSH: Frye, Northrop – Criticism and interpretation – Bibliography. | LCSH: Criticism – Canada – Bibliography. | LCSH: Literature – History and criticism – Theory, etc. – Bibliography. | LCGFT: Bibliographies. Classification: LCC Z8317.83 .D46 2021 | DDC 016.801/95092–dc23
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
For B Millner
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Contents
Introduction
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1 Books and Symposia
3
2 Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
23
3 Obituaries, Memorials, Tributes
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4 News and Feature Stories, Miscellaneous Items
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5 Biographical Notices and Articles
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6 Reviews of Frye’s Books, Excluding Those in the Collected Works
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7 Reviews of the Volumes in Frye’s Collected Works
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8 Dissertations and Theses on Frye
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Appendix. Frye’s Books: Editions and Translations
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Introduction
In 2014 Colin McCabe wrote, “Nothing fades quicker than critical reputation. In my first year at university [1967], Northrop Frye was the dernier cri, but I do not sense that he is much read now, his name having been ‘buried’ in obscurity” (131). Marjorie Garber sees the alleged demise of Frye as part of a wider turn from myth criticism to new historicism. At mid-century, she says, Northrop Frye led the way with strong cross-cultural claims about similitude and difference. A quest for universals and universal myths and patterns preoccupied scholars, whether in the archetypes of Frye or the quite different archetypes of Carl Jung. . . . Myth was everywhere. And then the moment was gone. Historical questions about the local, the specific, the contingent and the idiosyncratic took center stage, and universal claims—claims about universal symbols or universal practices or universal beliefs—tended to be regarded as naïve, or hegemonic, or both. (18–19)
William Kerrigan voices a similar opinion. “More than any critic of his day,” he writes, “Frye exercised the literary canon. No one, not even his great rival, M.H. Abrams, seemed able to touch the great works of many periods and languages with such omni-competent authority. But Frye is gone now [2014]. The feminists, postmodernists, new historians, and neo-marxists have buried him in a mass grave marked White Male Liberal Humanism” (198). A variation of this judgment is Sir Frank Kermode’s observation: “Looking back at the study of English in universities over the years the first thing that occurs to me is how very important the subject once seemed. . . . the leading academic literary critics were, in those days, very famous people. Think, for example, of Northrop Frye. Frye’s is now a name that you never hear mentioned but which was then everywhere” (Sutherland). Denis Donoghue concurs. In a 1992 review of Frye’s The Double Vision, he writes, “For about fifteen years—say from 1957 to 1972—Frye was the most influential critic in the English-speaking world. . . . [He] went out of phase if not out of sight when readers lost interest in ‘first and last things’ and set about a political program of
one kind or another under the guise of reading and teaching literature.” Shehla Burney agrees that Frye has “fallen out of favor since the rise of contemporary literary theory” (44). In the mid-1960s the English Institute devoted a session to Frye at its annual meeting, and Murray Krieger’s bold opinion, delivered on that occasion, was that, because of Anatomy of Criticism, Frye “has had an influence—indeed an absolute hold—on a generation of developing literary critics greater and more exclusive than that of any one theorist in recent critical history. One thinks of other movements that have held sway, but these seem not to have developed so completely on a single critic—nay, on a single work—as has the criticism in the work of Frye and his Anatomy” (1–2). An op-ed journalist for the Toronto Star remarked in 1992 that “by the time of Frye’s death at 78, that intellectual hold had been loosened somewhat, but his thought shows every sign of continuing to be a permanent contribution to our understanding of literature” (Anonymous). But in some circles the “permanent contribution” judgment has not held. Such judgment is summed up by Toronto journalist Phillip Marchand, who writes: “It has become a commonplace for academics and intellectuals to dismiss Frye as outmoded, full of bad, bourgeois habits such as transcendent humanism, liberalism and so on. His reputation has gone for a nose dive. . . . In short, Frye’s bones have been pulverized in the mills of academic fashion,” however much the metaphors of nose-diving and bone-pulverizing move us away from the point Marchand wants to make. Such opinions, nevertheless, have a tendency to reproduce themselves until they become widespread, having hardened into dogma. Here is a sampler: Margaret Wente: “I wonder what Northrop Frye would make of modern English studies? Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the giant of literary criticism is not around to say. The grand sweep of his work, with its timeless archetypes and universal themes of fall and redemption, enthralled a generation of students. Today [2015] he’s just another dead white male, along with Blake and Shakespeare.”
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Alec Scott: “During the postmodernist wave that began to wash over North America in the 1980s . . . [the] Anatomy fell out of style, and many hip, young literature profs took it off their reading lists.” Joseph Epstein includes Northrop Frye among a group of critics who for some time have been “fading from prominence and now [2007] beginning to fade from memory.” Camille Paglia: “Northrop Frye was a titanic figure during my college and postgraduate years, and it is shocking how quickly his work was swept away by the influx of post-structuralism.” Warren Moore, writing in 2001: “While the broad heading of literary theory seems to offer room for a virtual pantechnicon of ideas, the Canadian theorist’s works have been marginalized to the point of being considered something like alchemy—possibly of historical interest but really of no use in a post/modern world. The reasons for this fall from grace range from the lack of immediately apparent political usefulness . . . to the currently fashionable pluralistic worldview that rejects ‘synoptic theories’ by definition.” Ian Buchanan: In 2010 he opines that “Frye’s work has fallen into a state of relative neglect.” Richard Halpern: “It is no accident that Northrop Frye occupies the third and middle chapter in this study of Shakespeare and modernism, for Frye’s career dominated Anglo-American literary criticism in the middle decades of this century. Like the Tower of Babel he was so fond of referring to, Frye achieved an eminence in the field of literary studies that remains unequaled by any successor. And like that biblical tower, Frye’s elaborately constructed system now [1997] lies in ruins.” Richard Lane: “The overarching project of the Anatomy of Criticism reveals why Frye’s approach is now [2006] out of favour: he attempts to account for the entire field of literary criticism in a totalizing gesture that is now read as deluded” Mervyn Nicholson: “Frye himself is now an elephant in the room, someone who is there but not there—a strange figure, an outsider in literary/cultural studies, whose ideas are now [2016] rejected but were never really absorbed or digested. Frye is arguably the most original thinker Canada has produced. His impact from 1950 to 1975 was enormous. That influence screeched to a halt in the late 1970s.” Graham Good. “This is a wintry season for Frye’s work in the West”; “the once-great repute of the Wizard of the North is now [2004] maintained only by a few Keepers of the Flame.”
Marcia Kahan, writing in 1985 on a debate between Frank Kermode and Terry Eagleton: “About the only subject on which they could agree was Frye’s obsolescence,” adding that Eagleton asked what was a decidedly rhetorical question, ‘Who now reads Frye?’” One of the more prominent surveyors of critical theories, Frank Lentricchia, located Anatomy of Criticism at the head of a line of “-ologies” and “-isms” that marched onto the scene “after the new criticism”—existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and poststructuralism. Lentricchia worried about Frye’s attack on subjectivity, individuation, and the romantic conception of the self, and he noted that Frye’s conception of the centre of the order of words “anticipates and, then, crucially rejects” Derrida’s notion that such metaphors of centre, origin, and structure close off the possibility of “freeplay” (13–14). Moreover, Frye is said to have privileged spatial over temporal conceptions, centripetal over centrifugal movements, romantic over ironic modes of literature, and utopian desire over contingent, historical reality, Lentricchia’s unstated assumption being that it is self-evident in each case that the latter idea in these oppositions is to be preferred to the former. Years later he claimed that his essay “tried to point up the structuralist and poststructuralist moment in Frye” (Salusinszky 186), but that is a caricature of the aim of his chapter, which is to debunk all Frygean assumptions that do not conform to his armchair view of historical consciousness and antifoundational awareness. Lentricchia maintains that Frye continued to “water down”—his phrase—the positions taken in the Anatomy through a series of books (30), but he gives no evidence of having read, say, The Critical Path (1971), where Frye addresses the forms of ideology that underlie the program for criticism that Lentricchia prefers. He concludes by asserting that no one in the mid-1960s would have predicted that Frye would be “unceremoniously tossed ‘on the dump’ . . . with other useless relics” (30). The “useless relic” thesis was advanced by Lentricchia in 1980, twenty-three years after the Anatomy appeared but before the richly productive decade that saw the publication of The Secular Scripture, The Great Code, Words with Power, The Double Vision, and Myth and Metaphor, not to say the previously unpublished material (notebooks, diaries, correspondence, student papers, and the like), which would practically double the Frye corpus.1 The Reception of Northrop Frye is offered as evidence that the demise of Frye’s influence, like the rumours of Mark Twain’s death, have been very greatly exaggerated. What kinds of evidence might be offered to test the truth of the claims that Frye is obsolete, that his works have been buried in obscurity, that he is now seen as deluded,
1 This paragraph borrows some sentences from my “Pity the Northrop Frye Scholar? Anatomy of Criticism Fifty Years After.”
Introduction
that his influence screeched to a halt in the late-1970s, that his criticism fell out of style and has begun to fade from memory, and that the history of literary criticism has now passed him by? One obvious way to challenge the naysayers is to consider the ways that Frye’s readers have responded to his practical and theoretical criticism. The title of the present book points to the general principle that one can determine the way literary critics have been received by studying what has been written about them. A record of this writing is contained in The Reception of Northrop Frye. It provides a listing of the responses of readers to Frye’s texts. This listing is a form of what has been called “reception aesthetics,” as advanced by its chief theorists, Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, both of whom have set forth forms of reader-response criticism. At the beginning we should notice that the proponents of the “useless relic” thesis have focused almost exclusively on Anatomy of Criticism. But Frye’s writing career spanned sixty years, so by far the largest portion of his published work appeared after the time of his reputed demise as an important critical force. Of the forty books Frye published, thirty-four appeared after the mid-1960s. Readers of Frye should be wary of pronouncements about the value of his work when 85 per cent of what would eventually represent the corpus was not yet published. Moreover, the appearance of the thirty-volume Collected Works of Northrop Frye has, as just suggested, significantly expanded the Frye canon. Any generalizations about Frye should not exclude this large body of work, particularly the notebooks that he wrote during the last decade of his life—what I have called the Longinian phase of his career.2 This later corpus includes The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, which became a bestseller in Canada. The reception of this book can be gauged in part by the reviews it received, and, as the list in chapter 6 reveals, the book was reviewed in some 200 periodicals. That is an extraordinary number for any book, much less an academic one. The Great Code reached number two on the Canadian bestseller list, succeeded for several weeks only by Jane Fonda’s Workout Book. So much for Denis Donoghue’s 1992 observation, a year after Frye’s death, that he doesn’t hear Frye’s name mentioned any more. Speaking of death, chapter 3 records 138 obituaries, most of which were published shortly after Frye’s death (23 January 1991), which is not the kind of response engendered by someone who has become a “useless relic.” Literary critics do not ordinarily receive that kind of reception. David Bevington wrote in his glowing obituary for Frye that “his archetypal kind of criticism is a little out of fashion these days, as students turn to post-modern modes of critical discourse (new historicism, feminism, deconstruction); one doesn’t see Frye noted as often as he used to be” (126). The 2 See Denham, “Frye and Longinus.”
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second part of this observation is challenged by the present volume, its evidence showing that Frye is noted much more often now than he used to be—substantially more. Reader-response criticism is one of the most widely recognized forms of “reception aesthetics.” Chapters 6 and 7—reviews of Frye’s books—provide another index for Frye’s reception. Book reviewers engage the reader’s interpretation and evaluation of critical texts directly, and Frye’s books have garnered a bountiful assortment of reviews: more than 1300, including those for the thirty-volume Collected Works. Chapter 2 contains the largest category—essays, articles, and parts of books that use Frye’s work in one way or another. That chapter contains close to 5000 items, a number that continues to expand exponentially. One of the best indexes of Frye’s continuing influence in the academy comes from the uses to which his criticism has been put in graduate study. Chapter 8 records Frye’s appearances in doctoral dissertations and master’s theses. The theses and dissertations are not necessarily devoted in their entirety or even in major portion to some aspect of Frye’s work, though of course many are. They may call on Frye to support a reading of a particular literary work. They may contain only a single reference to Frye. I have not by any means consulted all of these graduate school documents, relying instead on a number of databases that have recorded “Frye” as a keyword in a search for dissertations and theses. Northrop Frye: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, which was published in 1987, listed 39 theses and dissertations in which Frye played a role. Three decades later the list contains 3712 such titles—almost one thousand times more titles than in the original survey. The chart immediately below shows the steady increase in the number of dissertations and theses that have been recorded by decade. These data reveal clearly that in graduate study there has been no diminution of interest in Frye’s work. Far from it. 1950–69 54 1970s 193 1980s 217 1990s 622 2000s 804 2010–19 1795 Here the steady exponential progression gives lie to the “useless relic” thesis. The number of theses and dissertations was greatest during the years 2014 and 2015, when there were respectively 228 and 209 theses and dissertations that had Frye content. Most of these writers assume that Frye need not be identified: he has entered in to the common
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parlance of critical discussion. A similar observation can be made about David Richter’s The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. In the first edition of this textbook anthology (1989) Frye takes his place alongside Freud, Jung, and Lacan as an exemplar of one of the contemporary trends, psychological criticism. In the second edition of the book (1998) Frye is considered to be no longer a member of a contemporary trend but a writer of classic texts. He is now accorded membership in the grand tradition beginning with the Greeks as someone who speaks with an authority not afforded trendsetters. Those who have written dissertations and theses on Frye tend to see him as one whose authority has already been established. The catalogue of dissertations in chapter 8 has a decidedly international character. Dissertations and theses have originated at universities and other institutions for advanced academic work in 51 countries,3 and they have been written in 34 languages.4 Frye has been used, interpreted, critiqued, analysed, appropriated, cited, summarized, explained, evaluated, appealed to, and quoted in dissertations from all over the world, beginning in 1963, which is when Lentricchia declared that Frye’s work had been consigned to the trash heap or, to use Philip Marchand’s curious metaphor, been pulverized on the mill of academic fashion. To say that Frye has “fallen out of favour” or that his name is never mentioned anymore, having been “buried” in obscurity, is clearly not supported by the expansive range of research topics involving Frye that graduate students have chosen to study and write about. The first dissertations devoted substantially to Frye were written in the mid-1960s, which marked the beginning, according to Lentricchia, of Frye’s having become a “useless relic.” What it actually marked was a tremendous upsurge of interest in the study of Frye at the graduate level. As for Eagleton’s question, “Who now reads Frye?,” the answer is a very sizable number. There are more references to Frye in theses and dissertations than ever before. This is also seen in the lists in chapters 1 and 2 of the present volume—books devoted exclusively to Frye and essays and parts of books in which he makes an appearance. Taking again 1965 as our point of reference—the date according to Lentricchia, that Frye allegedly fell from grace—all 64 books devoted solely to Frye (listed in chapter 1) have appeared since 1965.
During the four decades 1960 through 1990 there were 25 monographs devoted solely to Frye. For the following two decades—2010 through 2019—there were 40. These data counter the claim that there has been a decline of interest in Frye. Quite the contrary: the data show that there has been a substantial increase. By far the largest indicator, quantitatively, of the continuing, even the resurgent, interest in Frye is found in chapter 2, essays and articles in which Frye figures to a greater or lesser degree. Here there are more than 4400 entries. This category, which constitutes the base for understanding Frye’s reception, amounted to 588 entries in the 1987 bibliography. This amount constitutes 13 per cent of the total in the present list, which again is a clear marker that Frye’s work has not fallen out of style or faded from memory: 87 per cent of the entries in chapter 2 have appeared since 1987. Chapter 2 also records the fact that essays that draw on Frye have appeared in 36 languages.5 Many, in fact most, of the entries in The Reception of Northrop Frye are annotated. My intent is for these annotations to provide sufficient information for users of this book to determine whether they need to access the individual articles and essays. When an annotation begins and ends with double quotation marks, such marks indicate that that I am quoting either from the article itself or from abstracts ordinarily provided by the author or publisher. The appendix is a list of the various editions and translations of Frye’s books, which means of course, that it is a record of primary, not secondary, material. I have included the list because it is one index of Frye’s reception internationally. The fact that his books have been translated into 26 languages is a clear indicator that he has not fallen out of fashion internationally. Rather the fact that international publishers want to have Frye translated at all is another answer to Eagleton’s query, “Who now reads Frye?” One somewhat surprising feature of an account of Frye’s reception is the degree to which he has engaged readers from the East. We see this most directly in the lists of chapters 2 and 8. Part of this surge may be a result of the two international Frye conferences that were held in China—at the University of Peking in 1994 and at the University of Inner Mongolia in Hoh-Hot in 1999. Part of it may have resulted from the attention Frye received from well-known Frye scholars such as Wang Ning, Ye Shuxian, and the late
3 Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Gujarati, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lithuania, Malta, Morocco, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Wales. 4 Afrikaans, Bosnian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish. 5 Afrikaans, Arabic, Bosnian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh.
Introduction
Chizhe Wu.6 Astonishingly, twenty-two people with the Chinese surname “Li” appear as authors in the list of dissertations in chapter 8. In any event, there appears to be a great deal more attention to Frye by the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans than there is to his work by those who speak languages other than English. As for the Central and Eastern European languages, those who consult the present book will no doubt have a quizzical reaction upon discovering just how many essays have been written in Czech, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Serbian, Slovenian, Romanian, Albanian, Slovak, Croatian, and Bosnian. I have been suggesting that the “useless relic” thesis cannot be supported by the bibliographic facts. This does not mean, however, that Frye and his proponents were unaware of the powerful force that Derrida and deconstruction brought to the discussions about critical theory that exploded following the structuralist conference at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. I have written about the relation between Frye and Derrida elsewhere.7 Suffice it here to say that in the critical contests that followed in the wake of the Johns Hopkins conference, Frye was very much aware of the ballpark in which the game was being played. In one of his late notebooks he muses, “If I’m old hat because I’m ‘logocentric,’ I want to know why I’m that, and not just be that because I’m ignorant of the possibility of being anything else” (23). The Reception of Northrop Frye argues that Frye is actually not “old hat,” given the widespread attention his work has received, the various forms of which are catalogued in the present volume. There can be little doubt that the work of the new theoreticians in the elite universities came to us with a French accent and dominated discussions of theory for some years. But that does not mean that Frye and his readers were mute, and the fact that other critical voices were being heard throughout Frye’s career, beginning with the New Criticism of the 1950s, does not mean that history has passed him by. Let me close with a few examples of what we can discover once we have a fairly complete record of Frye’s reception in front of us. In the Third Essay of Anatomy of Criticism Frye develops his theory myths, which is a theory of narrative patterns. He discovers four basic patterns: comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony. Each of these four mythoi turns out to have six “phases,” and for each phase Frye specifies a number of characteristics that are set down in his taxonomy in intricate detail.8 Countless readers have found Frye’s theory of myths useful in their understanding and interpretation of works other than literary. One of these is the late Hayden
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White, who applied Frye’s schema to historical writing, discovering that historians tended to impose one of the four narrative patterns on their historical material, yielding either comic, romantic, tragic, or ironic accounts of historical events. Jonathan Arac has argued that White’s work has led to a reconception of the entire field of historiography. Hayden White’s name appears more than 90 times in the entries in chapter 2 (essays about Frye), all having to do with Frygean “modes of emplotment.” Rozalia Cherepanova has noted the ways that Frye’s four narrative patterns have influenced the study of narratives in other fields, such as history (Hayden White), as just mentioned, and psychology (Kevin Murray). Related to the Frye–White connection is Byron Almén’s A Theory of Musical Narrative and James Jakób Liszka’s The Semiotic of Myth. Almén has formalized for musical analysis Frye’s and Liszka’s theories of narrative archetypes. Those interested in studying the application of Frye’s theory of myths to musical theory will find more than a dozen essays in chapter 2 that call attention to this link. Eagleton, Lentricchia, and friends would not have known about musical archetypes: Liszka’s book was not published until 1989 and Almén’s until 2009. In other words, while it is true that conventional areas of applied or practical criticism continued to draw on Frye’s theory of myths, it is no less true that new areas of inquiry, such as narrative archetypes in music, began to open up. The use of narrative archetypes is found as well in other domains. Steffen Schneider has discovered that the four mythoi apply to the narratives of political systems. Jonathan M. Smith has found that geographers construct their meanings by using one or the other of the mythoi. Philip Smith has noted that the narrative genre model, which owes its existence to Frye, can be applied to risk evaluation. Roy Schafer has written that he found the four narrative archetypes applicable to his work “in that they pulled a lot of things together that were closer to experience than the very formal categories of metapsychology, and they corresponded to my experience as a therapist. I thought it would be worth trying to develop it at length”—which he proceeded to do in A New Language for Psychoanalysis. He was joined in this enterprise by Kevin Murray, who has provided an overview of narrative psychology. An example from legal discourse is Robin West’s view that various jurisprudential traditions can be read as narratives, the various traditions corresponding to one of Frye’s four mythoi. James F. Hopewell has used Frye’s theory of myths to characterize four different kinds of Protestant congregations:
6 From 1997 to 2004 Professor Wu of the University of Inner Mongolia was an unswerving translator of Frye. During this time he translated into Chinese Anatomy of Criticism, The Educated Imagination, Creation and Recreation, The Well-Tempered Critic, Northrop Frye on Culture and Literature, Words with Power, and Selected Essays. For Wang Ning’s and Ye Shuxian’s accounts of archetypal criticism in China, see the entries under “Wang” and “Ye” in chapter 2. 7 “Introduction” to Myth and Metaphor, xiii–xviii, and “Editor’s Introduction: The Anatomy and Poststructuralism,” lv–lxvi. 8 For an analytical exposition of Frye’s “Theory of Myths” see my Northrop Frye and Critical Method, 58–87.
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charismatic negotiation (Frye’s romance), canonic negotiation (Frye’s tragedy), agnostic negotiation (Frye’s comedy), and empiric negotiation (Frye’s irony). The four categories have become a template for describing the different approaches Protestants take to the spiritual life. Ryu Kyun and colleagues have given us a similar analysis of four narrative patterns lying behind documentary television films. Dominika Biegoń used narrative discourse analysis as advanced by Frye and Hayden White to understand the capitalist market economy. Riikka Kuusisto relied on such discourse to characterize one or another of the four emplotments one finds in narratives about international relations. Readers will discover numerous fields other than those provided by this sampler where the four emplotments have been used as a methodological and analytical tool. Jan Golinski has argued that some strands of the constructivist history of science have used the literary genre theory of Northrop Frye to highlight the literariness of scientific writing, also noting that the analysis of Hutton’s geological tours of Scotland can be read in terms of Frye’s account of the quest romance. Similarly, William Clark illustrates how writings in the history of science rely on Frye’s conventions of the four mythoi. William P. Fouse illustrates how the four narrative emplotments about occupied Yugoslavia during World War II effected the development of American foreign policy. Wulf Kansteiner gives a close reading of Saul Friedlander’s comprehensive history of the Holocaust, using Hayden White’s theory of emplotments. Merav Katz-Kimchi uses White’s theory to examine histories of the internet. Michael Lambek uses the four modes of emplotment to analyse performances of the Sakalava people of Madagaskar. T.D. MacLulich argues that Canadian exploration literature can be understood as fitting into one of Frye’s four mythological patterns. Louis Mackey maintains that just as the four emplotments can be applied to the writing of history so can they be applied to the “path of philosophy.” Reinhold Martin believes that the typology of emplotment can “shed some light on the historiography of modern architecture.” Barbara Stern has examined the influence of myths in consumption texts, using Frye’s taxonomy to assign consumer narratives and selected advertisements to four categories of mythic plots: comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony. She discovers links between Frye’s four mythoi and consumption myths. Each mythos also incorporates values that are encoded in the plot and that reappear in consumption narratives and in advertising appeals using mythic patterns and characterization. Alexander Spencer and Kai Oppermann have investigated the way that the four Frye/ White emplotments can help us understand the reason that the British voted to leave the European Union, and Spencer Wade wrote a dissertation seeking to understand illness narratives through the lens of emplotments. I have been briefly tracing the uses to which Frye’s theory of myths can be seen as spreading out over a number of
discursive disciplines, so that we have a network of applications that trace their foundation back to the four “mythoi” (Frye) and their subsequent iteration in the four emplotments (White). Other examples of such thematic repetition include Frye’s green-world theory of comedy, found in 48 of the essays in chapter 2. In the field of Canadian literature, his famous question “Where is here?” is examined in 43 of the essays. His related theory of the “garrison mentality” appears in 63 of the articles. The point is that Frye’s work continues to generate a still-expanding body of commentary; not only that, a single entry about a Frygean topic in chapter 2 can be linked to a number of other instances of the same topic. Frye’s criticism invites, even encourages, such networking. To conclude, the answer to Terry Eagleton’s rhetorical question, “Who now reads Frye?,” is a very considerable and ever-growing number. The present volume is intended to support that claim and at the same time to provide a relatively full record of the reception of one of the seminal critical minds of the last century. WORKS CITED Almén, Byron A Theory of Musical Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Anonymous. “Northrop Frye 1912–1991: Charting the Eternal World.” Toronto Star (1 November 1992): 70. Bevington, David. “Northrop Frye (14 July 1912–23 January 1991).” American Philosophical Society, Proceedings 137, no. 1 (March 1993): 126–8. Biegoń, Dominika. “Narrative Legitimation: The Capitalist Market Economy as a Success Story.” In Capitalism and Its Legitimacy in Times of Crisis, ed. Steffen Schneider, Henning Schmidtke, Sebastian Haunss, and Jennifer Gronau. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Buchanan, Ian. “Frye, Northrop. A Dictionary of Critical Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 191. Burney, Shehla. “Edward Said and Postcolonial Theory: Disjunctured Identities and the Subaltern Voice.” In Counterpoints, vol. 417, Pedagogy of the Other: Edward Said, Postcolonial Theory, and Strategies for Critique. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 41–60. Cherepanova, Rozalia. “A Commentator or a Character in a Story? The Problem of the Narrator in Oral History.” In Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe, ed. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen and Gelinada Grinchenko. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. 122–46. Clark, William. “Narratology and the History of Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26 (1995): 1–71. Denham, Robert D. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays 1974–1988. Ed. Robert D. Denham. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 22. – “Editor’s Introduction: The Anatomy and Poststructuralism.” In Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Ed. Robert D. Denham. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Introduction
– “Frye and Longinus.” In Northrop Frye and Others: Twelve Writers Who Helped Shape His Thinking. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2015. 63–83. – “Pity the Northrop Frye Scholar? Anatomy of Criticism Fifty Years After.” In Essays on Frye: Word and Spirit. Emory, VA: Iron Mountain Press, 2015. 223–39. – “Theory of Myths.” In Northrop Frye and Critical Method. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978. Donoghue, Denis. Review of The Double Vision. New York Review of Books 39 (9 April 1992): 25. Epstein, Joseph. “Forgetting Edmund Wilson.” Commentary 120 (1 December 2005): 53–8. Fouse, William P. The Power of Narratives: A Cultural History of US Involvement in Axis-Occupied Yugoslavia. MA thesis, University of Rhode Island, 2018. Garber, Marjorie. “Ovid, Now and Then.” Chapter 2 of The Muses on Their Lunch Hour: New York: Fordham University Press, 2017. 11–31. Golinksi, Jan. Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Good, Graham. “Frye in China.” Canadian Literature 183 (Winter 2004): 156–8. Halpern, Richard. “Modernist in the Middle.” Shakespeare among the Moderns. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Hopewell, James F. Congregation: Stories and Structures. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987. Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. – The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Jauss, Hans Robert. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. – Toward an Aesthetics of Reception. Trans. Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. Kahan, Marcia. “Pillow Talk.” Books in Canada 14 (April 1985): 3–4. Kansteiner, Wulf. “Success, Truth, and Modernism in Holocaust Historiography: Reading Saul Friedländer Thirty-Five Years after the Publication of Metahistory.” History and Theory 48, no. 2 (May 2009): 25–53. Katz-Kimchi, Merav. “‘Singing the Strong Light Works of [American] Engineers’: Popular Histories of the Internet as Mythopoetic Literature.” Information & Culture 50, no. 2 (2015): 160–80. Kerrigan, William. “Bloom and the Great Ones.” Clio 25 (Winter 1996): 196–206. Krieger, Murray. “Northrop Frye and Contemporary Criticism: Ariel and the Spirit of Gravity.” In Northrop Frye in Modern Criticism: Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. Murray Krieger. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. 1–30. Kuusisto, Riikka. “Comparing International Relations Plots: Dismal Tragedies, Exuberant Romances, Hopeful Comedies and
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Cynical Satires.” International Politics 55, no. 2 (March 2018): 160–76. Kyun, Ryu. “Analysis of Narrative Strategy in the Korean TV Natural Documentary Epilogue System: Focused on Antarctic Tears.” Journal of the Korean Contents Association 14, no. 4 (2014): 67–77. Lambek, Michael. “The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realizing the Past through Spirit Possession in Madagascar.” American Ethnologist 25, no. 2 (1998): 106–27. Lane, Richard. “Northrop Frye.” Fifty Key Literary Theorists. London: Routledge, 2006. 111–16. Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Liszka, James Jakob. The Semiotic of Myth: A Critical Study of the Symbol. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. McCabe, Colin. “Editorial.” Critical Quarterly 56, no. 2 (July 2014): 131. MacLulich, T.D. “Canadian Exploration as Literature.” Canadian Literature 81 (Summer 1979): 72–85. Mackey, Louis. “Poetry, History, Truth, and Redemption.” In Literature and History, ed. Leonard Schulze and Walter Wetzels. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983. 65–83. Marchand, Philip. “Are Northrop Frye’s Ideas Now DOA?” National Post (6 July 2015). http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/ marchand-the-legacy-of-northrop-frye. Martin, Reinhold. “History after History.” AA Files 58 (2009): 14–16. Moore, Warren S. III. Review of Northrop Frye on Myth: An Introduction, by Ford Russell. Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 34, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 87–9. Murray, Kevin D. “Narratology.” In Rethinking Psychology, ed. J.A. Smith, R. Harré, and L. Van Langenhove. London: Sage Publications, 1995. 179–95. Nicholson, Mervyn. Review of Northrop Frye’s Uncollected Prose. English Studies in Canada 42, nos. 1–2 (March–June 2016): 233–7. Paglia, Camille. “Falando sobre a tradição intelectual norte-americana, Liberdade de expressão e educação com Camille Paglia.” Interfaces Brasil/Canada 18, no. 3 (2018): 193–214. Salusinszky, Imre. Criticism in Society: Interviews with Jacques Derrida, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Frank Kermode, Edward Said, Barbara Johnson, Frank Lentricchia, and J. Hillis Miller. New York: Methuen, 1987. Schafer, Roy. “Language, Narrative, and Psychoanalysis: An Interview with Roy Schafer.” In Criticism and Lacan: Essays and Dialogue on Language, Structure, and the Unconscious, ed. Patrick Colm Hogan and Lalita Pandit. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. – A New Language for Psychoanalysis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. 22–56. Schneider, Steffen. “Good, Bad, or Ugly? Narratives of Democratic Legitimacy in Western Public Spheres.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, 1–3 June 2010.
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Scott, Alec. “Frye’s Anatomy.” U of T Magazine (Spring 2012). http://magazine.utoronto.ca/feature/ northrop-frye-anatomy-of-criticism-alec-scott/. Smith, Jonathan M. “Geographical Rhetoric: Modes and Tropes of Appeal.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86, no. 1 (1996): 1–20. Smith, Philip. “Narrating Global Warming.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ronald N. Jacobs, and Philip Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 745–60. Spencer, Alexander, and Kai Oppermann. “Narrative Genres of Brexit: The Leave Campaign and the Success of Romance.” Journal of European Public Policy: Special Issue: The Brexit Policy Fiasco 27, no. 5 (2020): 666–84. Stern, Barbara B. “Consumer Myths: Frye’s Taxonomy and the Structural Analysis of Consumption Text.” Journal of Consumer Research 22 (September 1995): 165–85.
Sutherland, John. “The Ideas Interview: Frank Kermode.” The Guardian Unlimited (29 August 2006). http://books.guardian. co.uk/comment/story/0,,1860357,00.html. Wade, Spencer. The Development of Illness Narrative in a Structured Cancer Group. PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2003. Wente, Margaret. “Adventures in Academia: The Stuff of Fiction.” Globe and Mail (June 1 2015; updated 23 March 2018). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/adventures-in-academia-the-stuff-of-fiction/ article24731318/. West, Robin. “Jurisprudence as Narrative: An Aesthetic Analysis of Modern Legal Theory.” New York University Law Review 60 (May 1985): 145–211. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
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Chapter 1
Books and Symposia
Scores of books are devoted in part to Frye. The following chronological list contains books devoted to Frye in their entirety. 1. Krieger, Murray, ed. Northrop Frye in Modern Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. 203 pp. Papers presented at the 1965 session of the English Institute devoted to Frye’s work. One of the first formal efforts to assess Frye’s theories and his place in modern criticism. Krieger writes in his foreword that Frye “has had an influence—indeed an absolute hold—on a generation of developing literary critics greater and more exclusive than that of any one theorist in recent critical history.” contents: Murray Krieger, “Foreword” Murray Krieger, “Northrop Frye and Contemporary Criticism: Ariel and the Spirit of Gravity” Northrop Frye, “Letter to the English Institute” Angus Fletcher, “Utopian History and Anatomy of Criticism” W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., “Northrop Frye: Criticism as Myth” Geoffrey Hartman, “Ghostlier Demarcations” Northrop Frye, “Reflections in a Mirror” John E. Grant, “A Checklist of Writings by and about Northrop Frye” reviews: Blissett, William. University of Toronto Quarterly 36, no. 4 (July 1967): 414. Cox, R. Gordan. British Journal of Aesthetics 8, no. 1 (January 1968): 76–80. Griffin, Lloyd W. Library Journal 91, no. 15 (1 September 1966): 3951–2. Hamilton, Alice. Dalhousie Review 47, no. 1 (Spring 1967): 105–7. Harvey, W.J. “Not Enough Muddle?” Listener 77 (5 January 1967): 32. Hibernia (Dublin) (February 1967). Hoeniger, David. Sonderdruck aus Arcadia: Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft 5, no. 1 (1970): 94–8.
Lemon, Lee T. Prairie Schooner 41, no. 3 (Fall 1967): 356. Lodge, David. “Current Critical Theory.” Critical Quarterly 9, no. 1 (Spring 1967): 81–4. Murdoch, Dugald. Studia Neophilologica 40, no. 1 (April 1968): 258–61. Rodway, Allan. Notes and Queries 14, no. 7 (July 1967): 272–4. Von Hendy, Andrew. Criticism 9, no. 4 (Fall 1967): 393–5. Yale Review 56, no. 3 (Spring 1967): vi, xii. 2. Kogan, Pauline [pseud.]. Northrop Frye: The High Priest of Clerical Obscurantism. Montreal: Progressive Books and Periodicals, 1969. 98 pp. Rpt. with minor changes in Alive Magazine: Literature and Ideology no. 43 (1975): 22–31. A Maoist diatribe that purports to examine Frye’s theories of knowledge, literature, and interpretation, his views on Blake, Jung, and writers and critics on class struggle. 3. Bates, Ronald. Northrop Frye. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971. 64 pp. Designed to be “an introduction to, and not a full exposition of, the extremely sophisticated and complex vision of criticism and literature” in Frye’s work. Devotes separate chapters to Fearful Symmetry, Anatomy of Criticism, The Educated Imagination, The Well-Tempered Critic, A Natural Perspective, Fools of Time, The Return of Eden, and Canadian literature. Aims “to present a skeletal outline of the total system” of Frye’s work. Observes that although the systematic mind lies behind Frye’s criticism since Anatomy of Criticism, the method of presentation, chiefly by way of the public lecture, tends more and more toward “what Bacon called Aphorisms and contrasted with Methods.” reviews: Noel-Bentley, Peter C. “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time.” Journal of Canadian Fiction 1 (Summer 1972): 78–80. Thomas, Clara. “Four Critical Problems.” Canadian Literature 56 (Spring 1973): 103–7 [105–6].
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4. Denham, Robert D. Northrop Frye: An Enumerative Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1974. 142 pp. Expands John E. Grant’s checklist in no. 1, above. reviews: Anonymous. References Services Review 2 (July 1974): 28. A[ppenzell, A[nthony] (pseudonym for George Woodcock). “Frye Enumerated.” Canadian Literature 61 (Summer 1974): 128. Lochhead, Douglas. “Letters in Canada.” University of Toronto Quarterly 44 (Summer 1975): 414. Olevnik, Peter P. Library Journal, 15 June 1974: 1691. Ray, William. Southern Humanities Review 9 (Fall 1975): 445–6. 5. Denham, Robert D. Northrop Frye and Critical Method. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978. 262 pp. An effort to examine the whole of Frye’s critical system by placing his arguments in the context of his total view of literature and criticism. Looks at Frye’s work in the context of the problems he is addressing, the nature of his subject matter, the principles and concepts implied by his critical language, and his mode of reasoning. Assumes that Anatomy of Criticism is the chief work to be accounted for, and so devotes the first four chapters to tracing the arguments and theories presented there. In chapter 5, examines Frye’s ideas about literary and critical autonomy, the scientific nature of criticism, value judgments, and the social function of the critic. In chapter 6, analyses several examples of Frye’s practical, historical, and social criticism. The final chapter points to some of the powers and limitations of Frye’s work. Includes twenty-four charts and diagrams. reviews: Anonymous. Annotated Bibliography of New Publications in the Performing Arts 39 (Spring 1980): 47. Brief notice. – Choice 16 (July–August 1979): 663. Brief notice. Barfoot, C.C. “Current Literature: 1978.” English Studies 60 (December 1979): 790. Bilan, R.P. “Frye’s Web.” Canadian Forum 59 (June–July 1979): 39–40. Conner, Frederick W. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 38 (Fall 1979): 97–8. Coulling, Sidney. “A Careful Analysis of Influential Criticism.” Roanoke Times [Virginia] (22 April 1979): E4. Fischer, Michael. Clio 9 (Spring 1980): 478–80. Harris, Wendell V. National Forum 60 (Fall 1980): 52–4. Hawkes, Terrence. “New Books in Review.” Yale Review 69 (Summer 1980): 574–6.
Leighton, Betty. “Frye, Bellow, Mailer, Conrad and Company.” Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina) (11 March 1979): C3. Rajan, Tilomatta. “In Search of System.” University of Toronto Quarterly 51 (Fall 1981): 93–5. Schwartz, Sanford. “Reconsidering Frye.” Modern Philology 78 (February 1981): 289–95. Segal, Robert A. “Methodology.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 51 (June 1983): 334. Spector, Robert D. World Literature Today 53 (Summer 1979): 562. Steig, Michael. “Frye, Freud & Theory.” Canadian Literature 83 (Winter 1979): 190–4. 6. Dyrkjøb, Jan Ulrik. Northrop Fryes litteraturteori. Copenhagen: Berlinske Verlag, 1979. 238 pp. Gives a critical account of Frye’s theory of literature, and, using this theory as a starting point, seeks to discover the relation between the vision we encounter in poetry and the utopian vision necessary for revolutionary social change. Sees the most important ideological assumptions in Frye as coming from the English left-wing Protestant tradition, the romantic emphasis on human creativity, and nineteenthcentury cultural liberalism. Uses a Marxist understanding of culture, society, and poetry as the starting point of his critique of Frye’s theory of literature and for the development of his own point of view. 7. Cook, David. Northrop Frye: A Vision of the New World. New York: St. Martin’s, 1985. 122 pp. Is concerned primarily with Frye as a social critic, in particular, with his defence of liberalism and critique of technology. Concentrates on the ways in which Frye’s response to the Western intellectual tradition has been shaped by his North American and Canadian experience—a response that produced, like Blake’s America: A Prophecy, a vision of the New World. Looks at the relationship between Frye’s view of the imagination and the natural world, the individual, and society, noting especially the way a humanized technology mediates among these three orders. Devotes a separate chapter to Frye’s understanding of the Canadian identity. Remarks that his treatment of Frye “is closer to that of a caricature than a photograph” and that his study has an imaginative and fictional dimension to it. reviews: Anonymous. Vic Report 16 (Autumn 1987): 7. Balfour, Ian. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 28, nos. 1–2 (1987): 97–8. Booth, William T. “Landscape with Politicians.” Essays on Canadian Writing 35 (Winter 1987): 117–22. Cameron, Elspeth. “Face Values.” Journal of Canadian Studies 21 (Winter 1986–7): 133–7 [136].
Books and Symposia
Cook, Ramsay. University of Toronto Quarterly 56 (Fall 1986): 157–9. Gebbia, Alessandro. “A Vision of the New World.” Annali Accademici Canadesi [Rome] 2 (Autumn 1986): 125–8. Hurley, Michael. Queen’s Quarterly 94 (Spring 1987): 219–22. Lane, Lauriat, Jr. English Studies in Canada 13 (September 1987): 349–52. Pinter, Steven. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology/La Revue canadienne de sociologie et d’anthropologie 26, no. 5 (November 1989): 830–1. Stevick, Philip T. Journal of Modern Literature 13 (November 1986): 476–7. Woodcock, George. “Political Frye.” Canadian Literature 110 (Fall 1986): 153–6. 8. Cook, Eleanor, et al., eds. Centre and Labyrinth: Essays in Honour of Northrop Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, in association with Victoria University, 1985. 346 pp. A group of essays presented to Frye in honour of his seventieth year. contents: Paul Ricoeur, “Anatomy of Criticism and the Order of Paradigms” Francis Sparshott, “The Riddle of Katharsis” Patricia Parker, “Anagogic Metaphor: Breaking Down the Wall of Partition” Michael Dolzani, “The Infernal Method: Northrop Frye and Contemporary Criticism” John Freccero, “‘Manfred’s Wounds and the Poetics of the Purgatorio” James Nohrnberg, “Paradise Regained by One Greater Man: Milton’s Wisdom Epic as a ‘Fable of Identity’” Thomas Willard, “Alchemy and the Bible” James Carscallen, “Three Jokers: The Shape of Alice Munro’s Stories” David Staines, “The Holistic Vision of Hugh of Saint Victor” Julian Patrick, “The Tempest as Supplement” Helen Vendler, “The Golden Theme: Keats’s Ode To Autumn” Milton Wilson, “Bodies in Motion: Wordsworth’s Myths of Natural Philosophy” Geoffrey Hartman, “Reading Aright: Keats’s Ode to Psyche” Eleanor Cook, “Riddles, Charms, and Fictions in Wallace Stevens” W. David Shaw, “Poetic Truth in a Scientific Age: The Victorian Perspective” Jennifer Levine, “Reading Ulysses” Eli Mandel, “Northrop Frye and the Canadian Literary Tradition” James Reaney, “Some Critics Are Music Teachers”
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Harold Bloom, “Reading Freud: Transference, Taboo, and Truth” Angus Fletcher, “The Image of Lost Direction” reviews: Buitenhuis, Peter. “Honor for a Literary Colossus.” Globe and Mail (25 June 1983): 73. Egawa, Toru. English Literature Research/Japanese English Language Conference 61, no. 2 (1984): 387–90. Forst, Graham. “WordCentred.” Canadian Literature 102 (Autumn 1984): 69–71. Galan, F.W. World Literature Today 57, no. 4 (Fall 1983): 695. Good, Graham. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 14, no. 2 (June 1987): 267–73. Josipovici, Gabriel. Modern Language Review 82 (July 1987): 687–9. Kane, Sean. University of Toronto Quarterly 53, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 411–12. Kastan, David Scott. “The Triumph of Comedy.” TLS, no. 4220 (17 February 1984): 163. O’Hara, Dan. Criticism 26, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 91–5. Thomas, Clara. Quill & Quire 49 (July 1983): 59. World Literature Today 57 (Autumn 1983): 695. 9. Denham, Robert D. Northrop Frye: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. 449 pp. A comprehensive, annotated account of writings by and about Frye. Part Two (secondary sources) is a precursor to the present volume. reviews: Anonymous. Reference and Research Book News 3 (June 1988): 31. Brief notice. Baine, Rodney M. Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly (Fall 1989): 88. Fee, Margery. Malahat Review 84 (Fall 1988): 166. Forst, Graham. “Frye.” Canadian Literature 122–3 (Autumn–Winter 1989): 189–90. Hammel, P.J. CM: Canadian Review of Materials 17, no. 2 (March 1989): 93. Johnson, G.A. Canadian Historical Review 1988: 235. Laakso, Lila. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 27 (1988): 110–12. Mellard, James M. “Monument or Scholarly Tool? Denham’s Northrop Frye: A Review Essay.” Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 2, no. 3 (1988): 113–21. Morgan, Eleanor. Canadian Book Review Annual (1988): 4–5. Pell, Barbara. Christian Scholar’s Review 19, no. 3 (1990): 290. Rampton, David. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 37 (1988): 181–3.
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Willard, Thomas. University of Toronto Quarterly 69 (Fall 1989): 167–8. Woodruff, James. Modern Philology 87 (February 1990): 324–6. 10. Balfour, Ian. Northrop Frye. Boston, Twayne, 1988. 132 pp. Available online at galenet.galegroup.com. An exposition of five of Frye’s books, written over a forty-five-year period. Focuses on laying out Frye’s central theses about literature and criticism, and thus serves as an introductory manual to his work. Considers Frye’s relation to “more contemporary criticism.” reviews: Adamson, Joseph. “Frye Redividus: The Semiotic Implications of His Criticism.” Semiotic Review of Books 1 (May 1990): 8–10 [9]. Denham, Robert D. American Review of Canadian Studies 19 (Summer 1989): 228–30. Findlay, L.M. “The Divine Legation of Northrop Frye.” English Studies in Canada 19 (June 1993): 177. Hamilton, A.C. Queen’s Quarterly 96 (Summer 1989): 500–2. Surette, Leon. “Refryed Books: The Myth of Frye.” Essays on Canadian Writing 41 (1990): 159–65. Willard, Thomas. University of Toronto Quarterly 59 (Fall 1989): 164–9 [168–9]. 11. Ayre, John. Northrop Frye: A Biography. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1989. 472 pp. A portrait of Frye and a consideration of his work by a former student. Based on family letters, archival correspondence, interviews, correspondence with Frye himself, conversations with childhood and college friends, colleagues, students, editors, and publishers. reviews: Adamson, Joseph. “Frye Redividus: The Semiotic Implications of His Criticism.” Semiotic Review of Books 1 (May 1990): 8–10 [8–9]. Bemrose, John. “An Exceptional Mind.” Maclean’s 102 (11 December 1989): 65–6. Bowers, Ann. British Journal of Canadian Studies 6, no. 2 (1991): 492–3. Brown, Douglas. Matrix 31 (Spring–Summer 1990): 67–8. Chronicle–Herald [Halifax, NS] (25 January 1991): D3. Dyrkjøb, Jan Ulrik. Kritik 24, no. 96 (1991): 110–12. Dolzani, Michael. Northrop Frye Newsletter 2, no. 1 (Winter 1989–90): 12–18. Dooley, D.J. Anglican Journal (May 1990): 16. Ferguson, Doug. “Biographer Misses Boat.” ChronicleJournal/Times–News (23 December 1989). Fetherling, Douglas. “True to His Own Tastes.” Toronto Star (24 November 1990): G13.
Findlay, L.M. “The Divine Legation of Northrop Frye.” English Studies in Canada 19 (June 1993): 161–6. Forst, Graham. “Modern World’s Aristotle?” Canadian Literature 129 (Summer 1991): 173–5. Fraser, Marian Botsford. “An Odd Form of Heroism.” The Province [Vancouver] (14 January 1990). French, Goldwin. “Two Complex Victorians.” Vic Report 18 (Spring 1990): 8. Gervais, Marty. “Frye’s Hidden Side Unearthed by Biographer Who Knew Him.” Windsor Star (16 December 1989). Hanson, Elizabeth. “The Manly Scholar.” Whig–Standard [Kingston, ON] (17 February 1990): 1. Hayley, Rod. “Introduction to Critic Frye Wins with Popular Approach.” Vancouver Sun (6 January 1990): E4. Jackson, Marni. “Anatomy of Frye.” Canadian Forum 70 (June 1990): 27–8. Marchand, Philip. “If You Can’t Stand the Heat Then Stay Away from Frye.” Toronto Star (9 December 1989): J2. Mills, Allen. “Biography Omits Mr. Frye.” Winnipeg Free Press (20 January 1990): 23. Morley, Patricia. “Northrop Frye: Getting to Know Man as Well as Theorist.” Ottawa Citizen (16 December 1989): J9. O’Brien, Peter. “The Man behind the Myth.” University of Toronto Bulletin (26 February 1990): 10–11. O’Malley, Martin. United Church Observer 54 (August 1990): 46–7. Overall, Denise. Education Forum 16, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 38–40. Pinter, Steven. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (November 1989): 830–2. Pugsley, Alex. “On the Eighth Day He Created Biography.” The Varsity [University of Toronto] (7 December 1989): 6. Reaney, James. “Counterpoint of Meaning.” Books in Canada (January–February 1990): 37–8. Robertson, P.J.M. “How a Critic’s Life Can Imitate Theory.” Globe and Mail (21 October 1989): C19. Stevens, Paul. “Cracking the Frye Code.” Toronto Star (9 December 1989): M6. Stuart, Reginald. “Biography Explores World of Northrop Frye.” Lethbridge Herald (20 January 1990). Theatrum 18 (April–May 1990): 36. Walker, Craig Stewart. “Visions of Coherence: Northrop Frye Reviewed.” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’Études canadiennes 25 (Summer 1990): 170–7 [172–3]. Whiteman, Bruce. “Northrop Frye: The Great Codifier.” The Gazette [Montreal] (23 December 1989): H10. Willard, Thomas. University of Toronto Quarterly 50 (Fall 1990): 157–8. Yan, Peter. “Frye’s Life Imitates Snake-Shape of Literature.” The Strand (14 March 1990): 8–9.
Books and Symposia
12. Lombardo, Agostino, ed. Ritratto di Northrop Frye. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1989. 435 pp. In English and Italian. Some twenty-eight essays from the international conference devoted to a “Portrait” of Frye, held in Rome in May 1987. contents: Northrop Frye, “Maps and Territories” Remo Ceserani, “Primo approccio alla teoria critica di Frye: Riflessioni attorno al concetto di modo” Sergio Perosa, “Incontri con Frye” Roberto Cresti, “Critical Theory and Literary Experience in Northrop Frye” Francesco Guardiani, “Le categorie di Frye dall’Anatomia della Critica al Grande Codice” Dominico Pietropaolo, “Frye, Vico, and the Grounding of Literature and Criticism” Frank Kermode, “Northrop Frye and the Bible” Piero Boitani, “Codex Fryeanus 0-15-136903-X: A Medieval Reading of The Great Code” Giorgio Mariani, “Northrop Frye and the Politics of the Bible” Jan Ulrik Dyrkjøb, “Northrop Frye’s Visionary Protestantism” Paolo Russo, “The Word as Event” Paola Colaiacomo, “La letteratura come potere” Keir Elam, “A Natural Perspective: Frye on Shakespearean Comedy” Agostino Lombardo, “Northrop Frye e The Tempest” Francesco Marroni, “Frye, Shakespeare e ‘la parola magica’” Stefana d’Ottavi, “Frye e Blake” Christina Bertea, “Frye e la fiaba” Carlo Pagetti, “Frye cittadino di utopia” Caterina Ricciardi, “Frye, l’America e le finzioni supreme” Eleanor Cook, “Against Monism: The Canadian Anatomy of Northrop Frye” Robert Kroetsch, “Learning the Hero from Northrop Frye” Alessandro Gebbia, “L’idea di letteratura canadese in Frye” Alfredo Rizzardi, “Northrop Frye e la poesia canadese” Richard Ambrosini, “From Archetypes to National Specificity” Maria Micarelli, “La visione sociale di Northrop Frye” Francesca Valente, “Northrop Frye the Teacher: Education and Literary Criticism” Robert D. Denham, “An Anatomy of Frye’s Influence” Baldo Meo, “La fortuna di Frye in Italia” Alessandro Gebbia and Baldo Meo, “Bibliografia di Northrop Frye, con una appendice delle traduzioni e dei contribute critica italiani” 13. Hamilton, A.C. Northrop Frye: Anatomy of His Criticism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. 294 pp. Considers Frye’s criticism from the context of modern criticism from the 1920s to the 1950s. Outlines the critical
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debates that were present when Frye began to formulate the central ideas that have come to characterize his literary theory—the debates out of which and against which Fearful Symmetry and Anatomy of Criticism were born. The organization of the book mirrors that of the Anatomy: an introduction, four kinds of criticism (historical ethical, archetypal, and rhetorical), and a conclusion. A major study. reviews: Adamson, Joseph. “Frye Redividus: The Semiotic Implications of His Criticism.” The Semiotic Review of Books 1 (May 1990): 8–10 [9–10]. Alsop, D.K. Modern Language Review 87 (October 1992): 921–2. American Review of Canadian Studies 22, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 628–30. Balfour, Ian. Queen’s Quarterly 98, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 705–7. Denham, Robert D. University of Toronto Quarterly 61, no. 1 (Fall 1991): 114–15. Findlay, L.M. “The Divine Legation of Northrop Frye.” English Studies in Canada 19 (June 1993): 174–6. Forst, Graham. “Modern World’s Aristotle?” Canadian Literature 129 (Summer 1991): 173–5. Hart, Jonathan. “Frye’s Anatomizing and Anatomizing Frye.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 19, nos. 1–2 (March–June 1992): 119–53. Higgins, M.W. Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 23, no. 3 (1994): 381. Keith, W.J. “Northrop Frye and How We Read.” Globe and Mail (14 April 1990): C17. Lennox, John. Journal of Canadian Poetry 7 (1992). Pierce, John B. American Review of Canadian Studies 22, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 628–30. Shore, David R. Journal of Canadian Poetry 7 (1992): 190–3. Vidan, Ivo. Journal of Modern Literature 19, nos. 3–4 (Spring 1996): 468. Walker, Craig Stewart. “Visions of Coherence: Northrop Frye Reviewed.” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’Études canadiennes 25 (Summer 1990): 170–7 [173–5, 176]. Willard, Thomas. “Hamilton’s Northrop Frye.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 3, no. 1 (Winter 1990–1): 7–31. 14. Denham, Robert D., and Thomas Willard, eds. Visionary Poetics: Essays on Northrop Frye’s Criticism. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. 161 pp. Papers presented at two programs devoted to Frye’s work at the 1987 convention of the Modern Language Association in San Francisco. The first four papers, listed immediately below, were under the rubric of “Northrop Frye and the Contexts of Criticism,” while the theme of the second four was “Anatomy of Criticism in Retrospect.”
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contents: Northrop Frye, “Auguries of Experience” Thomas Willard, “The Visionary Education” Hazard Adams, “Essay on Frye” David Staines, “Northrop Frye in a Canadian Context” Imre Salusinszky, “Frye and Romanticism” Robert D. Denham, “Auguries of Influence” Hayden White, “Ideology and Counterideology in the Anatomy” Patricia Parker, “What’s a Meta Phor?” Paul Hernadi, “Ratio Contained by Oratio: Northrop Frye on the Rhetoric of Nonliterary Prose” reviews: Forst, Graham. “Visionary Poetics.” Canadian Literature 137 (Summer 1993): 100. Hamilton, A.C. “Northrop Frye in Print and Conversation.” Queen’s Quarterly 101, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 895–9. Huttar, Charles A. Christianity and Literature 29, no. 1 (Fall 1979): 62–4. Vandervlist, Harry. Recherches sémiotics/Semiotic Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1993): 205–15. Van Der Weele, Steven J. Christianity and Literature 41 (Spring 1992): 336–9. 15. Cayley, David. Northrop Frye in Conversation. Concord, ON: Anansi, 1992. 228 pp. The transcript of an interview with Frye, conducted in December 1989 and divided into thirteen chapters. Robert D. Denham transcribed the interview and created the section headings. reviews: Actualité 22, no. 1 (January 1997): 67. Anonymous. “Today’s Best.” Calgary Herald (23 June 1992): B6. Brief notice. Darling, Michael. Books in Canada 21, no. 9 (December 1992): 39–40. Echart Orús, Pablo. Nueva Revista: De Política, Cultura y Arte, no. 61: 134–5. Rev. of Spanish trans. Forst, Graham. Canadian Literature 137 (Summer 1993): 100. Hamilton, A.C. Queen’s Quarterly 101, no. 4 (1994): 898. Hart, Jonathan. “Northrop Frye and the End/s of Ideology.” Comparative Literature 47, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 160–74. – Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 20, nos. 1–2 (1993): 139–71. Literary Review of Canada 5, no. 2 (February 1996): 8–11. Malpartida, J. Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 573 (March 1998): 132–3. Morley, Patricia. Quill & Quire 58 (September 1992): 67. Simpson, Janice. Grail (9 June 1993): 123–9. Staines, David. Journal of Canadian Poetry 9 (1994): 154–5.
Walker, Craig Stewart. “Unpopular Anachronism of a Critic with Vision.” Compass (September–October 1993): 37–9. 16. Lee, Sang Ran, ed. The Legacy of Northrop Frye in the East and West: Proceedings of the Third Annual International Conference of Canadian Studies. Seoul: Canadian Studies Center, Sookmyung Women’s University, 1992. Contains essays by Sang Ran Lee, A.C. Hamilton, Shunichi Takayanagi, Anthony Teague, Mary Hamilton, Kyung Sook Yeum, and Han Yong Woo. Five of these essays were reprinted in Canadian Literature: Introductory and Critical Essays, ed. Sang Ran Lee, Kwangsook Chung, and Myungsoon Shin. Seoul: Center for Canadian Studies, Institute of East and West Studies, Yonsei University, 1994. 17. Ricciardi, Caterina. Northrop Frye, o, delle finzioni supreme. Rome: Empirìa, 1992. 111 pp. In Italian. On Frye’s theory of modes (First Essay of Anatomy of Criticism) and theory of myths (Third Essay). 18. Adamson, Joseph. Northrop Frye: A Visionary Life. Toronto: ECW Press, 1993. 93 pp. “Examines Frye’s life and career and his quest for meaning in mythic forms and biblical symbolism. Highlights of this illustrated biography include Frye’s boyhood in Eastern Canada; his dramatic encounter with the work of William Blake; the impact and importance of Anatomy of Criticism; Frye’s gradual development of a theory of culture; and his culminating achievement, after twenty years, of a comprehensive study of the poetic structures of the Bible.” (publisher’s abstract) reviews: British Journal of Canadian Studies 11, no. 1 (June 1996): 153–4. Findlay, L.M. English Studies in Canada 21, no. 3 (1995): 361. Hagen, W.M. World Literature Today 68, no. 4 (1994): 820. Litvack, Leon. British Journal of Canadian Studies 11, no. 1 (1996): 153–4. McLeod, A.L. Choice 32 (October 1994): 278. Soloman, Evan. Quill & Quire 59 (November 1993): 26. Spector, Robert. World Literature Today 68 (Autumn 1994): 820. 19. Signori, Dolores A. Guide to the Northrop Frye Papers. Toronto: Victoria University Library, 1993. A 265-page record of the papers and other materials that came to the Victoria College Library Archives upon Frye’s death. Includes the Helen Frye Fonds and a record of Frye archival materials, largely correspondence, held in other libraries. Contains a comprehensive index.
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20. Aithal, S. Krishnamoorthy, ed. The Importance of Northrop Frye. Kanpur, India: Humanities Research Centre, 1993. 170 pp. An anthology of essays on Frye’s criticism. contents: Robert D. Denham, “Northrop Frye’s Shakespearean Criticism” Nishi Bir Chawla. “Northrop Frye and the Mythos of Comedy” P. Marudanayagam, “The Quest for Myth: Frye and Fiedler as Literary Critics” Thomas Willard, “Analogia Visionis: The Importance of Analogy” Ian Balfour, “Reviewing Canada” K.V. Tirumalesh, “Northrop Frye and the Theory Impasse” Aithal S. Krishnamoorthy, “Getting Past the Antithetical Way of Stating the Problem: Northrop Frye’s Critical Path” Joanne Harris Burgess, “‘The Search for Acceptable Words’: The Concept of Kerygma in The Great Code and Words with Power” Eva Kushner, “Northrop Frye and the Possibility of Intercultural Dialogue” 21. Hart, Jonathan. Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination. London: Routledge, 1994. 352 pp. A biographical-critical study of Frye, with separate chapters on the theoretical imagination, reconstructing Blake, The Great Code, history, education, mythology and ideology, a visionary criticism, the critic as writer, and the power of words. reviews: Dolzani, Michael. Style 30, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 519–23. Domville, Eric. Arachne 3, no. 2 (1996): 116–19. Elder, Bruce. “Apostle of Genius.” Literary Review of Canada 5, no. 2 (February 1996): 8–11. Muñoz Valdivieso, Sofía. “Re-visión de una crítica visionaria.” Analecta Malacitana 19, no. 2 (1996): 563–78. Salusinszky, Imre. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de littérature comparée 23, no. 2 (June 1996): 590–3. – Southern Review (Australia) 29, no. 3 (1996): 359–62. Vandervlist, Henry. Ariel 26, no. 4 (October 1995): 182–4. 22. Lee, Alvin, and Robert D. Denham, eds. The Legacy of Northrop Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. 353 pp. Contains twenty-nine papers, the libretto for an auditory masque, and a poem by Margaret Atwood, originally presented at an international conference, “The Legacy of Northrop Frye,” held at Victoria University, University of Toronto, 29–31 October 1992. contents: Alvin A. Lee, “Introduction” Robert D. Denham, “Frye’s International Presence”
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A.C. Hamilton, “The Legacy of Frye’s Criticism in Culture, Religion, and Society” Thomas Willard, “Archetypes of the Imagination” Hayden White, “Frye’s Place in Contemporary Cultural Studies” Craig Stewart Walker, “The Religious Experience in the Work of Frye” Margaret Burgess, “The Resistance to Religion: Anxieties Surrounding the Spiritual Dimensions of Frye’s Thought; or, Investigations into the Fear of Enlightenment” Imre Salusinszky, “Frye and Ideology” Deanne Bogdan, “The (Re)Educated Imagination” Michael Dolzani, “Wrestling with Powers: The Social Thought of Frye” Linda Hutcheon, “Frye Recoded: Postmodernity and the Conclusions” James Reaney, “The Inheritors Read the Will” Sandra Djwa, “Forays in the Bush Garden: Frye and Canadian Poetry” Milton Wilson, “Frye as Reviewer of Canadian Poetry” David Staines, “Frye: Canadian Critic/Writer” Clara Thomas, “Celebrations: Frye’s The Double Vision and Margaret Laurence’s Dance on the Earth” Margaret Atwood, “Norrie Banquet Ode” G.E. Bentley, Jr., “Blake on Frye and Frye on Blake” Monika Lee, “Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry and Frye: A Theory of Synchronicity” Helen Vendler, “Frye’s Endymion: Myth, Ethics, and Literary Description” Joseph Adamson, “Frye’s Structure of Imagery: The Case of Eros in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams” Michael Fischer, “Frye and the Politics of English Romanticism” J. Edward Chamberlain, “Mathematics and Modernism” Paul Cornea, “The Modern Century: An East-European Reading” Wladimir Krysinski, “Frye and the Problems of Modern(ity)” James Reaney and James Beckwith, “‘In the Middle of Ordinary Noise . . .’: An Auditory Masque” Angus Fletcher, “Frye and the Forms of Literary Theory” Nella Cotrupi, “Verum Factum: Viconian Markers along Frye’s Path” Eva Kushner, “Frye and the Historicity of Literature” Jan Gorak, “Frye and the Legacy of Communication” Ross Woodman, “Frye, Psychoanalysis, and Deconstruction” Eleanor Cook, “The Function of Riddles at the Present Time” Julia Kristeva, “The Importance of Frye” Appendix: Robert D. Denham, “Northrop Frye’s Books”
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reviews: Books in Canada 24, no. 5 (Summer 1995): 19. Canadian Book Review Annual 1994: 254. Connor, Catherine. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 44 (1996): 194–6. Darling, Michael. Books in Canada 24, no. 5 (1995): 19–21. Elder, Bruce. “Apostle of Genius.” Literary Review of Canada 5, no. 2 (February 1996): 8–11. Esterhammer, Angela. English Studies in Canada 22, no. 2 (1996): 238. Hart, Jonathan. “Poetics and Culture: Unity, Difference, and the Case of Northrop Frye.” Christianity & Literature 46 (Autumn 1996): 61–79. L., M.P. Journal of Modern Literature 20, nos. 3–4 (Spring 1997): 285. Miller, Danielle. Surfaces 5 (23 December 1995): 4–7. Perkin, Russell. University of Toronto Quarterly 66, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 371–4. Smith, Alexandra. Journal of the Australasian University Language and Literature Association 87 (May 1997): 120–1. 23. Wang, Ning, and Yen-hung Hsü, eds. Fu-lai yen chiu: Chung-kuo yü hsi fang [Frye Studies: China and the West]. Beijing: Chung-kuo she hui k’o hsüeh ch’u pan she [Social Sciences Press of China], 1996. In Chinese. Essays drawn largely from the conference “Northrop Frye and China” held at the University of Beijing, 12–17 July 1994. Contains papers presented at the conference by A.C. Hamilton, Joseph Adamson, Kang Liu, Eva Kushner, Ian Balfour, Aiming Cheng, Ning Wang, Jonathan Hart, Ersu Ding, Hui Zhang, Fengzheng Wang, Robert Denham, Suxian Ye, Naiying Liu, and Yiman Wang, plus additional essays by Mario Valdés, Linda Hutcheon, and Roseann Runte. The articles by Balfour, Adamson, and Denham appeared earlier in Foreign Literatures 1 (1995): 3–21. 24. Boyd, David, and Imre Salusinzsky, eds. Rereading Frye: The Published and Unpublished Works. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 163 pp. “Following Northrop Frye’s death in 1991, a large archive of his correspondence, unpublished criticism, and notebooks was deposited with the Victoria University Library at the University of Toronto. This collection of essays, written by a group of Frye experts, begins the process of reassessing Frye’s thought and writings in light of the extraordinary material contained in this archive. The eight essays included here illuminate in new and significant ways both Frye’s critical theories and their philosophical underpinnings. They show that Frye’s thought was a manysided and yet strikingly consistent process of meditation that was not fully reflected in his published works, for all their adventurous scope and brilliance. This impressive collection highlights the continuing relevance of Frye’s
ideas and gives a broader sense of his writing and his achievement (publisher’s abstract). Most of the essays developed out of a research seminar held at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in July 1994. contents: Robert D. Denham, “The Frye Papers” Michael Dolzani, “The Book of the Dead: A Skeleton Key to Northrop Frye’s Notebooks” Imre Salusinszky, “Frye and the Art of Memory” Jonathan Hart, “The Quest for the Creative Word: Writing in the Frye Notebooks” Joseph Adamson, “The Treason of the Clerks: Frye, Ideology, and the Authority of Imaginative Culture” A.C. Hamilton, “Northrop Frye as a Cultural Theorist” Péter Pásztor, “Frye in Hungary: The Frustrations and Hopes of a Frye Translator” Robert D. Denham, “Interpenetration as a Key Concept in Frye’s Critical Vision” reviews: Anonymous. “Rereading Frye.” Virginia Quarterly Review 76, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 48. Cotrupi, Nella. “Retiring the Sacred Cow of Ideology.” Books in Canada 28, no. 5 (Summer 1999): 10–13. Dubois, Diane. Semantic Scholar (1999). https://www. semanticscholar.org/paper/Rereading-Frye%3A-ThePublished-and-the-Unpublished-Boyd-Salusinszky/5c02 8a721fd8849c681b2c506f74d5c35809a510. Forst, Graham. “Reading Rereading.” Canadian Literature 173 (Summer 2002): 120–1. Keith, W.J. “Editor’s Scholarly Choice.” Canadian Book Review Annual (September–October 2001). Kelly, David. AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language Association 95 (May 2001): 122–4. Muirhead, Bruce. Review of Salusinszky and Boyd, Rereading Frye. University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 1 (Winter 2000–1): 500–1. Nohrnberg, James C. “Master of the Myth of Literature: An Interpenetrative Ogdoad for Northrop Frye.” Comparative Literature 53, no. 1 (2001): 58–82. Perkin, J. Russell. University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 1 (Winter 2000–1): 500–1. Steele, James. English Studies in Canada 29, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2003): 242–9. 25. Gyalokay, Monique Anne. Rousseau, Northrop Frye et la Bible: Essai de mythocritique. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999. 208 pp. Maintains that in order to identify Old and New Testament themes reproduced in the literature, Frye proposed a structure of four “variations,” corresponding to the four levels of the axis mundi. These are found in the myths of
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the mountain, the garden, the cave, and the furnace. In Part 1 Gyalokay highlights the defining biblical structures in all of Rousseau’s works, classifying them according to the four variations of the monomyth and discovering mythical biblical patterns at the heart of the Rousseau corpus. reviews: Cronk, Nicholas. TLS, no. 5035 (1 October 1999): 33. Richard, Monik. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 12, no. 1 (October 1999): 133–5. Roussell, J. “Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 100, no. 2 (March–April 2000): 330–1. Voisine, Jacques. Revue de littérature comparée 74, no. 1 (January–March 2000): 108–10. 26. Cotrupi, Caterina Nella. Northrop Frye and the Poetics of Process. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 145 pp. “Challenging the dismissive view of Frye’s work as closed and outdated, Cotrupi explores the implications of his proposition that the history of criticism may be seen as having two main approaches—literature as ‘product’ and literature as ‘process.’” (publisher’s abstract) reviews: Burke, Anne. Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature 37 (2001–2): 46–55. Canadian Book Review Annual (1 January 2001): 248. Denham, Robert D. Christianity & Literature 51 no. 1 (Autumn 2001): 142–5. Donaldson, Jeffery. University of Toronto Quarterly 71, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 344–6. Dubois, Diane. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature comparée 29, no. 4 (2002): 629–33. Forst, Graham. “Frye Redux?” Canadian Literature 175 (Winter 2002): 140–2. Moran, Maureen. British Journal of Canadian Studies 15, nos. 1–2 (September 2002): 254–5. Wasserman, G.R. Choice 38, no. 10 (June 2001): 1788–9. 27. Russell, Ford. Northrop Frye on Myth: An Introduction. New York: Garland, 1998; London: Routledge, 2000. 246 pp. “Northrop Frye differed from other theorists of myth in tracing all of the major literary genres—romance, comedy, satire, not just tragedy—to myth and ritual.” (publisher’s abstract) reviews: Coupe, Laurence. Religion 30, no. 1 (January 2000): 73–6. – Journal of Religion 82, no. 1 (January 2002): 164–6. Lee, R.J. Choice 37, no. 2 (October 1999): 324.
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Moore, Warren S. III. Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 34, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 87–9. Reference & Research Book News 14 (August 1999): 151. Religious Studies Review 29 (January 2003): 3. 28. Wang, Ning, and Jean O’Grady, eds. New Directions in N. Frye Studies. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2001. 314 pp. Contains papers presented at the International Symposium on Northrop Frye Studies, held 15–17 July 1999 at Inner Mongolia University, Hoh-Hot, China, along with papers solicited by Wang Ning and Jean O’Grady. contents: Alvin A. Lee, “Preface” Robert D. Denham, “Frye’s Diaries” Jonathan Hart, “Northrop Frye and the Poetics of Context” Wang Ning, “Northrop Frye and Cultural Studies” Jean O’Grady, “Northrop Frye on Liberal Education” Sandra Djwa, “‘Canadian Angles of Vision’: Northrop Frye, Carl Klinck, and the Literary History of Canada” Thomas Willard, “Gone Primitive: The Critic in Canada” Graham Nicol Forst, “The Purpose of the Purposeless: Kant and Frye on the Uses of Art” Jan Gorak, “From Escape to Irony: Frye’s ‘The Argument of Comedy’” Michael Dolzani, “On Earth as It Is in Heaven: The Problem of Wish-Fulfilment in Frye’s Visionary Criticism” Glen Robert Gill, “Northrop Frye’s Words with Power: The Function of Myth Criticism at the Present Time” Ye Shuxian, “Frye and Myth-Archetypal Criticism in China” Gu Mingdong, “Frye and Psychoanalysis in Literary Studies: The West and China” Wu Chizhe, “Reconsidering Frye’s Critical Thinking: A Chinese Perspective” James Steele, “Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye: New Feminism or Old Comedy?” Jean O’Grady, “Epilogue” 29. O’Grady, Jean, and Wang Ning, eds. Northrop Frye: Eastern and Western Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 183 pp. Drawn from papers given at an international symposium on Northrop Frye in Hoh-Hot, Inner Mongolia, this volume offers insights into Frye’s theoretical approaches and the new context provided by cross-cultural questions. contents: Robert D. Denham, “Frye and the East: Buddhist and Hindu Translations” Graham Nicol Forst, “Kant and Frye on the Critical Path” Jean O’Grady, “Northrop Frye on Liberal Education”
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Glen Robert Gill, “Beyond Anagogy: Northrop Frye’s Existential (Re)visions” Michael Dolzani, “On Earth as It Is in Heaven: The Problem of Wish-Fulfilment in Frye’s Visionary Criticism” Jan Gorak, “From Escape to Irony: Frye’s ‘The Argument of Comedy’” Wang Ning, “Northrop Frye and Cultural Studies” Sandra Djwa, “‘Canadian Angles of Vision’: Northrop Frye, Carl Klinck, and the Literary History of Canada” Thomas Willard, “Gone Primitive: The Critic in Canada” James Steele, “Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye: New Feminism or Old Comedy?” Ye Shuxian, “Myth-Archetypal Criticism in China” Wu Chizhe, “Reconsidering Frye’s Critical Thinking: A Chinese Perspective” Gu Mingdong, “The Universal Significance of Frye’s Theory of Fictional Modes” Ye Shuxian and Wang Ning, “Frye Studies in China: A Selected Bibliography of Recent Works” Jean O’Grady, “Epilogue”
Joe Velaidum, “Towards Reconciling the Solitudes” David Gay, “‘The Humanized God’: Biblical Paradigms of Recognition in Frye’s Final Three Books” Michael Dolzani, “The Ashes of the Stars: Northrop Frye and the Trickster-God” James M. Kee, “Northrop Frye and the Poetry in Biblical Hermeneutics” Patricia Demers, “Early Modern Women’s Words with Power: Absence and Presence” Margaret Burgess, “From Archetype to Antitype: A Look at Frygian Archetypology” William Robins, “Modeling Biblical Narrative: Frye and D.H. Lawrence” David Jobling, “Biblical Studies on a More Capacious Canvas: A Response to Joe Velaidum and James M. Kee” J. Russell Perkin, “Reconfiguring the Liberal Imagination: A Response to Margaret Burgess, Patricia Demers, and William Robins” Robert Cording, “The ‘Something More’ in the Bible: A Response to Robert Alter, David Gay, and Michael Dolzani”
reviews: Good, Graham, “Frye in China.” Canadian Literature 183 (Winter 2004): 156–8. Moran, Maureen, British Journal of Canadian Studies 19, no. 1 (2006): 132–4. Reference and Research Book News 19, no. 1 (February 2004). Vulovic, Mima, Canadian Book Review Annual (2003): 259–60. Zhang, Longxi, “Northrop Frye: Eastern and Western Perspectives.” University of Toronto Quarterly 74, no. 1 (Winter 2004–5): 572–4.
31. Donaldson, Jeffery, and Alan Mendelson, eds. Frye and the Word: Religious Contexts in the Criticism of Northrop Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 386 pp. Frye and the Word draws together leading scholars in the fields of literary studies and hermeneutics, religious studies, and philosophy to construe and debate the late thought and writings of Northrop Frye in their spiritual dimension. The essays are a product of a conference entitled “Frye and the Word” held at McMaster University in May 2000.
30. Kee, James M., and Adele Reinhartz, eds. Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word. Semeia 89. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002. A selection of papers presented at a conference, “Frye and the Word,” held at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, May 2000. “The gulf between Frye’s imaginative universe and that of contemporary biblical scholarship is so great that his efforts have had little effect upon the ways in which the Bible is read within religious studies. The latest issue of Semeia, entitled Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word, seeks to build a first bridge across this gulf. It offers essays that are alternately sympathetic to and critical of Frye’s late work in the hope that we might begin to take better measure of this work’s significance for our hermeneutic relationship to the Bible today.” (James Kee’s abstract) contents: James M. Kee, “Introduction” Robert Alter, “Northrop Frye between Archetype and Typology”
contents: Jeffery Donaldson, “Introduction” Alvin A. Lee, “Sacred and Secular Scripture(s) in the Thought of Northrop Frye” Imre Salusinszky, “‘In the Climates of the Mind’: Frye’s Career as a Spiral Curriculum” Garry Sherbert, “Frye’s Double Vision: Metaphor and the Two Sources of Religion” Michael Happy, “The Reality of the Created: From Deconstruction to Recreation” Nicholas Halmi, “The Metaphysical Foundation of Frye’s Monadology” Leah Knight, “Word, Flesh, Metaphor, and ‘Something’ of a Mystery in Words with Power” Glen Robert Gill, “The Flesh Made Word: Body and Spirit in the New Archetypology of Northrop Frye” Robert Alter, “Northrop Frye between Archetype and Typology” Linda Munk, “Northrop Frye: Typology and Gnosticism” Johannes Van Nie, “A Note on Frye and Philo: Philosophy and the Revealed Word”
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reviews: Gay, David. “The Persistence of Vision: Northrop Frye in the Context of Religion.” Christianity and Literature 55, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 445–61. Pell, Barbara. “The Bible Fryed.” Canadian Literature 189 (Summer 2006): 172–3. Reference and Research Book News 19, no. 2 (May 2004). Richter, David. “Letters in Canada.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75 (Winter 2005–6): 386–7.
Anonymous. Reference & Research Book News 20, no. 2 (May 2005). – “Biography Book Review: Northrop Frye: Religious Visionary and Architect of the Spiritual World.” YouTube audio review. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=z7KhvXRo47A. Dransfield, Scott. Religion and Literature 38, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 143–6. Dubois, Diane. English Studies in Canada 32, nos. 2–3 (June–September 2006): 243–6. Fischer, Michael. Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 39, no. 4 (Spring 2006): 187–9. Forst, Graham. Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 35, no. 1 (2006): 156–7. Gay, David. “The Persistence of Vision: Northrop Frye in the Context of Religion.” Christianity and Literature 55, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 445–61. Leigh, David J. Toronto Journal of Theology 22, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 103. Merrett, Robert James. “Invoking the Imagination?” Canadian Literature 190 (Autumn 2006): 153–5. Munk, Linda. University of Toronto Quarterly 75, no. 1 (January 2006): 385–6 Seidel, Kevin. Virginia Quarterly Review 81, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 267. Ward, Allyna E. Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 6, no. 2 (August 2005).
32. Kenyeres, János. Revolving around the Bible: A Study of Northrop Frye. Budapest: Anonymus, 2003. 208 pp. Argues for the importance of Blake and the Bible in the development of Frye’s critical perspective and shows Frye’s relation to other critics and movements in the history of criticism.
34. Denham, Robert D. Northrop Frye: A Bibliography of His Published Writings, 1931–2004. Emory, VA: Iron Mountain Press, 2004. 108 pp. Brings up to date the bibliography of primary sources in Northrop Frye: An Annotated Bibliography (no. 9, above).
reviews: Angelika Reichman. Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 12, nos. 1–2 (2006): 299–302. Don Sparling. Central European Journal of Canadian Studies 4 (2004): 137–8.
35. Lemond, Ed, ed. Verticals of Frye/Les verticales de Frye: The Northrop Frye Lectures and Related Talks Given at the Northrop Frye International Literary Festival. Moncton, NB: Elbow Press, 2005. 64 pp.
Jean O’Grady, “Frye and the Church” J. Russell Perkin, “Northrop Frye and Catholicism” Joseph Adamson, “Crazy Love: Frye, Breton, and the Erotic Imagination” Jean Wilson, “Toni Morrison: Re-Visionary Words with Power” James M. Kee, “Northrop Frye and the Poetry in Biblical Hermeneutics” Peter G. Christensen, “Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis: Prison Letter as Myth” Graham N. Forst, “The Seduction of Figaro: Gender and the Archetype of the Tricky Servant” Ian Singer, “Frye’s Fourth: ‘The Substance of Things Hoped For, the Evidence of Things Not Seen’” Michael Dolzani, “The Ashes of Stars: Northrop Frye and the Trickster God” Robert D. Denham, “Northrop Frye’s ‘Kook Books’ and the Esoteric Tradition”
33. Denham, Robert D. Northrop Frye: Religious Visionary and Architect of the Spiritual World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004. 373 pp. Argues that the superstructure that Frye built has a religious base, in both its exoteric and its esoteric forms. Has separate chapters on interpenetration, identity, vision, the East, esoteric traditions, kook books and the occult, and the dialogue of Word and Spirit. reviews: Aeschliman, M.D. “The Literary Bible.” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 158 (December 2005): 56–8.
contents: Branko Gorjup, “Northrop Frye and His Canadian Critics” Caterina Nella Cotrupi, “Process and Possibility: The Spiritual Vision of Northrop Frye” Robert D. Denham, “‘Moncton, Did You Know?’ Northrop Frye’s Early Years” Naim Kattan, “La réception de l’oeuvre de Northrop Frye dans la Francophonie” John Ayre, “Into the Labyrinth: Northrop Frye’s Personal Mythology” Michael Dolzani, “The View from the Northern Farm: Northrop Frye and Nature” Robert D. Denham, “Northrop Frye and Medicine”
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36. Feltracco, Daniela. Northrop Frye: Anatomia di un metodo critico. Udine: Forum, Editrice Universitaria Udinese, 2005. 192 pp. A study of Frye’s critical method, with special attention to the concept of displacement, structure, the social context of education, and the myth of concern. 37. Pandey, Santosh Kumar. Contrapuntal Modes in Northrop Frye’s Literary Theory: Continuities in Literary Structuralism. Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2005. 188 pp. Frye views the mythos (plot) of literature in terms of binary structure of comedy (spring) vs. tragedy (autumn) and romance (summer) vs. irony and satire (winter), and an isolated literary work in terms of divine/demonic, highmimetic/low-mimetic, hero/villain, crime/atonement, garden/forest, inscape/outscape, heaven/hell, redemption/ fall, and so on. The ultimate harmony in literature is like counterpoint in music, where two or more independent melodies are combined into a single harmonic texture. The ultimate harmony thus is the result of integration of several binaries. 38. Gill, Glen Robert. Northrop Frye and the Phenomenology of Myth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. 242 pp. Compares and contrasts Frye’s theory of myth with anthropological, psychological, and religious theories. Argues that Frye’s work is both more radical and more tenable than that of his three contemporaries: Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell. “Eliade’s writings are shown to have a metaphysical basis that abrogates an understanding of myth as truly phenomenological, while Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious emerges as similarly problematic. Likewise, Gill argues, Campbell’s work, while incorporating some phenomenological progressions, settles on a questionable metaphysical foundation. Gill shows how, in contrast to these other mythologists, Frye’s theory of myth—first articulated in Fearful Symmetry (1947) and culminating in Words with Power (1990)—is genuinely phenomenological.” (from publisher’s abstract) reviews: Anonymous. Reference and Research Book News (1 February 2008). Brill, Lesley. Kritikon Litterarum 38, nos. 1–2 (June 2011): 137–44. Gay, David. Christianity and Literature 77, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 337–40. Hodd, Thomas. “Fearful Dis-Symmetry.” Canadian Literature 197 (Summer 2008): 136–7. Kertzer, Jonathan. University of Toronto Quarterly 78, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 429–31. Klepetar, S.F. Choice 44, no. 11(July 2007): 1907.
39. Hamilton, Mark. Categorizing Twentieth-Century Film Using Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Relating Literature and Film. Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. 349 pp. “Shows how Anatomy of Criticism could categorize not only written literature but also 20th-century film. The book matches Frye’s Irony/Satire mythos to Film Noir (fascination with everyday crime), and the Tragedy mythos to the War film (almost always tragic on some level). It equates the Romance mythos to the Western film genre (as Morris Bishop, the medieval historian has said, the western hero is very much the modern-day knight), and Comedy to the comedy genre.” (publisher’s abstract) review: Gay, David. Christianity and Literature 77, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 340–1. 40. Elango, S.P. Benjamin. Tholkappiyar and Northrop Frye: A Comparative Study. Tiruchirappalli, India: Clara Publications, 2008. Focuses on the connections between Frye and Tholkappiyar, the Tamil poet and the author of Tholkappiyam (500 BC), believed to be the oldest extant Tamil grammar. Scholars in Tamil Nadu have identified similarities in the theories of Tholkappiar and Frye. 41. Gao, Hai. 弗莱文学批评理论研究= The Poetics of Mythology: A Study of Northrop Frye’s Theory of Literary Criticism. Beijing: Zhongguo ren min da xue chu ban she, 2008. In Chinese. 42. Galván, Luis, ed. Visiones para una poética: En el cincuentenario de “Anatomy of Criticism” de Northrop Frye. Pamplona, Spain: Rilce (Revista del Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Españolas 25, no. 1 (2009). 164 pp. In English and Spanish. Contains the papers presented at a symposium held in May 2007 at the University of Navarra, Spain, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Anatomy of Criticism. contents: Robert D. Denham, “Pity the Northrop Frye Scholar? Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Fifty Years After” Jonathan Hart, “Mythology, Value-Judgements and Ideology in Northrop Frye’s Anatomy and Beyond” Luis Beltran Almeria, “El legado crítico de Northrop Frye” Brian Russell Graham, “The Return of Irony to Myth” Isabel Paraiso, “Crítica arquetípica: La estructura demónica en el tema del doble” Kurt Spang, “Melos y opsis en la crítica de Northrop Frye” James A. Parr, “Mito, modo y genero en algunos clásicos de la literatura española”
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Luis Galván, “Mito, interés y compromise: Arquetipos narratives en los libros de caballerías” Jaume Aurell, “Northrop Frye y la revolución historiográfica finisecular” Tibor Fabiny, “Typology: Pros and Cons in Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism” 43. Rampton, David, ed. Northrop Frye: New Directions from Old. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2009. 430 pp. “More than fifty years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye remains one of Canada’s most influential intellectuals. This reappraisal reasserts the relevance of his work to the study of literature and illuminates its fruitful intersection with a variety of other fields, including film, cultural studies, linguistics, and feminism. Many of the contributors draw upon the early essays, correspondence, and diaries recently published as part of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series, in order to explore the development of his extraordinary intellectual range and the implications of his imaginative syntheses. They refute postmodernist arguments that Frye’s literary criticism is obsolete and propose his wideranging and non-linear ways of thinking as a model for twenty-first century readers searching for innovative ways of understanding literature and its relevance to contiguous disciplines. The volume provides an in-depth examination of Frye’s work on a range of literary questions, periods, and genres, as well as a consideration of his contributions to literary theory, philosophy, and theology. The portrait that emerges is that of a writer who still has much to offer those interested in literature and the ways it represents and transforms our world. The book’s overall argument is that Frye’s case for the centrality of the imagination has never been more important where understanding history, reconciling science and culture, or reconceptualizing social change is concerned.” (publisher’s abstract) contents: Alvin Lee, “The Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The Project and the Edition” Robert Denham, “‘Pity the Northrop Frye Scholar’? Anatomy of Criticism Fifty Years After” Thomas Willard, “The Genius of Northrop Frye” D.M.R. Bentley, “Jumping to Conclusions: Northrop Frye on Canadian Literature” Robert David Stacey, “History, Tradition, and the Work of Pastoral: Frye’s ‘Conclusion’ to a Literary History of Canada” Ian Sloan, “The Reverend H. Northrop Frye” Sára Tóth, “Recovery of the Spiritual Other: Martin Buber’s ‘Thou’ in Northrop Frye’s Late Work” Garry Sherbert, “Frye’s ‘Pure Speech’: Literature and the Sacred without the Sacred”
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John Ayre, “Northrop Frye and the Chart of Symbolism” Michael Dolzani, “The Earth’s Imagined Corners: Frye and Utopia” J. Russell Perkin, “Transcending Realism: Northrop Frye, the Victorians, and the Anatomy of Criticism” Jean O’Grady, “Re-Valuing Value” Troni Y. Grande, “The Interruption of Myth in Northrop Frye: Toward a Revision of the ‘Silent Beatrice’” David Jarraway, “Frye and Film Studies: Anatomy of Irony” Michael Sinding, “Reframing Frye: Bridging Culture and Cognition” Jeffery Donaldson, “An Access of Power: Job, Evolution, and the Spirit of Consciousness in Northrop Frye and Daniel C. Dennett” reviews: Adamson, Joseph. University of Toronto Quarterly 80, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 322–4. Boyagoda, Randy. “The Anatomy of a Scholar.” National Post (4 July 2009). Forst, Graham. “Different Directions.” Canadian Literature 206 (Autumn 2010): 182–3. Nicholson, Mervyn. English Studies in Canada 36, nos. 2–3 (Summer 2010): 235–8. 44. Gorjup, Branko, ed. Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. 320 pp. “In his long and eminent scholarly career, Northrop Frye engaged with subjects ranging from classics to twentieth-century writings. Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism examines the impact of Frye’s criticism on Canadian literary scholarship as well as the response of Frye’s peers to his articulation of a ‘Canadian’ criticism. Frye’s belief that Canadian writing should be studied within the context of Canadian life rather than evaluated autonomously, in relation to the world’s literature, was controversial. While there were those who favoured Frye’s position and extended its use for wider theoretical applications, those who criticized Frye’s stance felt that Canadian authors should not be exempt from universally sanctioned critical standards. Branko Gorjup and an esteemed group of contributors skilfully capture the tension that arose from this binary critical problematic and document the various attempts at resolving or transcending it, encouraging a remapped understanding of Frye and locating his place in Canadian criticism from a contemporary perspective.” (publisher’s abstract) contents: Branko Gorjup, “Incorporating Legacies: Decolonizing the Garrison” James Reaney, “The Canadian Poet’s Predicament”
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John Riddell, “‘This Northern Mouth’: Ideas of Myth and Regionalism in Modern Canadian Poetry” D.G. Jones, “Myth, Frye, and Canadian Writers” Rosemary Sullivan, “Northrop Frye: Canadian Mythographer” Francis Sparshott, “Frye in Place” George Bowering, “Why James Reaney Is a Better Poet (1) than any Northrop Frye poet (2) than he used to be” Barbara Belyea, “Butterfly in the Bush Garden: ‘Mythopoeic’ Criticism of Contemporary Poetry Written in Canada” Frank Davey, “Surviving the Paraphrase” Barry Cameron and Michael Dixon, “Mandatory Subversive Manifesto: Canadian Criticism versus Literary Criticism” John Moss, “Bushed in the Sacred Wood” Eli Mandel, “Northrop Frye and the Canadian Literary Tradition” Margery Fee, “Retrieving the Canadian Critical Tradition as Poetry: Eli Mandel and Northrop Frye” Eleanor Cook, “Against Monism: The Canadian Anatomy of Northrop Frye” Heather Murray, “Reading for Contradiction in the Literature of Colonial Space” Linda Hutcheon, “Frye Recoded: Postmodernity and the Conclusions” David Staines, “Frye: Canadian Critic/Writer” Robert Lecker, “‘A Quest for the Peaceable Kingdom’: The Narrative in Northrop Frye’s ‘Conclusion’ to the Literary History of Canada” Russell Morton Brown, “The Northrop Frye Effect” reviews: Adamson, Joseph. University of Toronto Quarterly 80, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 322–4. da Cunha, Lidiane Luiza. American Review of Canadian Studies 41, no. 1 (March 2011): 83–5. Forst, Graham. “(In)visible Canadian.” Canadian Literature 206 (Autumn 2010): 124–6. 45. Urthark, Garden. The Illustrated Northrop Frye. Los Gatos, CA: Smashwords Editions., 2012. This five-part etext applies Frye’s theory of archetypal criticism to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. “Moby-Dick exhibits the U-shaped pattern of development typical of romance, with Ishmael’s descent into and return from a lower, and increasingly demonic, sea world of experience.” (publisher’s abstract) 46. Denham, Robert D., ed. Remembering Northrop Frye: Recollections by His Students and Others in the 1940s and 1950s. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland and Co., 2011. 229 pp. Brings together letters from 89 of Northrop Frye’s students, friends, and acquaintances in which they record
their recollections of him as a teacher and a person during the 1940s and 1950s. A number of the correspondents also provide their impressions of Victoria College at the time, where Frye taught for more than 50 years. The letters provide insights into Frye as a teacher that are not elsewhere available, and reveal a consistent portrait of an intellectually superlative, generous, and thoughtful human being. reviews: Donaldson, Jeffrey. “Dialectical.” Canadian Literature 213 (Summer 2012): 152–4. Fulford, Robert. “Frye School Reunion.” National Post (7 March 2011). Laberge, Yves. “How Should I Save Northrop Frye? Tributes and Criticism about a Canadian Thinker.” Amerika [online], 2018. https://journals.openedition. org/amerika//90807?lang=en. Warkentin, Germaine. University of Toronto Quarterly 82, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 520–1. 47. Graham, Brian Russell. The Necessary Unity of Opposites: The Dialectical Thinking of Northrop Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 137 pp. “Graham contends that it was the method of Frye’s thinking—his dialectic ability to see opposing concepts as a unity rather than a dichotomy—that allowed him to transcend binary constructs and formulate new conclusions and questions about literature, politics, and society.” (publisher’s abstract) reviews: Adamson, Joseph. University of Toronto Quarterly 82, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 562–4. Donaldson, Jeffrey. “Dialectical.” Canadian Literature 213 (Summer 2012). Raese, Matthew W. Style 46, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 266–70. 48. Dubois, Diane. Northrop Frye in Context. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. 210 pp. “Diane Dubois takes a contextual approach to Northrop Frye’s work and claims that it is best assessed in relation to his biographical circumstances. In context and in specific details, Dubois’ book seeks to illuminate Frye’s œuvre as a personal, lifelong project. This volume successfully situates Frye’s work within the social, political, religious and philosophical conditions of the time and place of conception and writing. Dubois ranges from Frye’s critical utopia and views on criticism and education through the university, church and William Blake to politics and the Canadian and academic milieu. This book, which is particularly good at tracing Frye’s academic influences and his roots in Methodism and Canada, will have a strong appeal to an
Books and Symposia
international audience of general readers, students, teachers and specialists. Frye is a key figure in the cultural and literary theory of the twentieth century, and Dubois’ accomplished discussion helps us to see his work anew.” (Jonathan Hart) contents Introduction Anatomy of Criticism Biographies and Contextual Approaches Canadian Literature and Culture William Blake Romanticism The Bible, Christianity, and Religion Interpenetration The University and Education Politics and Cultural Theory Shakespeare Literary Criticism Reappraisals and Retrospectives Eastern, Western, and Other Perspectives Miscellaneous Writings Archives, Finding Aids and Blogs Bibliographies and Indexes to the Primary Texts review: Graham, Brian Russell. “Dubois on Frye.” Canadian Literature 213 (Summer 2012): 157. 49. Tóth, Sára. A képzelet másik oldala: Irodalom és vallás Northrop Frye életmüvében. [The Other Side of the Imagination: Literature and Religion in Northrop Frye’s Work]. Budapest: Károli Books and L’Harmattan Publishing House, 2012. 256 pp. In Hungarian. “The first monograph in Hungarian on the Canadian literary theorist and critic starts with a quotation from a private letter by Frye, written in 1935, in which he claims that religion and literature are basically the same. It is this sameness, or at least the close and constant interrelation of literature and religion within culture, which Tóth examines in Frye’s various writings, including private notes that were published several years after his death. Part One is an introduction to his theory of literature, focusing mainly on Anatomy of Criticism. Part Two is devoted to the affinities between literary and religious experience. Part Three analyzes the ethical and social motifs in Frye’s theory of literature, as well as his views on the relationship between literature and ideology.” (Zoltan Papp’s summary) reviews: Papp, Zoltán. Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics 50, no. 1 (2013): 12. Visky, András. http://www.lira.hu/hu/konyv/szepirodalom/ felnottirodalom/irodalomtortenet/a-kepzelet-masikoldala-irodalom-es-vallas-northrop-frye-eletmuveben.
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50. Robert D. Denham. The Northrop Frye Handbook: A Biographical and Bibliographic Guide. Jefferson, NC, and London, 2012. 326 pp. contents: 1. A Frye Chronology and Bibliography 2. Frye’s Books: Editions and Translations 3. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, with a List of Reviews 4. Conferences, Colloquia, Symposia, and Panels Devoted to Frye’s Work 5. Books and Journals Devoted to Frye, with a List of Reviews 6. Dissertations and Theses on Frye 7. A Bibliography of Secondary Sources since 1987 Essays and Parts of Books Obituaries, Memorials, Tributes News and Feature Stories and Miscellaneous Items Biographical Notices and Articles Reviews of Frye’s Books since 1987 8. The Northrop Frye Papers at Victoria College 9. Annotations in the Books in Frye’s Personal Library 10. PhD Theses Supervised by Frye 11. Honorary Degrees Awarded to Frye 12. Making Literature Out of Frye 13. Frye and the Bodley Club 14. Interdisciplinary Connections reviews: Geall, David. Reference Reviews 27, no. 2 (2013): 26. Laberge, Yves. “How Should I Save Northrop Frye? Tributes and Criticism about a Canadian Thinker.” Amerika [online], 2018. https://journals. openedition.org/amerika//90807?lang=en. Reference & Research Book News 27, no. 2 (April 2012): 176–82. Sherlock, Lisa J. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 49, no. 12 (August 2012): 2244. 51. Han Lei. On Myth Criticism: A Study of Northrop Frye’s Critical Thought. Shanghai: Shanghai University Press, 2012. In Chinese. Contains separate chapters on myth criticism, Frye’s critical system, its theoretical origins in Vico, Nietzsche, Frazer, and Jung, its aesthetic dimension, and its theoretical significance. 52. Sinding, Michael. Body of Vision: Northrop Frye and the Poetics of Mind. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. 251 pp. “Reconsiders fundamentals of Northrop Frye’s theories of meaning, literature, and culture in the light of related current approaches that have taken his insights in very different directions. Develops branches of Frye’s thinking by
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proposing partial syntheses of them with cognitive poetics and with contextualist theories of cultural history and ideology, seeking to retain the best of all worlds. Case studies of texts and genres work out promising connections in detail. Three related aspects of Frye’s work are explored: meaning and thought, culture and society, and literary history. Chapter 1 connects Frye’s theory of meaning and poetic metaphor with those developed in cognitive linguistics and poetics by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner. Chapter 2 applies this synthesis to the metaphoric world of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Chapter 3 links Frye’s approach to the relations among literature, society, and ideology with that of cultural theorists Roland Barthes and Stuart Hall, and with Lakoff’s cognitive account of metaphor and framing in political thought and discourse. It characterizes the contrasting conservative and liberal worldviews represented in Hobbes’s Leviathan and Rousseau’s Social Contract. Chapter 4 considers relations between general principles of literary cognition and particulars of texts and contexts in history. Frye’s approach is compared with Patrick Colm Hogan’s study of emotional and literary universals, and with the new historicism of Stephen Greenblatt and Louis Adrian Montrose. The pastoral is examined as a genre that appears decidedly dated in many ways, yet is still capable of communicating powerfully.” (from the dustjacket blurb) reviews: Forst, Graham. “Deep Frye.” Canadian Literature 225 (Summer 2015): 130–2. Hauck, Nicholas. University of Toronto Quarterly 85, no. 3 (2016): 568–70. 53. Powe, B.W. Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 354 pp. “Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye are two of Canada’s central cultural figures, colleagues and rivals whose careers unfolded in curious harmony even as their intellectual engagement was antagonistic. Poet, novelist, essayist and philosopher B.W. Powe, who studied with both of these formidable and influential intellectuals, presents an exploration of their lives and work in Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy. Powe considers the existence of a unique visionary tradition of Canadian humanism and argues that McLuhan and Frye represent fraught but complementary approaches to the study of literature and to the broader engagement with culture.” (from publisher’s abstract) reviews: Aucoin, J.L. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 52, no. 2 (November 2014): 429–30. Barnes, Stephen. “Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy.” Christianity and Literature 64, no. 4 (September 2015): 491–4.
Choice Reviews Online 52, no. 3 (2014), review #52-1205. Cude, Wilf. “Stoking the Fires.” Antigonish Review 186 (Summer 2016): 117–23. Hammill, Faye. “When Canadians Clash.” Times Literary Supplement 5825 (21 November 2014): 11. Le Fustec, Claude. University of Toronto Quarterly 85, no. 3 (2016): 359–60. Leithart, Peter. “McLuhan and Frye.” Patheos 23 July 2015. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2014/07/ mcluhan-and-frye/. Majer, Krzysztof. “In the Speculative Mode.” Canadian Literature 223 (Winter 2014): 183. Mount, Nick. “Frye and McLuhan: Same Place. Same Time. Different Minds.” Literary Review of Canada. July–August 2014. https://reviewcanada.ca/ magazine/2014/07/frye-and-mcluhan/. Raveh, Anat Ringel, et al. Explorations in Media Ecology 17, no. 3 (2018). Robb, Peter. “McLuhan, Frye and Me; B.W. Powe Takes the Measure of Their Genius.” Calgary Herald (2 April 2016): G14; Ottawa Citizen (5 March 2016): H1. Romero, Lisa. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 92, no. 3 (2015): 774–80. Takayanagi, Shunichi. “Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye—Two Canadian Culture Heroes.” Journal of American & Canadian Studies 34 (2016): 49–64. 54. Le Fustec, Claude. Northrop Frye and American Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, November 2014. 238 pp. Most of the secondary literature about Northrop Frye belongs to one of two large categories, the theoretical or the practical. Claude Le Fustec’s book, part of the University of Toronto Press’s “Frye Series,” belongs to both. The primary theoretical issue has to do with the relationship between literature and religion, a relationship that has presented itself to the critical intelligence for a long time. Having surveyed the most recent understandings of the religion and literature dialogue and having called our attention to the various theoretical pronouncements about the transcendence– immanence opposition, Le Fustec sets off on her journey through the American literary tradition, armed with the concepts and language of Frye, who serves as her Virgil. What follows are six studies in practical criticism, studies of the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, and Toni Morrison. reviews: Almon, C. Choice 53, no. 1 (September 2015): 68. Bush, Harold K. “What Would Jesus Read? Popular Religious Books and Everyday Life in
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Twentieth-Century America.” American Literature 88, no. 4 (2016): 863–5. Denham, Robert D. Transatlantica [Online] 1 (2016), Online since 16 January 2017. http://transatlantica. revues.org/8050. Dolan, Neal. University of Toronto Quarterly 87, no. 3 (2018): 484–6. Forst, Graham. “Deep Frye.” Canadian Literature 225 (Summer 2015): 130–2. Han, John J. Steinbeck Studies 40 (2017): 78–81. 55. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor, eds. Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective. Budapest: L’Harmattan Kiado, 2014. 327 pp. In English and Hungarian. Prompted by the 2012 Budapest conference “Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective,” the studies in this volume by disciples and admirers, critics, and detached readers provide a faithful picture of the state of international Frygean criticism, including a “Danubian perspective” and of how Hungarian criticism has come to methodically apply Frye’s concepts to Hungarian literature. contents: Robert D. Denham, “Frye and Longinus” Kelemen Zoltán, “Postztmodern Biblia: Northrop Frye mítosz-és metaforakonstrukciójak kritikai megköz elítése” [Postmodern Bible: Northrop Frye’s Critical Link to the Structures of Myth and Metaphor] Nyilasy Balázs, “Northrop Frye a romance-ról és a regényröl” [Northrop Frye on the Romance and the Novel] Glen Robert Gill, “The Dialectics of Myth: Northrop Frye’s Theory of Culture” Michael Sinding, “The Shaping Spirit and Rousseau: Literary Cosmology, Cognition, and Culture” Daniela Feltracco, “Northrop Frye and the Neural Theory of Metaphor” Péter Dávidházi, “A Tribute to The Great Code” Claude Le Fustec, “The Kerygmatic Mode in Fiction: Three Examples from the United States” Brian Russell Graham, “Chapter Six on Words with Power as Intervention into the Debate about the Metaphorical Identification of Women with Nature” Bánki Éva, “A költészet születése: Sámuel I. könyve” [The Birth of Poetry in the Book of Samuel I] Tibor Fabiny, “Northrop Frye and Béla Hamvas” Fülöp Jözsef, “Érintkezö életmüvek: Northrop Frye és Rudolf Kassner” Sára Tóth, “A Frygian Perspective on European Irony: The Green Butchers” Horváth Csaba, “Kettös tükrok — tükrörszerketek és biblikus olvasatok a kortars Magyar irodalomban” [Double
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Mirrors, Mirror Mirrors and Biblical Readings in the Corpus of Hungarian Literature] János Kenyeres, “The Critic as Writer, the Writer as Critic: The Creative Imagination in Northrop Frye’s Work” Rebekah Zwanzig, “Mount ‘Arafat as a Site of Recognition; Anagnorisis in Northrop Frye and the Qur’an” Sándor Klapcsik, “Mythical Journeys in Agatha Christie’s Crooked House and Ordeal by Innocence” Larisa Kocic-Zámbó, “Frye and the Musical Poet” Sylva Ficova, “Northrop Frye, William Blake and the Art of Translation” Sinka Judit Erzsébet, “A ‘balladisznovella’ mint archaikus tapasztalatok megjelen ítöje a modernségben” [Balladisznovella as an Archaic Experience in Modernity] Ana-Magdelana Petraru, “Northrop Frye in Romania: Translations and Critical Studies” Júlia Bácskai-Atkári, “Frye Reading Byron” Andrei Dullo, “A Romanian Cosmogonic Myth in the Light of Northrop Frye” 56. Robert D. Denham. Northrop Frye and Others: Twelve Writers Who Helped Shape His Thinking. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2015. 295 pp. Explores the connections between Frye and twelve writers who influenced his thinking but about whom he never wrote anything expansive. contents: “Frye and Aristotle” “Frye and Longinus” “Frye and Joachim of Floris” “Frye and Giordano Bruno” “Frye and Henry Reynolds” “Frye and Robert Burton” “Frye and Søren Kierkegaard” “Frye and Lewis Carroll” “Frye and Stéphane Mallarmé” “Frye and Colin Still” “Frye and Paul Tillich” “Frye and Frances A. Yates” review: Willard, Thomas. University of Toronto Quarterly 86, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 220–2. 57. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin, eds. Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye, Past, Present, and Future. Montreal, QC, and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queens University Press, 2015. 278 pp. A selection of twelve papers from among those presented at a 2012 conference at the University of Toronto, “Educating the Imagination,” marking the centenary of Frye’s birth. The purpose of the conference, say the
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editors, was “to examine whether Frye’s reputation needs to be refurbished, to assess what needs to be retrieved from his critical insights today, and to take the measure of where literary and cultural scholarship currently stand by gauging our distance from and our dependence on him.” contents: Bewell, Alan, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin, “Introduction” Bringhurst, Robert, “Reading between the Books: Northrop Frye and the Cartography of Literature” Balfour, Ian, “Northrop Frye beyond Belief” Teskey, Gordon, “Prophecy Meets History: Frye’s Blake and Frye’s Milton” Dolzani, Michael, “From the Defeated: Northrop Frye and the Literary Symbol” Tally, Robert T., Jr., “Power to the Educated Imagination! Northrop Frye and the Utopian Impulse” Sherbert, Garry, “Verum Factum: Frye, Jameson, Nancy, and the Myth of Myth” Dick, Alexander, “Frye, Derrida, and the University (to Come)” Willard, Thomas, “Frye’s Principles of Literary Symbolism: From the Classroom to the Critical Classics.” Ittenson, Mark, “Romanticism and the Beyond of Language: Northrop Frye and the Wordsworthian Imitation of the Point of Epiphany” Carter, Adam, “Correspondences: Frye, De Man, Romanticism” Grande, Troni Y. “‘Our Lady of Pain’: Prolegomena to the Study of She-Tragedy” Chamberlin, J. Edward, “Chanting Down Babylon: Innocence and Experience in the Contemporary Humanities” reviews: Carruthers, David. The Goose 15, no. 1 (2016): http:// scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/26. Denham, Robert D. University of Toronto Quarterly 86, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 222–4. Forst, Graham Nicol. Canadian Literature 230 (Autumn– Winter 2016): 255. Sherlock, Lisa J. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 53, no. 11 (2016): 1610. 58. Robert D. Denham. Essays on Northrop Frye: Word and Spirit. Emory, VA: Iron Mountain Press, 2015. 302 pp. These essays represent Denham’s long-standing interest in the expansive body of literary and cultural criticism of Northrop Frye, among the preeminent humanists of the twentieth century. The essays in Part I, which date from 1992 to 2004, focus on Frye’s late work with
its decidedly religious thrust. These essays take full advantage of Frye’s previously unpublished writing, especially his notebooks, now a part of his thirty-volume Collected Works. Part II centres on issues arising from Anatomy of Criticism, arguably the most important work of literary theory of the twentieth century. Part III is a miscellany. The essays here are devoted to Frye’s life, his influence a half century after Anatomy of Criticism, and his views on medicine, Shakespeare, and education. contents: Part I The Religious Base of Northrop Frye’s Criticism Interpenetration as a Key Term in Frye’s Critical Vision Frye and the East: Buddhist and Hindu Translations Northrop Frye’s “Kook Books” and the Esoteric Tradition “Vision” as a Key Term in Frye’s Criticism Part II Northrop Frye and Rhetorical Criticism Frye and the Social Context of Criticism Frye’s Theory of Symbols Part III Frye the Diarist: Personae and Masks “Moncton Did You Know?” Northrop Frye’s Early Years “Pity the Northrop Frye Scholar”? Anatomy of Criticism Fifty Years After Northrop Frye on Medicine Northrop Frye’s Shakespearean Criticism Common Cause: Frye on Education review: McLemee, Scott. “Frye Revived.” Inside Higher Education (13 May 2015). 59. Santosh K. Pandey. Bible and Literature in the Critical Theory of Northrop Frye. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2016. 156 pp. Argues that Frye’s theory of literature is richer than that of the structuralists because it has a prophetic dimension, a dimension that derives primarily from his understanding of the Bible’s symbols, genres, types, and archetypes. 60. Rao Jing. Center and Labyrinth: Northrop Frye’s Study of Mythological Interpretation. Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2017. 278 pp. In Chinese. The object of this study is Frye’s criticism as a whole. The focus is on archetypal criticism. Starts with an analysis of Frye’s critical language and his style. Notes the limitations of particular critical interpretations, and the conflicts of interpretations.
Books and Symposia
61. Robert D. Denham. Northrop Frye and Others, Volume 2: The Order of Words. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2017. 257 pp. Identifies and brings to light additional and little-recognized intellectual influences on Frye, and analyses how they informed his thought. These are variously major thinkers, sets of texts, and intellectual traditions: the Mahayana Sutras, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Boehme, Hegel, Mill, Coleridge, Carlyle, Jane Ellen Harrison, and Elizabeth Fraser. Describes how Frye became acquainted with the subject of each chapter, and how he interpreted and adapted certain ideas from them to help work out his own conceptual systems. Offers insights on Frye’s relationship with his historical and intellectual contexts, and provides additional contexts for understanding the Frye corpus. contents: “Frye and the Mahayana Sutras” “Frye and Niccolò Machiavelli” “Frye and François Rabelais” “Frye and Jacob Boehme” “Frye and G.W.F. Hegel” “Frye and Samuel Taylor Coleridge” “Frye and Thomas Carlyle” “Frye and John Stuart Mill” “Frye and Jane Ellen Harrison” “Frye and Elizabeth Fraser: Her Letters to Him”
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On the anthropology of Frye’s literary theory. Focuses on Frye’s view of myth and symbol as they are developed in Anatomy of Criticism. review: Roszczynialska, Magdalena. Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia Poetica 7, no. 1 (2018): 234. In Polish. 64. Collett, Don. Universal Spirit: The Seasons of the Christian Year in the Company of Northrop Frye. Kelowna, BC: Wood Lake Publishing, 2019. 192 pp. “To a church that increasingly addresses itself to biblically illiterate people, the work of Northrop Frye offers a priceless gift. Equally important, Frye’s work offers a similar gift to those of a more secular or spiritual but not religious bent. Though he was a minister in the United Church of Canada, Northrop Frye rarely inhabited a pulpit in the usual way. A brilliant thinker and academic, a guiding light in the world of the university, his pulpit and his discipline were his classroom. As an educator, he felt it highly unethical to share his faith stance with his students. . . . He considered his witness to be his role as critic, as one who articulates a form of culture, including Christian culture. As Don Collett says, ‘Frye conceived of a world beyond the normal confines of Christian doctrine and theology and then . . . found a place for Christian doctrine and theology to provide the hope this world needs.’” (publisher’s notice)
62. Robert D. Denham. Northrop Frye and Others: Interpenetrating Visions. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2018. 211 pp. The third volume in the “Frye and Others” trilogy.
review: White, Cristopher. “A Rapport with Northrop Frye.” Broadview 1, no. 4 (September 2019).
contents: “Frye and Patanjali” “Frye and Giambatista Vico” “Frye and J.S. Bach” “Frye and J.R.R. Tolkien” “Frye and Oscar Wilde” “Frye and Alfred North Whitehead” “Frye and Martin Buber” “Frye and R.S. Crane” “Frye and Edmund Blunden” “Frye and M.H. Abrams”
Symposia and Special Issues of Journals “Northrop Frye: A Tribute, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.” CEA Critic 42, no. 1 (1979) and 42, no. 2 (January 1980). Contains essays by A.C. Hamilton, Clara Thomas, Memye Curtis Tucker, Margaret Atwood, Robert D. Denham, Ronald Bates, W.T. Jewkes, George Johnston, Charles Altieri, James Reaney, and Douglas O. Street, along with Frye’s “Royal Bank Award Address,” a discussion with Elizabeth and Gregory Cowan, David Stewart, and Richard Costa, and brief anecdotes by E.R. Godfrey, Vincent Tovell, Don Harron, Ronald Campbell, George W. Birtch, Harry J. Boyle, Arthur B.B. Moore, Carl F. Klinck, and Jill Conway. “Northrop Frye and the Bible: A Symposium.” University of Toronto, 1 October 1982. University of Toronto Quarterly, 52 (Winter 1982–3). Papers by Louis Dudek, David L. Jeffrey, Emero Stiegman, and George Woodcock. “A Little Symposium on The Great Code.” Dalhousie University, 1982. Dalhousie Review 63 (Autumn 1983).
review: Anonymous. New York Review of Books (27 November 2018): 48. Brief notice. 63. Żukowska, Kamila. Poetyka totalna. O antropologii literatury Northropa Frye’a [Total Poetics: On the Literary Anthropology of Northrop Frye]. Kraków: Universitas, 2018. 170 pp. In Polish.
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Papers by Joseph P. Cahill, Joseph Gold, and Peter Richardson. “Special Northrop Frye Number.” AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 66 (November 1986). Papers by Catherine Runcie, Imre Salusinszky, and Eric J. Sharpe, along with an introduction to the special issue by John A. Hay and an interview with Frye by David Lawton. Northrop Frye Newsletter. Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1988)–Vol. 10 (2004). Nineteen issues, edited by Robert D. Denham. Published at Emory & Henry College, Emory, VA, and Roanoke College, Salem, VA. reviews: “Frye and Eighteenth-Century Studies.” EighteenthCentury Studies 24, no. 2 (1990–1). Essays by Frye, Howard D. Weinbrot, Eric Rothstein, and Paul Hunter. “Northrop Frye.” Christianity and Literature 42 (Spring 1992). Essays by A.C. Hamilton, Jonathan Hart, Imre Salusinszky, Christopher Wise, and Robert D. Denham. “Northrop Frye and Contemporary Literary Theory.” Recherches sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1993). Essays by Alvin Lee, Joseph Adamson, Eleanor Cook, A.C. Hamilton, Eva Kushner, Patricia Parker, and Robert D. Denham, along with a review by Harry Vandervlist. English Studies in Canada 10 (June 1993). Essays by Clara Thomas, Sandra Djwa, Angela Esterhammer, L.M. Findlay, A.C. Hamilton, Frank Kermode, Alvin Lee, Magdalene Redekopf, Imre Salusinszky, and Judith Weil. “Northrop Frye and China,” 12–17 July 1994, Peking University, Beijing. Foreign Literatures 1 (1995). Papers by Ian Balfour, Joseph Adamson, and Robert D. Denham. Ellipse: Texts littéraires canadiens en traduction/Canadian Writing in Translation 69 (Spring 2003). Contains essays by Serge Morin, Alvin Lee, Nella Cotrupi, and Francesca Valente. Visiones para una poetica: En el cincuentenario de “Anatomy of Criticism” de Northrop Frye. Ed. Luis
Galván. Pamplona, Spain: Rilce (Revista del Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Españolas), 25, no. 1 (2009): 1–166. For contents, see no. 42, above. Ellipse: Texts littéraires canadiens en traduction/Canadian Writing in Translation 87–8 (2012). Giant in Time/ Un géant plongé dans le temps: An Anthology of Writings in Honour of Northrop Frye’s 100th Birthday/ Textes en homage à Northrop Frye à l’occasion de son 100eanniversaire. Articles on Frye by Susan Glickman, Michael Happy, Serge Morin, and Bruce Powe; a memory of Frye by Robert Denham, “Letter to Stephen Harper,” by Yann Martel; poems by Troni Grande, Nella Cotrupi, and Valerie LeBlanc that engage Frye directly; poems by Paul Bossé, Gabriel Robichaud, and Jessie Robichaud that take their inspiration directly from the Frye Festival in Moncton; works by Lee D. Thompson, J.D. Wainwright, Jim Racobs, Edward Lemond, Anne Leslie, and Daniel Dugas that were written “in the spirit of Frye”; and other stories and poems, with no direct connection to Frye, written in his honour. English Studies in Canada 37, no. 2 (June 2011). Special Issue: Northrop Frye for a New Century. Ed. Mervyn Nicholson. Reflections by John Ayre, Stan Garrod, Monika Hilder, William N. Koch, and Rick Salutin. Articles by Melissa Dalgleish, Timothy A. Delong, Robert D. Denham, Diane Dubois, Paul Hawkins, David M. Leeson, Duncan McFarlane, Mary Ryan, and Sára Tóth. University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (2012): 1–186. Special Issue: The Future of Northrop Frye: Centennial Perspectives. Articles by Michael Dolzani, Merlin Donald, Travis Decook, Ian Balfour, Jean Wilson, Yves Saint-Cyr, Adam Carter, Jonathan Allan, Gordon Tesky, plus an interview with Margaret Atwood by Nick Mount, responses to Frye by nine poets, and a previously unpublished essay by Frye on poetic diction.
Chapter 2
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
This section does not include, except in a very few cases, reviews and review essays of Frye’s books, which are recorded in chapters 6 and 7. A Aarseth, AsbjØrn. “Lyrikk og lyrikkteori etter 30 år. Et tilbakeblikk og en ajourfØring” [Lyric and Lyric Theory after 30 Years: A Look Back and a Northrop Frye Update]. In Lyriske strukturer. InnfØring i diktanalyse. Universitetsforlaget, 1998. 261–300. Chap. 4 examines recent contributions to the theory of the lyric, including Frye’s. In Norwegian. Abbasi, Kamal. “A Structuralist Reading of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.” Analele Universităţii Ovidius din Constanţa. Seria Filologie 12, no. 2 (2011): 51–8. “Structuralism as a scientific method is applied to all fields, including literature, in order to find the deep and underlying structure common to variegated forms and shapes. When applied to literature and fiction, structuralism focuses in particular on two aspects of the work, genre and narrative. Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure can be analyzed in terms of structuralism thus enriching one’s understanding and perception of the novel.” In this paper the genre of the work is determined by recourse to Frye’s theory of genres. Abbey, Lloyd. “The Organic Aesthetic.” Canadian Literature 46 (Autumn 1970): 103–4. Replies to an essay by George Bowering, who attacks what he calls the “Northrop Frye school” of poetry. Argues that Frye and Bowering hold different theories about the relationship between poetry and experience, and suggests that Frye would see Bowering’s theory of organic form for what it really is—a convention. Abbotson, Susan C.W. “Comedy of a Common Man: Miller’s Comedic Chops.” Arthur Miller Journal 15, no. 1 (2020): 3–31. “While critics have acknowledged the often comic moments in Miller’s best-known tragedies and in 1968’s The Price, which Miller labeled as a comedy,
they tend to overlook other dramas that Miller wrote as fully comic, such as The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), Mr. Peters’ Connections (1998), Resurrection Blues (2002), and Finishing the Picture (2004). These are plays that have a lot of connection to one another in terms of style and have found scarce production and lukewarm reception, mostly, I believe, because critics and audiences just do not know how to accept or understand Miller the comedian. This essay opens up that conversation and asks for a reconsideration of Miller’s comic intents” in Frye’s sense of comedy, especially ironic comedy. Abbott, Andrew. “Against Narrative: A Preface to Lyrical Sociology.” Sociological Theory 25, no. 1 (March 2007): 67– 99. “There is a temptation here—in the word irony—to fall into a facile but misleading equivalence. Hayden White, among others, has invoked the tropology of Northrop Frye to analyze social scientific writing (in his case, history). He notes Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche, and Irony as four basic tropes, loosely associated with the four genres of Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, and Satire. At first blush, the lyrical seems to fit well under romance. But these are all narrative categories, straight from the Aristotelian canon; all concern the aims and outcomes of a plot. There is no necessary reason to think that the lyrical impulse is romantic and, indeed, in Japanese poetry, which is almost entirely lyrical in conception, it often is not so, however romantic that poetry may seem to narratively conditioned [sic] Western eyes.” Abbott, Mark. “On Poetry: How It Helps Us Transcend Language Customs and Embolden Creativity.” The Province (25 April 2017). http://theprovince.com/ entertainment/books/abbott-on-poetry-how-it-helps-ustranscend-language-customs-and-embolden-creativity. On Frye’s assessment of Shelley’s view of poetry as opposed to Peacock’s. Abdulla, Adnan. Catharsis in Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. 97–100. Examines Frye’s
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statements about catharsis in Anatomy of Criticism and finds that he is “the first critic in the history of literary theory to associate catharsis with ecstasis” and that his defence of catharsis as both intellectual and emotional exuberance “is perhaps the most passionate throughout the ages.” Abeledo, Manuel. “El Libro del caballero Zifar entre la literatura ejemplar y el romance caballeresco” [The Book of the Zifar Knight: Between Exemplary Literature and Chivalrous Romance]. Letras (Universidad Católica Argentina) 59–60 (January–December 2009): 119–31. In Spanish. “In order to understand the entrance of Arthurian and chivalric literature in Spain, and its subsequent derivations and its diffusion in the Peninsula until reaching the transcendence that these texts reach in the Golden Age, it is fundamental to understand the particular tension and articulation that especially in the fourteenth century between the exemplary literary model, marked by particular patterns of reading and writing, and the model arrived from France with the Arthurian stories, related to what Northrop Frye called ‘romance.’” (author’s abstract) Abi-Ezzi, N. The Double in the Fiction of R.L. Stevenson, Wilkie Collins and Daphne du Maurier. Oxford: Lang, 2002. Draws on Frye’s theory of romance. Abitha, K. and X. John Paul. “A Study on the Popularity of Archetypal Theory: A Review.” Language in India 16, no. 11 (November 2016): 12–24. A study of the links between vampire novels and archetypal theory. Analyses archetypal images according to the definition of such images by Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Frye. Abrahams, Roger D. “The Complex Relations of Simple Forms.” Folklore Genres. Ed. Dan Ben-Amos. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014. “Without accepting Northrop Frye’s definition of genre, one can agree with his dictum on the use of generic criticism: ‘The purpose of criticism by genres is not so much to classify as to clarify . . . traditions and affinities, thereby bringing out a large number of literary relationships that would not be noticed as long as there were no context established for them.’ Frye points to the operational basis of this critical approach when he notes that ‘generic criticism . . . is rhetorical, in the sense that the genre is determined by the conditions established between the poet and his public.’” Ächtler, Norman. “Was ist ein Narrativ? Begriffsgeschichtliche Überlegungen Anlässlich Der Aktuellen Europa-Debatte” [What Is a Narrative? Conceptual Considerations during the Current European Debate]. KulturPoetik 14, no. 2 (2014):
244–68. In German. Proposes a definition of the German term Narrativ as an analytical category of interdisciplinary narratology. Argues that both psychology and history have a narrative shape that descends from Frye’s pre-generic mythoi. Ackerman, Alan. “Comedy, Capitalism, and a Loss of Gravity.” Discourse 36, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 139–75. Explores the nature of comedy in Frye’s theory of the comic mythos. Ackland, Michael. “Blake’s System and the Critics.” AUMLA 54 (1980): 149–70. A critique of Fearful Symmetry and three other books on Blake; they are faulted for ignoring the integrity of the individual poem and for often being less comprehensible than the works they interpret. Adams, Eric M. “Canadian Constitutional Identities.” Dalhousie Law Journal 38, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 311–43. “Literary History of Canada testified to the existence of a distinctive and worthy literary tradition in English Canada. The volume is especially well known for Northrop Frye’s concluding essay in which he confidently articulated his famous ‘garrison mentality’ as a unifying theme in Canadian literature and suggested that the question underlying the search for Canadian identity was not so much ‘Who am I?’ as ‘Where is here?’ In his much less well-known Whidden Lectures delivered at McMaster University shortly afterwards, in the nationalistic glow of the centennial year, Frye elliptically expressed more ambivalence and less certainty on the question of Canadian identity. ‘My present task, I think, is neither to eulogize nor to elegize Canadian nationality, neither to celebrate its survival nor to lament its passage,’ he explained. ‘All nations have . . . a buried or uncreated ideal, the lost world of the lamb and the child, and no nation has been more preoccupied with it than Canada.’ Canadian art and literature, he observed, ‘seem constantly to be trying to understand something that eludes it, frustrated by a sense that there is something to be found that has not been found.’ ‘The Canada, to which we really do owe loyalty,’ Frye concluded, ‘is the Canada that we have failed to create. In a year to be full of discussions of our identity, I should like to suggest that our identity, like the real identity of all nations, is the one that we have failed to achieve. It is expressed in our culture, but not attained in our life.’” “Frye might well have been speaking of the Canadian constitution. The search for Canadian constitutional identity has been an endemic feature of our constitutional history, one driven, more often, than not, by a desire to create and express something distinctive and organic about the Canadian constitutional
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
experience. The search itself revealed deep engagement with Canada’s constitutionalism, most prominently among elites in law and politics, but also more broadly in popular constitutional culture, especially journalism.” Adams, Hazard. “The Achievements of Northrop Frye (1912–1991).” Comparative Criticism, vol. 15. Ed. E.S. Shaffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 225–42. Perceptive account of Frye’s achievements, based on the theme of Frye as an outsider. – “Criticism: Whence and Whither?” American Scholar 28 (Spring 1959): 226, 228, 232, 234, 238 [232, 238]. Praises Anatomy of Criticism for its systematic conceptual universe and for its particular insights. Believes Frye’s theory cannot be dismissed without dismissing along with it the virtues of his system, and chides Robert Martin Adams for criticizing the systematic character of Frye’s work, arguing that Adams’s critique is based upon a mistrust of philosophy. – “Essay on Frye.” In Denham and Willard, Visionary Poetics, 41–6. Rpt. in Thinking through Blake: Essays in Literary Contrariety. Jefferson, NC, and London, UK: McFarland and Co., 2014. 65–9. Seeks to clear up an apparent contradiction in Frye’s work: Frye declares that literary criticism is a science but he also associates his own work with the genre he calls the anatomy. The anatomy dissects literature into its constituent parts but also incorporates all forms into itself. Frye’s method of “turning the insides out” is typical of such poets as Blake and Yeats. Insofar as the Anatomy offers a vision of a beautiful and functioning world, it becomes a work of art. – “Frye, Northrop.” Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 4, ed. Frederick Ungar and Una Mainiero. New York: Ungar, 1975. 126–7. A brief account of Frye’s chief contributions to literary study from Fearful Symmetry through The Stubborn Structure. – The Interests of Criticism: An Introduction to Literary Theory. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969. 122–31. Discusses Frye’s argument about the nature of criticism, as outlined in the Polemical Introduction to Anatomy of Criticism, and the chief theoretical concepts upon which Anatomy of Criticism is based, including imitation, myth, ritual, symbol, and archetype. Maintains that Frye has produced the most influential body of critical theory since the New Critics. Takes issue, however, with Frye’s view on value judgments. – “Jerusalem’s Didactic and Mimetic-Narrative Experiment.” Studies in Romanticism 32 (Winter 1993): 627–54. A critique of interpretations of Blake’s poem, beginning with Frye’s Fearful Symmetry, to which Adams is nevertheless indebted.
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– “The Literary Concept of Myth.” Philosophy of the Literary Symbolic. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1983. 263–86. A detailed account of Frye’s theory of symbolism, “the most comprehensive theoretical effort to gather the strands of romantic and postromantic literary theory together.” Discusses Frye’s idea of symbolic forms in relation to the concept of imitation, his understanding of anagogy, his use of the analogy between literary and mathematical languages, the relation between his view of literary symbolism and his more general interests, and his conception of the myths of freedom and concern. – “Northrop Frye.” Critical Theory since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971. 1117–18; rev. ed., 1992. 1045–6. An account of Frye’s theory of symbolism. Serves as an introduction to the Second Essay of Anatomy of Criticism, which is reprinted in Adams’s anthology. A number of references to Frye are scattered throughout the anthology: see pp. 2, 6, 8–10, 67, 116, 400, 445, 721, 942, 993, 1079, 1167, 1200. Adams, Hazard, and Leroy Searle. “Northrop Frye.” Critical Theory Since 1965. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1985. 251–2. An introduction to the selection from The Critical Path, which is reprinted in this anthology. The editors point to the dialectic of the myths of freedom and concern in The Critical Path and observe that the book represents “the unfolding of a theory of the relation of literature to society and culture.” Adams, Jon. “Making a Science of Criticism.” Interference Patterns. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2007. 39–76. On the effort by Frye and others to develop a systematic criticism drawn from the principles of literature itself, similar to the scientific projects of Chomsky in linguistics and Lévi-Strauss in anthropology. – “Plot Taxonomies and Intentionality.” Philosophy and Literature 32, no. 1 (April 2008): 102–18. On the conceptual foundations of Frye’s taxonomic schemes in Anatomy of Criticism. Frye is “acutely aware of the tension between his desire to see literature organized into a formal structure and the problems this creates for the valorization of individual writers.” By looking at how Frye constructs his taxonomical schema, and how he fits individual authors back into that superstructure, Adams argues “it is possible to get a better sense of how the taxonomy problematises the author’s role, and of why we might—despite their systemic appeal—want to remain wary about instituting the type of higher-level order a plot taxonomy requires.” Adams, Tim. “Exile on Planet Fame: Anthea Turner.” The Observer (15 October 2000). https://www.theguardian.
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com/observer/comment/story/0,6903,382717,00.html. Review of Anthea Turner’s autobiography, Fools Rush In. “The American post-structuralist Northrop Frye once argued that through the ages there had been a gradual diminution of literary heroes. Thus where ancient cultures told of the loves and rages of gods, in later times the protagonists of defining myths were superhuman rather than divine. In the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance heroic archetypes were generally elevated versions of their audience. With the arrival of the novel pivotal heroes and heroines became like ourselves, only more so. Future scholars, you imagine, may well demonstrate that this progression from the sacred to the mundane reached its logical conclusion in Anthea Turner’s autobiography Fools Rush In.” Adamson, Joseph. “Crazy Love: Frye, Breton, and the Erotic Imagination.” In Donaldson and Mendelson, Frye and the Word, 205–34. Reads Breton’s L’amour fou in light of Frye’s primary concern of eros and its biblical archetypes. – “Frye and Edgar Allan Poe.” Paper presented at: “Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth.” University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013. Available online at https://macblog.mcmaster.ca/ fryeblog/2012/12/16/frye-and-poe-2/. Shows how Poe occupies a key place in Frye’s literary cosmology. – “Frye’s Structure of Imagery: The Case of Eros in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 213–21. Calls on the archetype of the garden, as outlined by Frye in Words with Power, to illuminate the structure of imagery in Williams’s poems. – “Maladjusting Us: Frye, Education, and the Real Form of Society.” Hamilton Arts and Letters 8, no. 1 (2015). http://samizdatpress.typepad.com/hal_magazine_issue_ eight1/frye-education-and-the-real-form-of-societyby-joseph-adamson-10.html. “In the current climate of austerity and utilitarian cries for ‘relevance,’ [Frye’s] discussion of the role of the humanities in the university and of the central importance of art and literature in society, seems even more resonant now than it was close to fifty years ago.” – “Northrop Frye.” Online Encyclopedia of Canadian Christian Leaders. http://www.canadianchristianleaders. org/leader/northrop-frye/. Overview of Frye’s career and legacy. – “Northrop Frye and Contemporary Literary Theory.” Recherches sémiotics/Semiotic Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1993): 7–9. An introduction to the seven essays constituting
the special section of RSSI devoted to Frye and contemporary literary theory. – “Northrop Frye, Semiotics, and the Mythological Structure of Imagery.” Recherches sémiotics/Semiotic Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1993): 85–100. On the shared assumptions of Frye and semioticians and the similarities between the insights of Bakhtin and Frye. – “The Rising of Dilsey’s Bones: The Theme of Sparagmos in The Sound and the Fury.” Modern Language Quarterly 49, no. 3 (September 1988): 239–61. On the Nietzschean theme of the dismemberment of the hero in Faulkner. Draws on Frye’s view in the Anatomy that such dismemberment (sparagmos) is the archetypal theme of satire and irony. – “The Treason of the Clerks: Frye, Ideology and the Authority of Imaginative Culture.” In Boyd and Salusinszky, Rereading Frye, 72–102. On Frye as a cultural critic. His conception of the autonomy of imaginative culture may be his “single most important contribution to the history of thought.” – “Vallejo, Prometheus, and the Flesh Made Word.” The Poetry and Poetics of Cesar Vallejo: The Four Angles of the Circle. Studies in Latin American Literature and Culture. 6. Ed. Adam Sharman. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997. 153–72. Draws on Frye’s archetype of the Promethean furnace to reconsider Vallejo’s work. Adamson, Joseph, and Jean Wilson. “Introduction.” In“The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991. Ed. Joseph Adamson and Jean Wilson. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 19. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. xxi–xliii. An overview of the central issues in the last two decades of Frye’s life, with special attention to The Secular Scripture. Sees the three central themes of Frye’s late work as “the dialectical polarization of imagery into desirable and abhorrent worlds; the recovery of myth in the literary act of recreation; and the struggle and complementarity of secular and sacred scriptures.” Notes the similarity of concerns in Frye’s late work with those of his two books on the Bible, and places him in the context of the poststructural moment. Adanur, Evrim Doğan. “Shakespeare’in Troilus ve Cressida Oyununda Anakronizm Kullanımı” [The Uses of Anachronism in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida]. Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences 16, no. 4 (2017): 1048–56. Glances at what Frye’s calls “pervasive disillusionment” in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida set in an environment in which “heroism degenerates into brutality and love itself is reduced to . . . mechanical stimulus.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Addison, Catherine. “The Verse Novel as Genre: Contradiction or Hybrid?” Style 43, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 539–56. “In many European languages other than English, the romance—or at least the prose romance— is indistinguishable from the novel. The word ‘novel’ translates into French, Italian and German respectively as ‘roman,’ ‘romanzo’ and ‘Roman.’ Many other languages also use cognates of the word ‘romance’ in this way, to refer to a class of texts that includes both romances and novels. However, in English a distinction between the terms is generally maintained. Frye, whose chief critical interest is in romance, maintains that the novel occupies the area of fiction closest to the ‘realistic’ extreme. Interestingly, although he claims to be concerned mainly with ‘prose narratives,’ Frye does not specifically exclude verse from any of the literary types that he discusses, and he declares Spenser’s poetic Faerie Queene to be the ‘greatest romance in English literature.’” Adie, Mathilda. Female Quest in Christina Stead’s “For Love Alone.” Lund Studies in English 107. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004. Combines Frye’s myth criticism with feminist and post-colonial theory to show that such criticism opens the way for an in-depth analysis of Teresa Hawkins in Stead’s novel as a modern quest hero. Adiseshiah, Siân. “‘I just die for some authority!’ Barriers to Utopia in Howard Brenton’s Greenland.” Comparative Drama 46, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 41–55. “In Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye speaks of Shakespeare’s comedy as ‘the drama of the green world, its plot being assimilated to the ritual themes of the triumph of life and love over the waste land.’ Andrew Stott describes green worlds as ‘wish fulfilment locations, always rural, often enchanted, in which the normal business of the town is suspended and the pleasurable pastimes of holiday prevail. . . . Green worlds proximate utopias very closely, but an important distinction is that they are encased in a temporary block of time. Activities in the Arcadian retreat (Bakhtinian carnival, disguised identities, transgendering, subversion of normative rules and values) come to an end and the spectator is presented with the resumption of order . . . which is also usually a return to the city. Importantly, the significant difference in Greenland is that there is no restoration of the dominant order; Greenland is not a temporary utopic holiday from where visitors return to the grey world of real life; it is instead the everyday posthistorical space of the future.” Adkins, Curtis P. “The Hero in T’ang Ch’uan-ch’i Tales.” Critical Essays on Chinese Fiction. Ed. Winston L.Y. Yang and Curtis P. Adkins. Hong Kong: Chinese
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University Press 1980), 17–46 [18–21]. Uses Frye’s conception of the archetype as both a recurring symbol and a narrative pattern to examine the quest myth in the T’ang ch’uan-ch’i tales. Афанасьев, Сергей Глебович [Afanasyev, Sergei Glebovich]. “Художественное Восприятие В Контексте Теории Эмпатии.” [Extrapolation of Psychoanalysis by Empathy]. Society: Philosophy, History, Culture 12 (30 December 2016): 1–3. In Russian. “Deals with the theses of the empathic theories, in particular, the psychoanalytic theories of art criticism. Discusses ideas of Western scholars, such as Norman Holland, Herman Northrop Frye, Georges Poulet about the correct understanding of the role of the art form, the desire to overcome the ‘biographism,’ the proper interpretation of psychoanalysis by the empathic conception of criticism.” (author’s abstract) Afzaljhan, Fawzia, Cultural Imperialism and the Indo-English Novel: Genre and Ideology in R.K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya, and Salman Rushdie. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Studies the interplay between Frye’s mythromance and Lukács’ critical realism in the fiction of four Indian writers. Agabiti, Thomas. “Samuel Fuller’s Run of the Arrow and the Mythos of Romance: An Archetypal Analysis.” Film Reader 2 (January 1977): 96–110. Applies Frye’s conceptual framework of archetypal criticism to cinema, especially Samuel Fuller’s Run of the Arrow. Agawu, Kofi. Review of A Theory of Musical Narrative, by Byron Almén. Notes, Second Series, 66, no. 2 (December 2009): 275–77. Observes that Almén’s chief intellectual debts are not to musicians but to studies of myth by Frye and narrative by James Liszka. Aglargöz, Ozan. “Czarniawska’yi Gölgelerken . . ./ Shadowing Czarniawska. . . .” Is Ahlakı Dergisi [Business Ethics Magazine] 9, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 159–64. On the importance of the trilogy structure, as advanced by Paul Hernadi, for B. Czarniawska and Frye. In Turkish. Agnew, Gates K. “Berowne and the Progress of Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Shakespeare Studies 4 (1968): 40–72. Argues that the play fits the formula of comedy as defined by Frye. Agrell, Beata. “Genretheori och Genrehistoria.” In Genreteori, ed. Eva Haettner Aurelius and Thomas Götselius. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1997. In Swedish. Examines Tzvetan Todorov’s critique of Frye’s theory of genre. Aguiar, Flávio. “Northrop Frye e a autonomia da arte.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JLdPfcRPQbI. In Portuguese.
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– “Postscript” to Aguiar’s translation into Portuguese of The Great Code–O Código dos códigos: a Bíblia e a Literatura. São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial, 2004. Aguilera, José Luis Bellón. “Tres teorías del conflicto intelectual: Randall Collins, Pierre Bourdieu y Harold Bloom” [Three Theories of Intellectual Conflict: Randall Collins, Pierre Bourdieu and Harold Bloom]. Romanica Silesiana 7 (2012): 237–47. In Spanish. Mentions that Bloom was a disciple of Frye’s. Ahmad, Iqbal. “Imagination and Image in Frye’s Criticism.” English Quarterly 3 (Summer 1970): 15–24. Argues that for Frye imaginative energy creates imaginative reality, the images of which are found in the patterns or archetypes of literature: the original writer does not repeat the archetype but recreates it. Believes that Frye’s theory of the imagination helps the reader to understand literature but cannot be used to evaluate specific works. Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah. “Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination.” Southeast Asian Studies 3, no. 1 (April 2014): 49–84. “The Jungian archetypal framework lists a variety of garden images, showing the many different meanings and situations in which the archetype appears to the European collective unconscious. Northrop Frye outlines its various incarnations in Western literature: (1) as the garden of paradise, it is the manifestation of human desires, expressed by shaping the vegetable world into gardens, parks, and farms; (2) in demonic imagery, the corresponding garden images are the ‘sinister enchanted garden like that of Circe . . . the tree of death, the tree of forbidden knowledge in Genesis, the barren fig-tree of the Gospels, and the cross’ as well as ‘the labyrinth or maze.’ These images portray a world ‘before the human imagination begins to work on it and before any image of human desire, such as the city or the garden, has been solidly established.’ The garden of the world of romance, or the ‘analogy of innocence’ includes the Garden of Eden—Frye cites images from the Bible, Milton, and Dante—and the locus amoenus as examples. However, the garden is not as prominent in ‘high mimetic imagery’ or the ‘analogy of nature and reason.’” Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah, Shanthini Pillai, and Noraini Md. Yusof. “Rehabilitating Eden: Archetypal Images of Malaya in European Travel Writing.” Journeys 12, no. 1 (August 2011): 22–45. “This article brings in Jungian literary criticism—by Joseph Campbell, Erich Neumann, and Northrop Frye—to the analysis of images of Malaya in European travel writing.”
Aichele, George, Jr. “Modern Comic Theories.” Theology as Comedy: Critical and Theoretical Implications. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980. 17–42 [26–8, 31–2]. Categorizes Frye’s theory of comedy as “light,” because, like the theories of Bergson and Langer, it views comedy as socially creative, edifying, preservative, and culturally powerful. Opposes this view to the “dark” or negative theories of comedy in such writers as Baudelaire and Camus. Aikin, Judith P. Scaramutza in Germany: The Dramatic Works of Caspar Stieler. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. “In the especially fruitful realm of English language theory of comedy one finds a tendency to elevate comedy, particularly Shakespearean or romantic comedy, to a level of cosmic significance not exceeded by that of tragedy. Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye, for instance, have tied comedy to archetypal myths and rituals of regeneration and resurrection.” Aithal, S. Krishnamoorthy. “Getting Past the Antithetical Way of Stating the Problem: Northrop Frye’s Critical Path.” In Aithal, The Importance of Northrop Frye, 107– 35 (no. 20 in chapter 1, above). Shows how Frye picks his way carefully through the field of theory. Aitken, Johan L. English and Ethics: Some Ideas for Teachers of Literature (Profiles in Practical Education 10). Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1976. 34 pp. A manual, significantly shaped by Frye’s insights, on the coalition between ethics and literary study. – “An Informing Power in the Mind.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, Toronto, 28 December 1997, as part of the symposium, “Frye and the City.” 11-page typescript. – “Making Human Sense: The Changing Influences of Northrop Frye’s Literary Theory upon the Literary Experiences of Children—1957–2007.” Northrop Frye Weblog, McMaster University, posted 6 March 2010. https://macblog.mcmaster.ca/fryeblog/ making-human-sense-the-changing-influences-ofnorthrop-fryes-literary-theory-upon-the-literaryexperiences-of-children-1957-2007/. “By 1957, something called Children’s Literature was becoming a respectable field of academic study in universities. The so-called classics from “the maddened ethics of fairyland” (The Brothers Grimm, Perrault and the literary tales of Andersen and Wilde), The Water Babies, Gulliver’s Travels, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe—all the books children had the good
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
sense to seize upon—had long been given critical attention. Now, however, the climate—social, economic, political and educational—was ripe for this attention to extend to almost everything read to—and by—children. And, in 1957, when Anatomy of Criticism burst upon the world, the exciting practices of making connections and seeing correspondences intensified. The confluence of these two sea changes—Frye’s perspective on literary studies writ large and the recognition that Children’s Literature could be studied in an organized fashion— brought the possibility of system and sense to a field heretofore largely neglected by the academy.” – “Northrop Frye and Educational Theory: Some Implications for Teaching.” Teacher Education 10 (April 1977): 50–9. Examines Frye’s understanding of several key objectives or priorities in education: contemplation, communication, free speech, and social vision. Argues that teachers need an educational theory and that Frye’s, as presented in On Teaching Literature and other essays, can help them to grow. This essay is an abridged version of chap. 1, part 3, of Aitken’s dissertation, “Children’s Literature in the Light of Northrop Frye’s Theory.” – “The Tale’s the Thing: Northrop Frye’s Theory Applied to the Teaching of Tales in the Elementary School.” Interchange 7, no. 2 (1976–7): 63–72. Shows how Frye’s theories of literature apply to the tales children relish, and how they help teachers make connections and perceive hidden likenesses. – “Teaching The Great Code.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA, 10 November 1984. 10 pp. Photoduplicated typescript. Recounts author’s experience of teaching Frye’s Great Code, supplemented by his videotaped lectures on the Bible, to students in the University of Toronto School for Continuing Studies. – “The Shape of Myth.” Indirections 6 (Winter 1981): 28–39. Using Frye’s proposal that mythology should serve as the basis of education, shows how teachers can examine biblical and classical myths with children. – et al. Wavelengths 31. Np: Dent (Canada), 1970; Wavelengths 32, ibid., 1971; Wavelengths 33, ibid. A series of textbooks, based upon Frye’s conceptual framework of literary modes, for children in the elementary grades. Akey, Stephen. “Beyond Words: Anatomy of Wonder.” The Smart Set (blog) (11 January 2016). https:// thesmartset.com/anatomy-of-wonder/. A moving paean to Anatomy of Criticism as a work of creative genius.
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Aktulum, Kubilay. “Metinlerarasılık Görüngüsünde Gerçeklik ya da Metnin Göndergeselliği” [Referentiality and Reality of the Text in an Intertextual Perspective]. Bilig 85 (Spring 2018): 233–56. In Turkish. Sees Frye as among those who affirm intertextuality without denying the referentiality of texts. al-Bazei, Saad. “Methodological Underpinnings: The Prejudices of Western Literary Criticism.” Arab Journal for the Humanities 38 (1990). “Discusses the formalist [critical] approach as exemplified in the work of Northrop Frye, where we find illustrated the religiousphilosophical background of some of the underpinnings of the formalist method. Biblical exegeses as well as the philosophical principles of someone like the Jewish thinker Spinoza are discussed in the context of highlighting the religious-secular tensions governing both formalism and the approach evolving out of it, structuralism.” Alber, Jan. Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Frye, “who sees romance as a mode (rather than a genre) and also as the ultimate paradigm of all storytelling, points out that ‘the hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability once the postulates of romance have been established. In contrast to Frye, I see romance not as a mode but as a genre.” Albertazzi, Silvia. “Matt Cohen’s Seasons of Salem.” In Canada ieri e oggi, ed. Giovanni Bonanno. Fasano: Schena Editore, 1986. 347–58. Alborg, Juan Luis. Sobre crítica y críticos: Historia de la literatura española; Paréntesis teórico que apenas tiene que ver con la presente historia [On Criticism and Critics: History of Spanish Literature. Theoretical Parenthesis That Barely Has to Do with This Story]. Madrid: Gredos, 1991. In Spanish. On Frye, passim. Albrecht, Jane White. “The Satiric Irony of Marta la piadosa.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 39 (Summer 1987): 37–45. Argues that Tirso de Molina’s play is an example of what Frye calls “ironic comedy.” Albu, Rodica. “‘What Is Left of Archetypal Criticism?’ (dedicated to Northrop Frye and his school). First Symposium of English and American Studies. 29–31 October 1982. Iaşi: Cuiza University. 1982.
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The Reception of Northrop Frye
Alciato, Armando. “Il pensiero critico di Eliot secondo Northrop Frye” [Eliot’s Critical Thinking according to Northrop Frye]. In Realtà nuova: Il pensiero dei rotariani sui problemi della nostra vita e della nostra cultura 57, no. 3–4 (March–April 1992): 171–88. Eliot’s critical thinking according to Frye. Aldama, Frederick Luis. “History as Handmaiden to Fiction in Amitav Ghosh.” A User’s Guide to Postcolonial and Latino Borderland Fiction. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009. 66–85. “The romance is less concerned with individual psychology than with archetypes. In his taxonomy of different storytelling modes, Northrop Frye nicely sums this up, writing, “the romancer does not attempt to create ‘real people’ so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes” (83). Alexander, Ian. “Music in My Life: A Dialogue between Northrop Frye and Ian Alexander.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 1, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 10–16. Interview on Alexander’s CBC “Music in My Life” series. Alexander, J. “Northrop Frye on the Teaching of English.” Use of English 47, no. 3 (1996): 193–204. Alexander, Jeffrey C. The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Chap. 1, written with Phillip Smith, argues that the appeal of literary theory, as found in Frye and others, “lies partially in its affinity for a textual understanding of social life. . . . As Northrop Frye recognized, when approached in a structural way narrative allows for the construction of models that can be applied across cases and contexts but at the same time provides a tool for interrogating particularities.” – “What Social Science Must Learn from the Humanities.” Sociologia & Antropologia 9, no. 1 (January–April 2019): 43–54. “Aristotle created narrative theory in his Poetics and employed it to explain the difference between the tragic and comedic Greek plays. Northrop Frye updated this sturdy account of meaning in reference to Shakespearian drama, explaining how ascending romance brings readers closer to the actors and stokes fervent feelings, while descending comic plots deflate passion by pulling reader identification away.” Alexander, Jeffrey C., and Philip Smith. “Introduction: The Rise and Fall of Clifford Geertz.” In Interpreting Clifford Geertz: Cultural Investigation in the Social Sciences. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 1–6. “In his analysis of the Bible, entitled The Great Code, Northrop Frye observed the history of the Israelites to be an unstable one. First there was obscurity and marginality. Next, prophetic intervention renewed faith and solidarity.
Thence came triumph and empire—but after that things would go wrong. Complacency produced decadence, fractious infighting, and broken covenants. Failure, humiliation, and exile followed. The cycle would begin again. This tidal periodicity moving over generations accounts for the epic feel of the Old Testament, as if Nietzsche’s myth of eternal return were playing out through the destiny of a people.” Alexander, Joy. “Northrop Frye o nastavi engleskog jezika” [Northrop Frye on the Teaching of English]. Strani jezici: časopis za unapređenje nastave stranih jezika [Journal for the Improvement of the Teaching of Foreign Languages] 25, nos. 1–2 (1996): 74–81. In Bosnian. Alexander, Kwame. The Write Thing: Kwame Alexander Engages Students in Writing Workshop (and You Can Too!). Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Educational Publishing, 2019. Notes Frye’s injunction that the study of literature should begin with the form that lies at the centre of literary expression—poetry. Alexis, André. “The Long Decline.” Walrus 7, no. 6 (July– August 2010). “These days, Canadian literary reviewers are so woefully incompetent, it makes you wonder if there’s something in our culture that poisons critics in their cradles. I was once told, by a short, pompous man with thick, dark-rimmed glasses (a self-styled ‘critic’), that criticism is ‘the rich loam out of which literature blooms.’ If that were the case, Canadian literature would have withered, died, and blown away long ago. The failure of our country to produce a single literary critic of any worth, at least since the death of Northrop Frye, is striking. And in this age when book review pages disappear from our dying newspapers, things are likely to get worse. That is, we’re likely to be left with nothing but the sheer opinion spreading that passes for critical thought these days. . . . Northrop Frye was a great critic, but his work—and some of the work he influenced, Margaret Atwood’s Survival, above all— was one of the catalysts for a kind of populist critical rebellion. Frye’s work was academic, specialized, and structuralist. Anatomy of Criticism is a book that, it has been suggested, put methodology first and, to an extent, the literary works it was scrutinizing second. I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Frye’s respect for the literary work was, to me, inspiring. And he was a good practical critic (or reviewer). He could write a clear evaluation of Wallace Stevens, say, that was accessible to all, whether you had read Anatomy of Criticism or not.” Alfonso, Eva, and Marta Frago. “The Adventure Screenplay in William Goldman: The Playful and the Ironic in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess
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Bride.” Comunicación y Sociedad 27, no. 4 (2014): 1–15. “Goldman’s novel The Princess Bride is close to Northrop Frye’s ironic mythos, which applies a realistic focus to fantasy and creates a liminal space between fiction and reality. It is also a meta-fantastic narration, a concept defined by George Aichele as fairy tales about fairy tales.” Al-Garrallah, Aiman Sanad. “‘The cunning wife/fruit tree’ syndrome: Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale and Seven Arabic Stories.” Neohelicon: Acta comparationis litterarum universarum 42, no. 2 (2015): 671–86. Uses a feminist archetypal approach to shed some light on specific archetypal patterns, in Frye’s sense, found in Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale and seven Arabic tales. Argues that there are some primordial, universal, and recurrent archetypes which connect those texts together. Ali, Abdul Wahab. “Kemunculan Novel dalam Sastera Moden Indonesia dan Malaysia: Satu Kajian Perbandingan” [The Emergence of the Novel in Modern Indonesian and Malaysian Literature: A Comparative Study]. ITBM, 1991. Ali, Muhammad, Ghulam Ali Buriro, and Aftab Ahmed Charan. “The Viewer Perception of the Connotative Portrayal of Superhero Characters in Postmodern Screen Fiction.” International Research Journal of Arts and Humanities 47, no. 47 (2019): 189. Alihodžić, Demir. “Gendered Dystopia: Gender Politics in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We”. DHS—Društvene i humanističke studije: časopis Filozofskog fakulteta u Tuzli 2 (2017): 111–39 Allan, Jonathan. “Anatomies of Influence, Anxieties of Criticism: Northrop Frye & Harold Bloom.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 36, no. 2 (June 2009): 137–54. “Considers Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence and his own ‘anxiety of influence’; accordingly, Bloom’s work will be considered in the shadow cast by Frye. This question will . . . be mapped out and established through a series of letters and close readings of Bloom’s work. Arising out of this analysis is another, and perhaps more profound, question about the nature of the anxiety of having influenced; as such, this study moves to consider Frye’s reaction to the influence he had upon Bloom.” (author’s abstract) – “The First Major Theoretician? Northrop Frye and Literary Theory.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 44, no. 1 (March 2017): 82–94. Thomas Willard devotes an article to “the genius of Northrop Frye,” in which he ultimately concludes, “I think we can safely say that he had genius,” which would run counter to Harold
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Bloom’s claim that “Frye’s criticism will survive because it is serious, spiritual, and comprehensive, but not because it is systematic or a manifestation of genius.” In his article “The Social Vision of Frye’s Criticism: The Scandal of Undiscriminating Catholicity,” Jonathan Arac begins, “Anatomy of Criticism is the greatest work of positive literary criticism yet produced in English, but its standing has continuously been haunted by unease over Frye’s refusing to grant value-judgments any place within criticism,” a point that Harold Bloom has seen (and continues to see) as his chief—and lasting— difference with his precursor, Northrop Frye. What is clear is that Frye’s place in literary history is one that seems to be, at least at first glance, quite secure, even if debated. These critical voices are, after all, just a selection of possible choices, all of which aim to show how strong, good, or important a critic Northrop Frye is.” – “Northrop Frye on Romance.” “Teach Me Tonight” weblog. http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2011/01/northropfrye-on-romance.html. Review of The Secular Scripture. – “Predestined Literary Theory: The Influence of John Calvin on Northrop Frye’s Development of the Archetype.” Paper presented at the conference Nostalgic Futures: Yesterday’s Comparative Literature in Tomorrow’s World, Brock University, 9 November 2007. – “Teaching Romance: Labeling the Genre.” “Teach Me Tonight” weblog. http://teachmetonight.blogspot. com/2011/02/teaching-romance-labeling-genre.html. – “Theorising Male Virginity in Popular Romance Novels.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 12 October 2011. “In this article, I hope to move beyond merely acknowledging the virgin hero’s existence to a more complex, theorised understanding of him as a complex character within the genre of popular romance fiction. My argument is that male virginity in romance novels is worthy of a more significant study than it has thus far been afforded—in part because male virgins are treated so differently in these novels from the ways they appear in cinematic representations, and in part because studying the virgin hero allows us to revisit some of the most puzzling and provocative of Northrop Frye’s pronouncements on the ‘romance,’ broadly considered: in particular, his claim that in ‘romance’ there is a ‘magical emphasis on virginity, the fact that virgins can do things others can’t but that ‘this prudery [about virginity] is structural, not moral.’ With Frye in mind, my approach to the topic will be anatomical; that is, I will anatomise various ‘types’ of the virgin hero in modern popular romance fiction, with some exploration of how they overlap and relate to one another.”
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The Reception of Northrop Frye
– “Theorising the Monstrous and the Virginal in Popular Romance Novels.” 8th Global Conference on Monsters and Monstrous. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/ uploads/2010/08/jallanpaper.pdf. 2010. Considers the question of male virginity in popular romance, particularly Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, in relation to discourses of monstrosity and deviance. The discussion of romance draws heavily on Frye’s account of the genre. – “Visiting Theory: The Northrop Frye Visiting Professorship at the University of Toronto.” University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 157–62. A history of the Northrop Frye Visiting Professorship. Allen, James Lovic. “The Road to Byzantium: Archetypal Criticism and Yeats.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 32 (Fall 1973): 53–64 [55–8]. Claims that Frye’s archetypal categories are “too highly schematized and theoretical” to be of use in the practical criticism of Yeats’s work. Analyses Frye’s archetypal framework in Anatomy of Criticism, and in an essay on Yeats’s imagery, concludes that Yeats’s neo-Platonic imagination required ‘only two main categories of images and archetypes, not the three or four postulated by Northrop Frye.’” Allen, J. Frederick. “Man and Nature: An Ecocritical Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.” IUP Journal of English Studies 13, no. 2 (June 2018): 50–62. “Frye’s statement on literary criticism should be mentioned: ‘What is at present missing from literary criticism is a coordinating principle, a central hypothesis, which, like the theory of evolution in biology, will see the phenomenon it deals with as part of a whole.’ If one were to replace ‘literary criticism’ with ‘ecocriticism,’ Frye’s statement would ring true even now.” Allison, John. “The ‘World Politics’ Course: Changing Thinking on International Relations Education in Ontario Secondary Schools, 1850–1970.” History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society 48, no. 6 (2019): 731–50. Almería, Luis Beltrán. “El legado crítico de Northrop Frye” [The Critical Legacy of Northrop Frye]. Revista de Filología Hispánica 25, no. 1 (2009): 55–62. In Spanish. “Sixteen years after Northrop Frye’s death, his legacy is still splendid. The essence of this legacy is the commitment with the social context of literature, condensed in Frye’s formula of equilibrium between concern and freedom. This formula is the great truth in Frye’s legacy. At its side, however, the author of this essay finds a vacuum: Frye’s reluctance to an explicit philosophy of literary history, from which a reading of Frye arises that sets out mechanical and abstract concepts.”
– “Ontología, teoría de la imaginación e historia literaria” [Ontology, Theory of Imagination and Literary History]. RILCE (Revista del Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Españolas) 31, no. 2 (2015): 365–80. In Spanish. “The philosophical-historical conception of literature is opposed to the most ingrained dogma in conventional literary history: the principle of the Zeitgeist or spirit of the age. Many call it simply historical context. This dogma can be described by saying that in order to explain a work it is necessary to understand its cultural and historical environment and, in its radical sense, suppose that it is enough to reconstruct the environment to understand the work. This principle appears equally in the most stale historicism and in the new historicism of Greenblatt and others. Among the critics of this principle, Frye and Bakhtin stand out. This principle assumes the tendency to understand the spirit of time in increasingly smaller temporal moments, a year, for example. Frye explained in The Critical Path that there are two contexts: one, minor, which is the immediate cultural and historical one; and another, relevant, which is that of literature, taken in very broad perspectives. If the principle of the spirit of time were true all the literature of a given moment would have the same characteristics, something that does not happen even with the literature of mass consumption.” Almén, Byron. “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis.” Journal of Music Theory 47, no. 1 (2003): 1–39. Presents a model of the narrative analysis of music based on Frye’s concept of the narrative archetype. – “The Sacrificed Hero: Creative Mythopoesis in Mahler’s Wunderhorn Symphonies.” In Approaches to Meaning in Music, ed. Byron Almén and Edward Pearsall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. 135–69. – A Theory of Musical Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Explores the possibility of reducing the infinite variety of compositional forms to a manageable group of categories in which the confluence of form and mood that creates genre can be aligned with the four basic archetypes of literary narrative (according to Northrop Frye)—comic, ironic, romance, and tragic. Alonso Recarte, Claudia. “The Myth of the Adirondack Backwoodsman: From the Golden Years to Consumer Society.” Miscelánea 42 (2010): 33–49. “I have attempted to present the rise and fall of the myth of a culturallyspecific region through Burke’s sociological formulation of literature as equipment for living and a theoretical consideration of Frye’s fictional modes.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Alou, Antoinette Tidjani. “Myths of a New World in Édouard Glissant’s novels La Lézarde and Le Quatrième siècle.” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 44, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 163–86. In a reading of Glissant’s novels, calls on Frye’s work/play opposition and his principle of the four primary concerns, as these ideas are developed in Words with Power. Alp, Çiğdem. “Modernizme geçiş: Virginia Woolf’un Night and Day romaninda romans geleneğinin ve realizmin yikimi” [Experimental Modernism: The Subversion of Romance Formulas and the Dismantling of Realist Representation of the City in Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day]. Celal Bayar Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 2 (2013): 50–67. In Bosnian. “While the subverted romance structure exposes the established views on gender and marriage, the portrayal of London through the consciousness of the characters prevents the novel from being a wholly realist work. The aim of this paper is to analyze how Woolf challenges traditional form and subject matter, and hence lays the ground for her later modernist works.” Follows throughout Frye’s definition of the novel and the romance. Alpers, Paul J. Poetry of the Faerie Queene. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. “‘Literally . . . a poem’s narrative is its rhythm or movement of words,’ Northrop Frye has remarked. But ‘when we think of a poem’s narrative as a description of events, we no longer think of the narrative as literally embracing every word and letter. We think rather of a sequence of gross events, of the obvious and externally striking elements in the word-order.’ In Frye’s terms, the argument of the last chapter is that we have forsaken the literal narration of The Faerie Queene, the continuous flow of words, for a kind of narration that is really not there.” Al-Saber, Samer. “Beyond Colonial Tropes: Two Productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Palestine.” Critical Survey 28, no. 3 (2016): 27–46. Notes that Frye coined the term “Green world” in Anatomy of Criticism to describe a place of escape, most often a forest, in Shakespearean comedies. Alsyouf, Amjad. “Aesthetic and Cognitive Values of Seamus Heaney’s Wintering Out: A Fryean Approach to Selected Poems.” Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews 7, no. 4 (2019): 722–9. https://doi.org/10.18510/ hssr.2019.7492. “This study investigates the relevance of the aesthetic values to the cognitive values in the poetry of the Anglo-Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939–2013). It examines ‘The Tollund Man,’ ‘Servant Boy,’ ‘Gifts of Rain’ and ‘Limbo’ from his poetry collection Wintering Out (1972), and focuses on the treatment of rebirth imagery and archetypes aiming to address their aesthetic and conceptual features.” Uses Frye’s archetypal theory.
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Alter, Robert. “Northrop Frye between Archetype and Typology.” In Donaldson and Mendelson, Frye and the Word, 137–50, and in Kee, Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word, 9–21; published in French as “Northrop Frye: Entre archetype et typologie.” Recherches de science religieuse 89, no. 3 (2001): 403–18. Argues that Frye’s view of the literary—“a verbal structure that exists for itself”—is vulnerable from the point of view of literary theory and as a description of the Bible. Claims that Frye’s imaginative approach is based on a series of interpretations that are systematically erroneous. Argues that in the Bible poetry is a minor genre compared to prose, the Bible’s principal narrative device. Altieri, Charles. “Northrop Frye and the Problem of Spiritual Authority.” PMLA 87 (1972): 964–75. Analyses Frye’s definition of humanity, a definition established by the study of origins and expressed both in a society’s “myths of concern” and in its imaginative creations. The telos of humanity, or the underlying structure and imagery of human desire, is seen as a principle of mediation, not unlike what one finds in Sartre, Lukács, and Ricoeur. Argues that this principle can become a model for both moral action and literary criticism, and it can be used to resist the relativism of such structuralist critics as Foucault and Derrida. – “Some Uses of Frye’s Literary Theory.” CEA Critic 42 (January 1980): 10–19. Testifies to the mediating values of Frye’s literary theory in three areas. First, Frye’s definition of both the centripetal and the centrifugal functions of literature, his dialectical understanding of literature as both temporal and spatial, and his attention to both the authorial and the dramatic aspects of texts as being more descriptively adequate than theories that emphasize only one of the poles in these oppositions. Second, Frye’s focus on the structure of the desires that inform actions helps to define the acts and identities of critics. Third, Frye’s unwillingness to reduce literature to irony and criticism to description, on the one hand, or to deconstructive play, on the other, forces the critic to confront his ultimate problem: how to relate literature to praxis and existential reality. Altieri, Joanne. “Against Moralizing Jacobean Drama: Middleton’s Chaste Maid.” Criticism 30 (Spring 1988): 171–87. Seeks to rescue Middleton from the “Frye-based reading” of George E. Rowe, Jr., who sees Middleton as not belonging to the comic tradition at all, at least not to the tradition of New Comedy. Altizer, Thomas J.J. New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake. Aurora, CO: Davies Group Publishers, 2000. Acknowledges author’s great debt
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The Reception of Northrop Frye
to Frye’s pioneering study of Blake and calls on Frye’s views throughout. See, for example, pp. 10, 59, 68–9, 71, 74, 92, 102, 112, 131, 137, 143, 151–3, 164, and 186. Alvares, Jean. “Utopian Themes in three Greek Romances.” Ancient Narrative (1 January 2002). https://www. thefreelibrary.com/Utopian+themes+in+three+Greek+ romances.-a0192640128. “The ancient Greek romances are ideal in more than their protagonists’ wealth, high status, beauty, exceptional love and the happy ending they eventually find. Here is a preliminary theorization and overview of a wider explication of the romances’ ideal themes. Three approaches are drawn upon to provide examples for such a project: the myth-thematic approach, as exemplified by the work of Northrop Frye, and those of the Marxist critics Fredric Jameson and Ernst Bloch. Myth-thematic criticism highlights those ideal and persistent patterns the ideal romances share with profound myths such as that of Demeter and Kore or with eschatological discourses as well as with medieval and later romances.” (author’s abstract) Alvarez, Aurora Gedra Ruiz. “A retórica do trágico em o Remorso de baltazar serapião” [The Rhetoric of the Tragic in the Baltazar Serapião’s Remorse]. Acta Scientiarum. Language and Culture 41, no. 1 (2019). Online. Uses Frye’s conception of the low mimetic mode to characterize Baltazar in Valter Hugo Mãe’s Baltazar Serapião’s Remorse. Ambrosini, Richard. “From Archetypes to National Specificity.” In Lombardo, Rittrato, 331–9. On “the cross-pollination between [Frye’s] literary theory and his writing about Canadian literature.” Ameel, Lieven. “Cities Utopian, Dystopian, and Apocalyptic.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City. Ed. Jeremy Tambling. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 785–800. Quotes Frye as saying that today’s readers of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward tend to see it not as a utopia but as “a blueprint for tyranny,” the point being that utopias are not always unambiguously blueprints for a good society.
Amrine, Frederick. Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman: Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020. “Reading the novels in light of the eminent criticism of Northrop Frye, this book productively shifts away from social commentary towards the archetypal and symbolic, showing Goethe not to be an exception within world literature; rather, that he participates deeply in its overarching structures.” Anastasjew, N. “Literaturkritik in den USA heute” [Literary Criticism in the USA Today]. Kunst und Literatur 32, no. 2 (1984): 223–34. In German. Sees Frye as the ancestor of the current evils that beset criticism because of his assumption that criticism builds on an internally governed structure of ideas that are relatively independent of art. Anderson, Angela. “Dylan Thomas and the Hero’s Quest.” Art*Thoughts (17 April 2017). https://andersonangelad. wordpress.com/2017/04/17/dylan-thomas-and-theheros-quest/. “Frye argues for a centralized theory of literature based on archetypes drawn from ‘pre-literary categories’ or ‘literary anthropology.’” In his survey of archetypes that inform literature on a grand scale, he concludes: ‘the central myth of art must be the vision of the end of social effort, the innocent world of fulfilled desires, the free human society.’ He calls this the hero’s quest, which is the ‘mingling of the sun and the hero, the realizing of a world in which the inner desire and the outward circumstance coincide.’ It is the soul’s quest for perpetual spring and the defeat of winter.” Andersen, Birklund. “Historien som eventyrroman (Northrop Frye og eventyrromanen)” [The Story as an Adventure Novel (Northrop Frye and the Adventure Novel)]. In Den faktiske sandheds poesi: Studier I historieromanen i fØrste halved. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1996. In Danish. Applies Frye’s narrative theories to the adventure novel.
Ames, Frank Ritchel. “The Blood-Stained Warrior in Ancient Israel.” In Warfare, Ritual, and Symbol in Biblical and Modern Contexts, ed. Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Ancient Israel and Its Literature, no. 18 (3 June 2014). Calls attention to Frye’s view of symbolism.
Anderson, David K. Review of What Was Tragedy? Theory and the Early Modern Canon, by Blair Hoxby. Comparative Drama 51, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 234–7. Observes that “a critical commonplace going back to Nietzsche and reiterated in the twentieth century by critics such as George Steiner and Northrop Frye sees Christianity, with its anticipation of ultimate justice, as anti-tragic.”
Amossy, Ruth, and Elisheva Rosen. “La comédie ‘romantique’ et le carnaval: La Nuit des Rois et les Caprices de Marianne” [The Romantic Comedy and the Carnival: The Night of the Kings and the Caprices of Marianne]. Littérature 16, no. 16 (1974): 37–49. In French. Relies heavily on Frye’s view of comedy.
Anderson, Haithe. “Left of Everything?” Educational Studies (American Educational Studies Association) 33, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 436–54. On the importance of romantic plot structures, as defined by Frye, in the critical pedagogy of bell hooks, Henry Giroux, and Donaldo Macedo.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Anderson, Mark. Review of But He Talked of the Temple of Man’s Body: Blake’s Revelation Un-Locked, by Eliza Borkowska. Romanticism 21, no. 2 (2015): 190–1. Andersson, Greger. “Narrating Selves and the Literary in the Bible.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 17, no. 1 (January 2019): 87–105. “This article discusses how features in a narrative generate an understanding of its purpose and how this understanding affects our attitude when reading and interpreting a text. It focusses on biblical texts that aspire to be historical but still contain elements that are generally thought to belong to the realm of fiction, as well as on texts with an assumed argumentative purpose and traits that create a sense of literary art.” Andrade, Fabio Rigatto de S. “As despalavras de Beckett” [Beckett’s Clumsiness]. Folha de S.Paulo (mais!) 19 (1999): 5–7. In Portuguese. – “Um antropólogo literário: Northrop Frye” [A Literary Anthropologist: Northrop Frye]. Jornal de Resenhas (São Paulo) 64 (2000): 3. In Portuguese. On Frye’s views of myth and literature. André, Catherine M. “Oppositional Christian Symbolism and Salvation in Blake’s America: A Prophecy.” Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Lumen 37 (2018): 199–213. “Northrop Frye’s argument that Orc is an ambiguous creature that continually undergoes a seven-stage cycle of development is well known and, at times, contested by scholars such as [David] Erdman and Christopher Hobson.” Andreacchio, Marco. “Questioning Northrop Frye’s Adaptation of Vico.” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 37, no. 3 (Spring 2010): 281–305. Also at http://www.interpretationjournal.com/ backissues/Vol_37-3.pdf. Argues that Frye consciously adapted the literary visions of Vico but he knows that his adaptation does not generally concur with the overall theoretical views of the philosopher. Andrews, Jennifer. “Humouring the Border at the End of the Millennium: Constructing an English Canadian Humour Tradition for the Twentieth Century and Beyond.” Essays on Canadian Writing 71 (Fall 2000): 140–9. “Northrop Frye’s famous question ‘Where is here?’ remains a significant touchstone for Canadian literary critics at the end of the millennium, especially with the recent legal efforts of Native and Inuit tribes to redefine what constitutes Canada in geographical, political, cultural, and economic terms. But rather than looking northward to Nunavut, or across the country to the sites of various reserves, this paper turns southward to the forty-ninth parallel and considers an often
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neglected dimension of Canadian literature: English Canadian humour.” – “The Missionary Position: The American Roots of Northrop Frye’s Peaceable Kingdom.” Journal of Canadian Studies 52, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 361–80. “[E]xplores how Frye’s idea of the peaceable kingdom is shaped by American religions and their missionary traditions— specifically Quakers and Methodists— and the historical flow of these religions across the Canada-US border, in combination with the influx of Loyalists northward and the subsequent commitment to missions that was part of British, American, and Canadian society. The American roots of Frye’s peaceable kingdom serve as a tangible reminder that borders are porous, and that those origins need to be acknowledged as a critical part of Canada’s self-construction.” Andrighetti, Rick. “Facing the Land: Landscape Design in Canada.” Canadian Architect 39, no. 8 (1 August 1994): 13–19. Calls on Frye’s theory of the garrison mentality. Ángel-Lara, Marco. “Aphorisms with an Opening (and Closure) Effect”/ “Aforismos con un efecto de apertura (y un efecto de clausura.” Pensamiento y Cultura 18, no. 1 (June 2015): 76–106. Comments on Frye’s view of canonical status. Angermüller, Johannes. “Derrida, Phenomenology, and Structuralism: Why American Critics Turned Deconstructionists.” In Pioneering North America: Mediators of European Literature and Culture, ed. Klaus Martens. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2000. 163–70. Considers Frye’s critical theory in the context of the revolution in the United States generated by Derrida’s 1967 essay, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Anghel, Camelia. “Versatile Genres: Travel Writing as Comedy.’” University of Bucharest Review: Literary and Cultural Studies Series 1 (2010): 19–29. “Northrop Frye emphasizes, we remember, the integrative dimension of comedy, its orientation towards social inclusion: ‘the blocking characters are more often reconciled or converted than simply repudiated . . . One can also notice, with Frye, that in comedies the emergence of a new (redeemed) society is often marked by a festive event in keeping with the happy-ending tradition of the genre.” Angus, Ian. “Locality and Universalization: Where Is Canadian Studies?” Journal of Canadian Studies 35, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 15–32. Argues that Frye’s well-known generalization that Canadian literature is a continuous meditation on “Where is here?” no longer holds. The question now is rather “How to describe ‘Where is here?’”
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The Reception of Northrop Frye
Ankersmit, F.R. “The Linguistic Turn, Literary Theory and Historical Theory.” Historia 45, no. 2 (November 2000): 271–310. Also appears as chapter 1 of Ankersmit’s Historical Representation. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. 29–74. Notes that Frye is among the theorists to whom Hayden White most often turns in his Metahistory and other writings. Ann Arundel County Public Schools, Curriculum Writing Committee. Literary Archetypes: Advanced Placement English Curriculum Guide. Annapolis, MD, 1985. 203 pp. The course described in this guide, based on Frye’s work, is organized around his four narrative forms: romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire. Ann, Koh Tai. “Self, Family and the State: Social Mythology in the Singapore Novel in English.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 20, no. 2 (September 1989): 273–87. On whether or not Frye’s views on the evaluation of Canadian literature can be applied to the Singapore novel. Anonymous. “Anatomy of Criticism.” http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Anatomy_of_Criticism. Wikipedia’s fairly extended overview of Frye’s Anatomy. – “Archetype.” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Alex Preminger, Earl Miner, and Frank Warnke. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. 95–7. Includes a brief section on Frye’s understanding of archetypes. – “Archetypal Criticism.” Baidu Encyclopedia. http:// baike.baidu.com/view/290260.htm?func =retitle. In Chinese. On Frye’s central role in the development of archetypal criticism. – “Archetype.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th edition, 2019. “Northrop Frye and Maud Bodkin use the term archetype interchangeably with the term motif, emphasizing that the role of these elements in great works of literature is to unite readers with otherwise dispersed cultures and eras.” – “Bibliographie sélective et critique de Northrop Frye.” Littérature 92 (1993): 108–16. In French. – “Canadian Culture in the 1960’s.” TLS (28 August 1969): 941–3 [942]. Sees Frye as the “most eloquent” and “brilliant” representative of Canada, “almost universally admired,” a “virtuoso performer . . . unlikely to have any successors, not only because of his erudition, but because he has elegantly side-stepped the central critical debate of our time on the relation between literature and society.”
– “Dianoia.” Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary & Cultural Criticism. Ed. Joseph Childers and Gary Hentzi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. 81–2. On Frye’s use of the Greek term. – “Educating the Imagination: Creating Texts.” The English Journal 79, no. 7 (November 1990): 15. “‘Educating the Imagination’ is the theme of the 80th annual NCTE convention. . . . In a series of radio broadcasts, published in 1964 as The Educated Imagination, . . . Northrop Frye explored the nature and uses of the imagination, which he defined as ‘the power of constructing possible models of human experience.’ We celebrate the convention theme and this milestone in the history of NCTE by scattering quotations from Frye’s book throughout this issue of English Journal— quotations which, for one reason or another, seem particularly appropriate to 1990, the era of glasnost and Greenpeace, of Dick Tracy and Jesse Helms.” – “Frye, Northrop.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th edition, 2019. – “Getting Lost.” Commonweal 139, no. 2 (27 January 2012): 6. Review of Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence. “The title of Bloom’s book exhibits the influence process. Northrop Frye wrote the Anatomy of Criticism, and Bloom’s work has long been in conversation—indeed, in a struggle—with Frye’s.” – “Glossary of the Gothic: Romance Paradigm.” E-Publications@Marquette. https://epublications. marquette.edu/gothic_romance/. “The Gothic narrative very often is a mirror and subversion of the romance paradigm. The romance framework, given definition by Northrop Frye, involves a (relatively) young hero undergoing a transformative experience in overcoming the obstacles that stand in his way of attaining the heroine of his dreams, the jeune fille (Fr. ‘young girl’). The main obstacle usually takes the form of a senex iratus (Lat. ‘angry old man’), often her father, who thwarts the fruition of his desires of a marital union with her. The hero is then sent into exile but he subsequently returns home to wed the jeune fille. The Gothic, however, while borrowing from the romance, is its perverse doppelganger.” – “(Herman) Northrop Frye.” Contemporary Authors. Online at Gale Literary Databases. – “Il grand codice: Conversazione con Northrop Frye.” Trans. Roberto Plevano. Portofranco 2 (May 1988): 29–30. In Italian. An interview with Frye about the Bible.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
– “‘I am 75 years old, and my wife is dead’: A Love Story from the Notebooks of Northrop Frye [excerpt from Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1985–1990]. Saturday Night 115, no. 5 (27 May 2000): 36. – “Maclean’s Honor Roll: Words to Free the Spirit.” Maclean’s 103, no. 53 (31 December 1990): 12–13. – “The Myths We Live By.” Manas 30, no. 4 (26 January 1977): 2–3. On Frye’s view of myth in The Stubborn Structure. – “Northrop Frye.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop Frye. Wikipedia’s account of Frye’s life and career. – “Northrop Frye.” Oxford Reference. Online. There are 265 entries for “Northrop Frye” in the various companions, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and guides produced by the Oxford University Press. – “Northrop Frye.” http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/ collections/special_collections/f11_northrop_frye. An introduction to and description of the materials in the Frye special collections of the Victoria University Library. – “Northrop Frye.” Penny’s Poetry Pages. http://pennyspoetry .wikia.com/wiki/Northrop_Frye. Contains sections on Frye’s life, his contributions to literary criticism, the recognition he has received, and his publications. – “Northrop Frye.” Historica Canada Education Portal. http://education.historicacanada.ca/en/tools/208. A lesson plan based on viewing the Northrop Frye biography from The Canadians series. – “Northrop Frye and Myth Criticism.” Poetry Magic website created by Litlangs Publishing. http://www. poetrymagic.co.uk/aboutus.html. – “Northrop Frye Challenges Validity of Sacred versus Secular Scripture.” Harvard Gazette (11 April 1975): 3. Reports on the first of Frye’s Charles Eliot Norton lectures, delivered 7 April 1975, and entitled “The Word and the World of Man.” – “Northrop Frye 1912–1991: Charting the Eternal World.” Toronto Star (1 November 1992): 70. In 1966, an American professor noted that Frye had “an absolute hold on a generation of developing critics, greater and more exclusive than that of any one theorist in recent critical history. By the time of Frye’s death at 78, that intellectual hold had been loosened somewhat, but his thought shows every sign of continuing to be a permanent contribution to our understanding of literature.”
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– “Northrop Frye, Simulation, and the Creation of a ‘Human World.’” Essay on website Transparency Now, sponsored by Bedford/St. Martin’s Books. – “Northrop Frye Statue Unveiled for Literary Fans.” CBC News (21 February 2012). https://www.google.com/ search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=%22+Edinburgh+ Encyclopaedia+of+Modern+Criticism+and+Theory%22 #hl=en&q=%22 Northrop+ Frye+ statue+unveiled+for+ literary+fans%22. – “Northrop Frye’s Greatest Gift: His Books.” Globe and Mail (16 July 2010). “Northrop Frye was not much attached to the term ‘comparative literature,’ and it would be a mistake to gather, from a controversy at the University of Toronto about the transformation into a larger entity of that university’s Centre for Comparative Literature, which he founded, that his legacy is embodied in any academic institution. Rather, Professor Frye left us his books, especially three of them.” The opening paragraph of an editorial on Fearful Symmetry, The Great Code, and Anatomy of Criticism. – “Northrop Frye’s Modes of Hero (Protagonist).” School of Media Arts, University of Montana. http://www.umontanamediaarts.com/MART101L/ fryes-modes-of-hero. – “Notes for Norrie; Writers and Academics from Across North America Discuss the Influence of Northrop Frye.” Telegraph-Journal [Saint John, NB], 21 April 2012, E8. Reflections on the influence of Frye by Germaine Warkentin, John Ayre, Glen Gill, Naim Kattan, Ross Leckie, Peter Sanger, Tom Smart, and B.W. Powe. – On New Comedy. https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/ engl2080/FryeComedy.pdf. Drawn from Frye’s essay “The Argument of Comedy.” – “Our Man in Washington.” Arts Bulletin (April 1977): 14. Summarizes Frye’s address at the Symposium on Canadian Culture, Washington, DC, 2 February 1977. – “Pages Nino Ricci Turns to When He Needs Inspi ration.” Maclean’s 118, no. 38 (19 September 2005): 63. Ricci names ten books, the first of which is The Educated Imagination. – “A Peace . . . and a Justice.” Moreana 26, no. 100 (January 1990): 269, 271–339, 341–59, 361–73. Argues that William Bullein’s Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence is an anatomy in Frye’s sense. – Review of Harold Bloom, The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Le Guin. Kirkus Reviews 87, no. 15 (1 August 2019). “Besides defending his own evaluations, Bloom sets his views alongside those of
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many major critics, including Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson, Nina Baym, Irving Howe, and Northrop Frye.” – Review of Reflections in the Library: Selected Literary Essays, 1926–1944, by Antal Szerb. Modern Language Studies 55, no. 1 (January 2019): 119–20. “Notes Blake’s links with Expressionism; and provides acute readings of Blake’s mythology and psychology paralleled only in Northrop Frye’s and Kathleen Raine’s later studies.” – “Secular Scripture: Romance Offers Polarized Reality, Says Northrop Frye.” Harvard Gazette (18 April 1975): 4. Reports on the second and third of Frye’s Charles Eliot Norton lectures, entitled “The Context of Romance” and “Our Lady of Pain: Heroes and Heroines of Romance.” – “Sons of New Critic.” TLS (25 November 1965): 1078. A brief judgment about Frye’s contribution to American literary criticism in the 1950s and 1960s. Characterizes Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism as a tolerant “new eclecticism,” exciting and suggestive, and observes that it has nourished a number of recent essays in practical criticism. – “Structuralism and Semiotics: Structuralism in Literary Theory.” Frye’s approach to structuralism is to explore the ways in which genres of Western literature fall into his four mythoi. Purdue On-line Writing Lab. https:// owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_ in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/ structuralism_and_semiotics.html. – “The Thinker: Northrop Frye.” Maclean’s 113, no. 36 (4 September 2000): 42. Brief article on Frye in connection with his having been selected by a panel of experts as the second most important person in Canadian history. (The first was Jean Vanier.) Anoshe, M. “Cassirer’s Assumptions on Myth and Culture and Their Effects on Frye’s Views.” Pazhuhesh-e Zabanha-ye Khareji 34 (Winter 2007): 5–14. In Bulgarian. “The purpose of the present research is to explore the relationship of Cassirer’s views on myth to those of Northrop Frye. Like other philosophers, he tried to express his views on myth and culture with the assistance of his popular precedents. Among popular myth theorists such as Frazer, Freud, Jung, and Spengler, it seems that Cassirer’s view has affected Frye’s thought deeply. The construction of Cassirer’s thought on symbolic form and also his laws on myth helped Frye to draw on these thoughts in his most important work, Anatomy of Criticism, which is evaluated in this study. Though Frye is concerned with myth theorists, he tries to resurrect the fundamentals of inherited theories.” Ansari, A.A. “Northrop Frye on Shakespeare.” Aligarh Critical Miscellany 5, no. 1 (1992): 12–27. Rpt. in
Ansari’s Shakespearean and Other Essays. New Delhi: Sarap and Sons, 2009. Chapters 13 and 14 are devoted to Frye on Shakespeare. Antal, Bókay. Bevezetés az irodalomtudományba [Introduction to Literature]. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2006. In Hungarian. In the poststructural section of this survey of literary theory, says that the “archetype theory of the only North American structuralist school, Northrop Frye, in Canada, was not comprehensive enough to provide a theoretical answer to all areas of literature, creating a new discourse.” Section 3 of part IX, on postmodern hermeneutics, gives an account of Frye’s theory of modes. Antal, Éva. “A kritika vámpirizmusa” [Critical Vampirism]. Holmi 6 (2002): 733–52. In Hungarian. Notes Frye’s view of irony, which is compared to that of Paul de Man, Cleanth Brooks, and other critics. Antczack, Janice. Science Fiction: The Mythos of a New Romance. New York: Neil Schuman, 1985. Uses Frye’s conceptual framework to analyse nearly one hundred science fiction titles. Antolin, Pascale. “The Carnivalesque in Illness: Hollis Seamon’s Somebody Up There Hates You.” Literature and Medicine 36, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 85–100. “‘It is all very well to eat, drink and be merry, but one cannot always put off dying until tomorrow,’ Northrop Frye writes in Anatomy of Criticism. Many a literary critic has recognized the power of carnivalization—it is a means of resistance, it can put fear at a distance, and it can question the perception of dying and death.” Antonello, Pierpaolo. “The Novel, Deviated Transcendency, and Modernity.” Religion & Literature 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2011): 165–170. “[René] Girard may be enlisted into a generation of critics who were convinced of the possibility of thematizing literature within a longue durée, inspired by a Vichian understanding of the human imagination. I am thinking in particular of two of the greatest twentieth-century literary critics: Eric Auerbach (particularly in Mimesis) and Northorp Frye (with reference to both Anatomy of Criticism and The Great Code). In a less systematic way, we may say that Girard, in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, sketched a similar trajectory: the idea of inscribing the novel within a ‘progressive’ history of Western imagination, in which what is in question is the deceptive dimension of ‘spontaneous’ desire, and the unstable boundaries of subjectivity.” Apesos, Anthony. “The Poet in the Poem: Blake’s Milton.” Studies in Philology 112, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 379–413. “Succinctly characterized, the Bard’s song is the
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
recounting of a labor dispute—although it is much more than that. Insofar as it is such, it is an allegorization of the relation between Blake and his patron William Hayley, the man who brought Blake to Felpham. Of the consideration of Blake’s time at Felpham with Hayley, one may agree with Northrop Frye’s assertion that ‘[i]t is not necessary to know much of this in order to understand the poem.’ But to understand how Blake came to write Milton and how that writing served Blake in his life, it is essential. . . . it is not possible, as Frye suggests, to dismiss Blake’s experiences at Felpham as mere ‘suggestions for the material.’” Aphel, Donata. “Northrop Frye: Fate studiare la Bibbia.” Il Tempo (26 May 1987). Interview. In Italian. – “‘La Tempesta’ di Shakespeare commentate da Northrop Frye.” Il Giornale di Vicenza (18 May 1979). In Italian. On Frye’s commentaries on The Tempest. Apolloni, Ag. “Shpata e satires” [Satire’s Sword]. Symbol 8 (2016): 119–21. In Albanian. Notes Frye’s definition of satire as militant irony. In Frye’s view satire is always accompanied by a sense of moral judgment. Apostol, Ricardo. “Urbanus es, Corydon: Ecocritiquing Town and Country in Eclogue 2. Vergilius 61 (2015): 3–28. “Readers of Vergil’s Eclogue 2 have often trusted the opposition Corydon draws between himself (as simple rustic) and his landscape (pastoral idyll) on the one hand, and the more sophisticated world of Alexis and Iollas on the other. This paper argues that the poem does much to collapse such simple distinctions, and that if Corydon’s story seems plausible despite its contradictions it is in part because of how we have been taught to read pastoral. The first section will cast doubt on Corydon’s characterization of himself as a rusticus, and suggest a different interpretation of the character based in part on Northrop Frye’s criticism.” Applebee, Arthur N. Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English: A History. Urbana: NCTE, 1974. 202–3. On the ways that Project English tried to answer the problem of sequence in the school curriculum by combining Frye’s literary theory with Jerome Bruner’s model of learning. Appleyard, J.A. Becoming a Reader: The Experience of Fiction from Childhood to Adulthood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Calls on Frye’s theory of modes throughout. – “What Do the Oscars Tell Us?” America 178 (21 March 1998): 16–19. Maintains that the five Oscar nominees for 1998 (Titanic, L.A. Confidential, As Good as It Gets, Deconstructing Harry, and Good Will Hunting) are all
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versions of Frye’s archetypal narrative of romance. Their basic structure is happiness, happiness endangered or lost, happiness regained. “The late Northrop Frye, the Canadian critic who pioneered the study of literary archetypes, would have no trouble explaining things for us. He would say these [two movies, Titanic and Deconstructing Harry] are variations of the ‘recognition’ scene that typically ends romances and comedies, when the truth is disclosed, events are sorted out, the hero and heroine are united, and all the characters acknowledge the changed state of affairs.” Apter, Emily. “Terrestrial Humanism: Edward W. Said and the Politics of World Literature.” A Companion to Comparative Literature. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. 439–53. “Said forged his positions confrontationally in response to two titans, Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom, both of whom, far more than Leo Spitzer or Erich Auerbach, set the terms of literary criticism and theory for his generation. I would even conjecture that Said’s recourse to Spitzer and Auerbach was at least in part an effort to effect an end-run around Frye and Bloom. . . . Northrop Frye was a less controversial figure for Said [than Bloom], but he too was identified with a tradition of theological hermeneutics that impinged on Said’s vision of secular criticism. In Said’s estimation Frye’s 1957 Anatomy of Criticism offered a ‘Blakean-Jungian synthesis of the humanistic system organized into a mini-life-world with its own seasons, cycles, rituals, heroes, social classes, and utopian pastoral as well as urban settings,’ which, though impressive as ‘the last synthesis of a worldview in the American humanities,’ led inexorably to a Blakean idea of the ‘human divine, a Judeo-Christian Eurocentric norm.’ Where Fredric Jameson cast an approving eye on Frye’s construct of ‘the social,’ deriving from Frye’s myth criticism a ‘willingness to raise the issue of community and to draw basic, essentially social, interpretive consequences from the nature of religion as collective representation,’ and crediting Frye’s figuralism with leading to a demystificatory reading conducive to exposing the mythological substrate of ideology, Said remained circumspect.” Arac, Jonathan. “Anglo-Globalism.” New Left Review 16 (July–August 2002): 35–45. Compares the efforts of Franco Moretti and Frye to make literary criticism genuinely comparative. – The Overstory: Taking the Measure of a Major New American Novel.” Critical Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2019): 137–44. Review of a novel by Richard Powers. – “Reckoning with New Literary History.” New Literary History 40, no. 4, Tribute to Ralph Cohen (Autumn
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2009): 703–11. “New Literary History importantly renewed my sense of disciplinary self-respect as a participant in the project of literary studies. It did much to confirm my confidence that this is an inquiry that you can use your whole mind to pursue. Paul de Man might have said that my projected way out became no exit, but I have not experienced my life in literary studies as an impasse. For disciplinary self-respect and confidence, it helps when you see that the best minds of adjacent fields find what you do transformative. Hayden White’s ‘Interpretation in History’ is a stupendous piece of work, in which a historian used literary theory—notably Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke—to reconceive the whole field of historiography.” – “The Social Vision of Frye’s Criticism: The Scandal of Undiscriminating Catholicity.” University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 163–73. An eloquent defence of Frye’s historical, ethical, and archetypal criticism, relating Frye’s vision to that of Coleridge, Auerbach, Benjamin, and others. – “What Kind of History Does a Theory of the Novel Require?” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 190–5. Notes how Schlegel “anticipates the ‘rhetorical’ basis of Frye’s theory of genre, in which prose ‘fiction’ is the genre of the written word and the novel only one of its four major varieties.” Aranguren, Jose Luis L. “Los Generos Literarios” [The Literary Genres]. Triunfo (10 November 1973). Places Frye’s theory of genres in the discussion of genre that preceded it, and gives a summary of Frye’s theory of modes, symbols, and mythoi. Araújo, Nabil. “Do passado como futuro da crítica: ‘Competência performativa’ e ‘formas de escrita’ nos Estudos Literários.” [Of Past as the Future of Criticism: “Performative Competence” and “Forms of Writing” in Literary Studies]. Aletria [Belo Horizonte] 29, no. 3 (2019): 97–116. “From Northrop Frye’s classical metacritical reflections in the ‘Polemical Introduction’ to Anatomy of Criticism (1957), in which Frye defends a concept of ‘criticism as science’ against the understanding of ‘criticism as literature,’ we turned to the Ottmar Ette’s ÜberLebenswissen: Die Aufgabe der Philologie (2004). In his recent metacritical reflections, the author proposes a ‘specialized history of writing forms’ in Literary Studies, one that generates ‘a critical perspectivation of its tradition.’” Arbasino, Alberto. Certi romanzi [Certain novels]. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964. In Italian. Expands on Frye’s views of the Menippean satire.
Archambeau, Robert. “Excess, Pastiche, and Queerness in the Comics: Reading “The Black Dossier.” Samizdat Blog (24 August 2014). Notes that The Black Dossier does not “congeal into something Worthy and Highminded like the archetypes of Jung or Northrop Frye.” Ardila, J.A. Garrido. “Diégesis y digresiones episódicas en el Quijot” [Diegesis and Episodic Digressions in the Quixote]. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies; 92 no. 8 (2015): 879–96. In Spanish. “The evolution of romance in the First Part of Cervantes La Galatea to the realism of the Second Part is what Northrop Frye explained, in the history of the European novel, as the progressive displacement of idealistic elements until fiction is purged almost completely of them. In the interpolated novels of Don Quixote, we can see how, in general, the scenarios of romance and, later, the implausible plots are displaced. In short, in Don Quixote we find, through episodic digressions, a worthy illustration of Frye’s theory.” Arhip, Cristian, and Odette Arhip. “Dissemination of the Archetypal Field of Don Quixote in Camil Petrescu’s Work.” International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences 10 (2014): 78–83. “The concept of myth includes the simplest definition of Jung’s archetype. Taking the appearance of fantasies, dreams and obsessions, the archetypal representations acquire an aura of concreteness in the writers’ imaginary register. In a comparative approach, the form as means of expressing the archetype remains the same. The content is difficult to represent and it has a diffuse, misty aspect. Perhaps this detail determined Northrop Frye to try to redefine archetype in terms of a symbol based on convention and repetition. Acting as associative groups, the archetype becomes a symbol that communicates only in witting communities from diverse cultural areas knowing and explaining its significance.” Armas, Frederick A. de. “Villamediana’s ‘La gloria de Niquea’: An Alchemical Masque.” Journal of Hispanic Philology 8, no. 3 (Spring 1984): 209. Places Villamediana’s La gloria de Niquea in the context of the masquerade tradition, using Frye’s theory of comedy. Armas Wilson, Diana de. “Cervantes’ Last Romance: Deflating the Myth of Female Sacrifice.” Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 3, no. 2 (1983): 103–20. The Persiles presents a strong and still unrecognized challenge to the persistent literary conventionality of women as a passive victim, a convention which, according to Northrop Frye, has for centuries provided the episode of prose romance.
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Arnold, Dawn, and Nigel Beale. “Dawn Arnold on Northrop Frye and the Frye Festival.” The Biblio File (10 May 2009). http://www.thebibliofile.ca/ webpage/2009/05/10. Dawn Arnold and Nigel Beale talk here about the history of the Frye Festival, Frye’s thoughts on imagination and new worlds, the benefits to children of learning more than one language, how writing affects understanding, Moncton strip clubs, Acadie, French language children’s authors, Richard Ford, classroom visits, and inspired students. Arnott, Christopher. “Change of Seasons: Theater, Dance, Literature, Comedy and Music Change Their Tunes as the Days Turn Cooler.” Hartford Courant (Online) (19 August 2019). “Northrop Frye divined decades ago that ‘the mythos of summer’ is romance, while ‘the mythos of autumn’ is tragedy. Arnott, Luke. “Arkham Epic: Batman Videogames as Totalizing Texts.” In Contemporary Research on Intertextuality in Video Games, ed. Christophe Duret and Christian-Marie Pons. Hershey, PA: IPI Global, 2016. 1–21. Finds Frye’s classification of heroes according to their power of action to be a useful taxonomy. – “Epic and Genre: Beyond the Boundaries of Literature.” Comparative Literature 68, no. 4 (2016): 351–69. “Noting the resurgence of popular and academic interest in epics across disparate media, this essay proposes a theory of the epic genre that transcends particular media and cultures. It seeks to reconcile discussions of the epic in Aristotle, G.W.F. Hegel, Georg Lukács, Mikhail Bakhtin, Erich Auerbach, and Northrop Frye, arguing that traditional definitions of epic narrative are instead subsets of a greater generic structure.” (author’s abstract) – “Epic Theory in Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” http://worldliteratures.suite101.com/article.cfm/ epic_theory_in_fryes_anatomy_of_criticism.
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European: Selected Papers of the 13th International Conference of the Faculty of Letters (2016): 99–106. In Romanian. Notes Frye’s typological reading of the Bible. Artz, John M. “Addressing the Central Problem in Cyber Ethics through Stories.” Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology. 2nd ed. Information Science Reference (2005): 58–61. “Whereas the consequentialist evaluates actions based upon their consequences, the possible consequentialist evaluates actions based upon their possible outcomes. The possible outcomes are described in stories and the likelihood of the outcome is determined by the believability of the story given our understanding of current conditions and human nature. As the literary critic Northrop Frye points out, ‘The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.’” As, H.H.J. van. “Zonder kennis van de Schrift is goed verstaan van de Westeuropese literatuur (historie) niet mogelijk” [Without a Knowledge of Scripture, a Good Understanding of Western European Literature (History) Is Not Possible]. Reformatorisch Dagblad (27 May 1987): 23. In Dutch. On The Great Code. Åsberg, Christer. “Bibeln som litteratur” [The Bible as Literature]. Nordisk judaistik 8 no. 1 (1987): 1–17. In Swedish. On the approach to the Bible as literature by Frye and others. Ascencio, Michaëlle. “Le Bilinguisme dans le roman haïtien” [Bilingualism in the Haitian novel]. Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 37, no. 4 (148) (1997): 943–52. In French. Uses Frye’s theories on the relationship of language and religion to analyse the encounter of Creole and French texts of contemporary Haitian novelists.
Árpád, Kovács. “Metáfora és identitás: Northrop Frye idöszerüsége” [Metaphor and Identity: Timeliness of Northrop Frye]. In Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres and Péter Pásztor, ed. Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 37–50. In Hungarian. Looks at Frye’s concept of trope in the context of rhetoric and the significance of metaphor in the relationship between storytelling and mimesis.
Aschkenasy, Nehama. “The Biblical Intertext in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (Or, Saul and David in EighteenthCentury Vienna).” Comparative Drama 44, no. 1 (2010): 45–62. “Frequently, the biblical prototype behind a modern tale or protagonist is suggested by a phrase or striking image which evokes a biblical scene or verse. Often it is the predominance of fundamental ethical or spiritual concerns that summons up the scriptural universe of ideas and creates a discursive energy between the new and the old: thus Northrop Frye has defined Kafka’s writings as a ‘series of commentaries on the Book of Job.’”
Arsene, Cristina-Onu. “Making Oneself Receptive via Hermeneutics, Exegesis, Typology and Midrash: Interpreting the Bible and American Literature (A Case Study on the Major Works of Herman Melville).” In Limba şi Literatura Repere Identitare în Context
Astell, Ann W. “Girard and Levinas as Readers of King Lear.” In Of Levinas and Shakespeare: “To See Another Thus,” ed. Moshe Gold et al. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2018. Notes that Frye’s The Secular Scripture and The Great Code had already been
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published by the time that Nicholas Boyle’s Sacred and Secular Scripture had been published. Astrauskienė, Jurgita, and Indrė Šležaitė. “Appropriation of Symbol as Disclosure of the World of the Play in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie.” Respectus Philologicus 23 (2013): 67–82. “Such studies as Eliade’s had an immediate relevance to literary criticism, and provided Northrop Frye with a solid basis for claiming that without proper apprehension of symbols, it is impossible to deal adequately with contemporary literature. The critic argues that ‘the poet does not equate a word with a meaning; he establishes the functions or powers of words,’ since ‘the understanding of their meaning begins in a complete surrender of the mind and senses to the impact of the work as a whole, and proceeds through the effort to unite the symbols toward a simultaneous perception of the unity of the structure.’” Åström, Berit. “The Symbolic Annihilation of Mothers in Popular Culture: Single Father and the Death of the Mother.” Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 4 (May 2015): 1–15. “This article takes as its starting point the paradoxical representation of mothers in popular culture. On the one hand the mother is constructed as central to the physical and emotional development of the child; on the other, she is routinely rejected or elided, questioned, and vilified. One expression of this ambivalent attitude is the re-circulation of the trope of the dead mother. The trope, which ostensibly is employed to create sympathy for a character, or simply to drive the plot, often also privileges fathers, suggesting that children are better off without mothers. After a brief genre overview of the use of the trope of the dead mother on film and television, the article analyses how the BBC serial Single Father, with its repeated depictions of the mother’s violent death, develops the trope, by not only privileging the father and vilifying the dead mother, but also reducing her death to a plot point, a backdrop for romance.” Atkins, G. Douglas. Geoffrey Hartman: Criticism as Answerable Style. New York: Routledge, 1990. 50–2, 116. On Hartman’s differences from Frye. See also pp. 9, 18, 84, 95. Atwood, Margaret. “Fifties Vic.” CEA Critic 42, no. 1 (November 1979): 19–22. A witty account of Atwood’s life as a student of Frye’s at Victoria College. – “Norrie Banquet Ode.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 171–3. A humorous poem written on the occasion of the 1992 conference on Frye’s legacy.
– “Northrop Frye Observed.” Second Words: Selected Critical Prose. Toronto: Anansi, 1982. 398–406. A memoir by Margaret Atwood, one of Frye’s former students. Recounts the experience of being in his classes at Victoria College and reflects on the “delicate question” of his influence on her writing and her life. – “Northrop Frye Remembered.” Michigan Quarterly Review 30, no. 4 (Fall 1991): 647–9. A eulogy. – and Rick Mount. “Elephants Are Not Giraffes: A Conversation with Margaret Atwood More or Less about Northrop Frye.” University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 60–70 [interview]. Mount tries to tease out of Margaret Atwood her connections with Frye, but she denies a direct influence. What she does see in Frye is a great synthesizer who was able to discover literary patterns and who, when he lectured, spoke not in the ordinary associative babble of most teachers but in prose paragraphs. Augusto, Sara. “À procura de um tempo perdido: De Camilo Pessanha a Carlos Morais José.” Interdisciplinary Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies 8 (2019): 9–23. In Portuguese. “Starting from Aristotle’s Poetics, Frye explains how, in addition to the internal fiction of the plot, there is an external fiction, which is the relationship developed between the writer and the society in which he is integrated, corresponding to ‘dianóia,’ that is, the idea or the poetic thought that the reader obtains from the writer, and to which Frye matches the concept of ‘theme.’ Thus, in addition to the reader of a novel being able to ask: ‘What will this story be about?’ Asking himself about the plot, he can also ask: ‘What is the meaning of this story?’ From this question comes the possibility of reading a narrative thematically and imagining an allegory scale, with formal allegories at the top.” Auken, Sune. “Den magiske cirkel—Northrop Fryes myteteori” [The Magic Circle: Northrop Frye’s Theory of Myths]. Den Blå Port 33 (1995): 54–64. – “Not Another Adult Movie: Some Platitudes on Genericity and the Use of Literary Studies.” In Why Study Literature, ed. Jan Albert et al. Aarhus, DK: Aarhus Universitry Press, 2011. 113–34. “The basic claim of this short and tentative article is that the concept of genre—difficult, slippery and manifold as it is—shows us that to study literature for its own sake actually by and of itself leads to knowledge readily relevant in a number of other contexts. . . . [‘laws’ of a genre are clearly not fixed and immovable, and multigenericity, genre bastardizations, genre breaks and genre mixtures are prolific. This is clearly demonstrated
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in the works of, for instance, Fowler, and it is recurrently evident in any extensive studies of generic structures; it is evident in Croce’s refutal [sic] of genre as a concept, in a number of details in Frye’s work with genre as rhetorical structures.” Aune, David E. The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 101–15. In his chapter entitled “Literary Criticism” Aune glances at Frye’s thesis about the literary nature of the biblical myths and metaphors and he refers to Frye’s statement that the Bible “is as literary as it can be without actually being literature.” Aurell, Jaume. “Northrop Frye y la revolución historiográfica finisecular” [Northrop Frye and the Fin-de-Siècle Historiographic Revolution]. Revista de Filología Hispánica 25, no. 1 (2009): 122–37. In Spanish. “Explores the reception of Frye in historiography, largely through the appropriation of Frye by Hayden White, whose Metahistory has had an enormous influence on historical criticism. One of the principles of postmodern historiography is the assimilation of the historiographic text to the literary one in respect to form. Thus, the discipline of history has moved into the vicinity of literary criticism in the last several decades.” – “Rethinking Historical Genres in the Twenty-first Century.” Rethinking History 19, no. 2 (April 2015): 145–57. Another account of the metahistorical theory of Hayden White by way of Frye’s view of emplotments. Austen, Veronica J. “‘If I Can Make it There . . . : Jann Arden’s American Dream.” In Canadian Music and American Culture: Get Away from Me, ed. Tristanne Connolly and Tomoyuki Iino. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2017. “Explores the implications of a Canadian mythos of success which assumes that to succeed is to be recognized and valued by the US. From Northrop Frye’s 1965 contemplation of Canada’s inability to create a ‘literary great’ to the more contemporary pursuit of Jann Arden to break into the American music industry, what it means for a Canadian artist to achieve greatness and success has remained a fraught question.” (author’s abstract) Austin, Lewis. “Visual Symbols, Political Ideology, and Culture.” Ethos 5, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 306–25. Notes Frye’s observation that some symbols are tactile: science is cold, hard, and dry; religion is warm, soft, and wet; green and gold are the colours of youth, novelty, and change. Austin, Linda M. “Psychometric Wunderkammern: WordAssociation Testing and the Aesthetics of Creative Genius.” New Literary History 51, no. 1 (Winter 2020):
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22–42. One section devoted to what Frye means in The Well-Tempered Critic by “associative meaning.” Avădanei, Dragoș. “Family Crises, Half-Truths, Ironies, and Private Devils.” Acta Iassyensia Comparationis 19 (2017): 49–55. “Ray Pearson [in Sherwood Anderson’s ‘The Untold Lie’] finds no way out of his crisis, which is existential, in fact; family or no family, one still leads a meaningless, false life; the only meaning is in nature, in its beauty, and its tragic ‘fall’ (Northrop Frye’s ‘season of tragedy’). . . . Mrs. Whipple’s life [in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Revelation’] was a torment not only because they were growing poorer and poorer as the harsh winter was approaching (again Frye—the season of irony and satire).” Avirov, Madeleine. “A Primitive Mind.” Poetry 197, no. 4 (2011): 304–7. “Remember Gary Snyder: ‘Lifting a brush, a burin, a pen, or a stylus is like releasing a bite or lifting a claw.’ It is that elemental. In line with poetry, which, says the literary critic Northrop Frye, recreates ‘something very primitive and archaic in society . . . primitive in the sense of expressing a fundamental and persisting link with reality.’ And, he continues, ‘every mind is a primitive mind, whatever the varieties of social conditioning.’” Awuzie, Solomon. “Didacticism and the Third Generation of African Writers: Chukwuma Ibezute’s The Temporal Gods and Goddess in the Cathedral.” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 52, no. 2 (2015): 159–75. Ibezute’s novel The Temporal Gods “leaves the reader with the impression that Akudi should have accepted her husband’s decision. But if Akudi had accepted her husband’s decision, there would not have been this story. There came to be this story because Akudi refused her husband’s decision and fought against it. This goes a long way to prove Northrop Frye’s assertion, especially when he says, creative material, ‘like the poet, is born and not made’— hence, so we can say of the novel and the circumstance that surround Akudi as a character.” Ayre, John. “The Alphabet of Forms: The Development of Northrop Frye’s Archetypal Criticism.” Paper presented at Brock University, 14 February 1986. Unpublished typescript. 10 pp. Gives an account of the influences on Frye’s intellectual development: Greek myths, the Bible, serial movies, juvenile novels, Blake, Spengler, Frazer, Jung, Renaissance mythological handbooks, Austin Farrer, and so on. – “Frye and Pattern.” English Studies in Canada 37, no. 2 (June 2011): 9–15. On the patterns that underlie Frye’s critical thinking. “Frye was likely the most patternoriented critic ever to work in English literature.”
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– “Frye’s Geometry of Thought: Building the Great Wheel.” University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 825–38. On the spatial diagrams that lie behind Frye’s thinking. – “Into the Labyrinth: Northrop Frye’s Personal Mythology.” In Verticals of Frye/Les Verticales des Frye, ed. Ed Lemond. Moncton, NB: Elbow Press, 2005. 38–47. – “The Mythological Universe of Northrop Frye.” Saturday Night 88 (May 1973): 19–24. On Frye’s educational background and career as a teacher and administrator. – “Northrop Frye.” Canadian Encyclopedia. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1998. Biographical and critical overview. – “Northrop Frye and the Chart of Symbolism.” In Rampton, Northrop Frye, 167–82. On the importance of the schematic diagram in grasping the full import of Frye’s thinking. – “Northrop Frye and the Structures of Symbolism.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth. University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013. Azevedo, Carlos. “Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood: An Anatomy of the American Gothic.” In Dracula and the Gothic in Literature, Pop Culture and the Arts, ed. Isabel Ermida. Leiden, Netherlands, and Boston: Brill– Rodopi, 2016. 119–34. “Taking as its starting point the genre of anatomy (or ‘Menippean satire’) as defined by Northrop Frye, this article seeks to re-examine Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, especially in relation to her first novel. To read Wise Blood (1952) as a Gothic anatomy affords a middle course between the historically characteristic paradigms of much O’Connor criticism to date: the theological and secular strains.” (author’s abstract) B Babãk, Milan. “‘X’ Ten Years on: The Fictions of George F. Kennan’s Recent Factual Representations.” Review of International Studies 42, no. 1 (January 2016): 74–94. “Since any given set of factual statements can be emplotted and figured in a number of radically different ways yielding radically different meanings—following Giambattista Vico and Northrop Frye, [Hayden] White identifies four master tropes of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony corresponding to four plot archetypes of romance, tragedy, comedy, and satire—the narrativist thesis has a distinctive relativising thrust.”
Babe, Robert. “The Communication Thought of Northrop Frye.” In Canadian Communication Thought: Ten Foundational Writers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 230–65. Focuses on two major areas of Frye’s thought: his theories of perception and cognition and his views on the interaction of the scientific and mythopoeic. – “Foundations of Canadian Communication Thought.” Canadian Journal of Communication 25, no. 1 (2000). Reviews the communication writings of five Englishlanguage theorists—H.A. Innis, George Grant, Frye, C.B. Macpherson, and Marshall McLuhan. Proposes that Canadian communication thought is dialectical, critical, holistic, ontological, and oriented to political economy, and that it emphasizes mediation and dynamic change. Babenko-Zhyrnova, Marina Vitaliivna. “Sacral Motifs in Ukrainian Contemporary Philosophical Lyrics.” Religious and Sacred Poetry: An International Quarterly of Religion, Culture and Education 2 (2014): 45–64. “To reveal the meaning of the symbol means articulation into a whole, or even integration into a ‘system.’ A similar opinion was expressed by the Canadian critic Northrop Frye; in particular he saw the Bible as metalanguage, as the great code of art.” Babiak, Peter. Garage Criticism: Cultural Missives in an Age of Distraction. Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2016. One chapter treats Frye’s views of metaphor. Babich, Babette. “The Philosopher and the Volcano: On the Antique Sources of Nietzsche’s Übermensch.” Philosophy Today 55 (2011): 206–24. Lucían uses “the very same ‘Menippean’ satiric fashion Nietzsche invokes at the conclusion of his Ecce Homo, ‘What I owe the Ancients.’ Satirically, ironically, Lucían would seem to span Nietzsche’s career. But Northrop Frye had already laid the ground rules or gone to the grounds, or, still better to the underground, for English readers, explaining in a section of his Anatomy of Criticism entitled ‘Theory of Myths.’” Babilas, Dorota. Wiktoria znaczy zwycięstwo. Kulturowe oblicza brytyjskiej królowej [Victoria Victorious: Cultural Representations of the Queen]. Warsaw: University of Warsaw Publication, 2012. In Polish. Devotes a section to Hayden White’s theory of emplotments and its derivation from Frye’s four mythoi. Bach, Bernard. “Avant-Propos.” Germanica 51 (January 2014): 7–8. “The Bible can rightly be seen as the framework of the imagination in which Western literature has operated and still functions to a large extent today. It is, according to Northrop Frye, the ‘Great Code of Art.’ Literary history shows amply that this vast reservoir of images, myths, heroes, and
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
values has continually fertilized Western literature.” (author’s abstract) Bach, Henrik. “Tolv små noveller om store temaer” [Twelve Short Stories on Large Themes] STANDart 3 (August–October 1996). In Danish. Bachinger, Jacob. “An Extraordinary Voyage into the Garrison Mentality: James DeMille’s A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder.” the quint: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly from the North, 3, no. 1 (2010): 70–89. Draws on Frye’s concept of the garrison mentality. Bácskai-Atkári, Júlia. “Frye Reading Byron.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 289–95. Shows that Frye’s analysis of Byron’s Don Juan can be extended to the genre of the verse novel as such: it captures the chief differences from the mock epic and its parody of other genres—which typically recall Frye’s “mythos of summer”—and its self-mocking tone are present on a higher level too: the verse novel is a form which is by definition a literary response. As such, it is also selfresponsive: verse novels after Byron tend not only to be self-reflexive as texts but they emphatically reflect on the genre itself, either by distancing themselves from (certain aspects of) previous verse novels, as did many Hungarian examples in the second half of the nineteenth century, or even by parodying previous ones, as does Térey’s Paulus with Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. Baechler, Mark. “Abrahamic Mythological Universe.” Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Symposium (2016): 1–6. http://www.acsforum.org/symposium2016/ papers/baechler.pdf. “The Abrahamic Architecture drawing series is part of a project investigating the field of Jewish, Christian and Islamic architecture in search of interconnections. . . . When viewed through the mythological lens of Northrop Frye and Mappae mundi drawings a mythological universe is revealed.” Baehr, Stephen L. “From History to National Myth: Translatio Imperii in Eighteenth-Century Russia.” The Russian Review 37, no. 1 (January 1978): 1–13. “The frequent accumulation of virtually synonymous imagery in Russian poetry of the mid-eighteenth-century points to the fact that much panegyric literature of this time had become ‘apocalyptic’ in Northrop Frye’s sense of ‘a world of total metaphor in which everything is potentially identical with everything else, as though it were inside a single, infinite body.’” Baena, Rosalia. “Not Home but Here”: Rewriting Englishness in Colonial Childhood Memoirs.” English Studies 90, no. 4 (2009): 435–59. In a note about the
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various uses and definitions of the word “myth,” says “One of the best known [theorists] is Northrop Frye, who has defined myths, in his archetypal criticism, as the structural principles of literature which make possible verbal communication of narrative and meaning.” Bahramifar, M., and A. Dadvar. “Archetypal Analysis of Zahak Story of Shahname on the Basis of Frye’s Definition of Apocalyptic, Demonic and Analogical Categories of Poetic Imagery.” Revista QUID (Special Issue) (13 June 2017): 905–11. Bahti, Timothy. “Vico and Frye: A Note.” New Vico Studies 3 (1985): 119–29. Examines Frye’s use of Vico, especially in The Great Code. Maintains that Frye’s “real interest for those . . . pursuing his Vichian avowal and affinities resides in his handling of the structure within which Vico situates his three ‘ages’ and their respective kinds of language: the structure of the cycle or ricorso.” Like Vico, Frye uses the cycle “as his most comprehensive intellectual structure,” and he joins with Vico in moving toward “a critical understanding of history and language as a nonhistorical understanding of time.” Băiceanu, Elena (pârlog). “Under the Sign of Realism: A Possible Dialogue between Two Writers: George Bălăiţă and James Joyce.” Journal of Romanian Literary Studies 6 (2015): 1294–301. In Romanian. Calls attention to the phases of language Frye postulates in The Great Code. Bailey, Suzanne. “Robert Browning.” Victorian Poetry 57, no. 3 (2109): 380. Notes studies for the year that show Browning’s impact on critics, such as Frye. Baily, Alan. “The Politics of King Lear and the ‘Avoidance of Love.’” APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2111000. Notes Frye’s view that Hamlet is a play of greatest interest to the nineteenth-century and King Lear to the twentieth. Baisnée, Valérie. “‘I’m Niu Voices’: Selina Tusitala Marsh’s Poetic Re-Imagining of Pacific Literature.” Commonwealth: Essays and Studies 41, no. 1 (Autumn 2018): 107–17. “Since the Greek classics, lyric poetry has played on and reinforced the power of naming. In his essay ‘Approaching the Lyric’ Northrop Frye claims that when we read lyric, ‘we are psychologically close to magic, an invoking of names of specific and trusted power. . . . Verbal magic of this kind has a curious power of summoning, like the proverbial Sirens’ song.’ Selina Marsh’s poetry often taps into this power of invoking names.” Baker, Brian. “Frederik Pohl: A Working Man’s Science Fiction.” Foundation 43, no. 117 (Spring 2014): 18–30. Examines the degree to which James Blish’s sci-fi novels are examples of what Frye calls Menippean satires.
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Baker, P.G. “‘Night into Day’: Patterns of Symbolism in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.” University of Toronto Quarterly 49, no. 2 (Winter 1979): 95–116. An examination of the Schikaneder libretto in terms of Frye’s principles. The hero’s quest for regeneration, his initiation, and his eventual transcendence of the four elements of the sublunary world take place within a unified framework of mythically functioning landscapes and characters, with an emphasis on music-making in its literary and figurative senses. Bako, Alina. “Muzicalitate narativă în romanul românesc” [Narrative Musicality in the Romanian Novel]. Incursiuni în imaginar 7 (2016): 11–30. In Romanian. Quotes with approval Frye’s claim that the forms of literature cannot be studied outside of literature, just as the forms of music (fugue, sonata, etc.) cannot be studied outside of music. Bakoš, Juraj. “Northrop Frye Flies to Mars: Theory of Modes across Martian Fiction, Hradec Králové.” Journal of Anglophone Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 20–5. “Northrop Frye does not state it explicitly, but the implied historical relevance of the succession of the fictional modes in his famous theory is apparent. A particular mode, in this sense, is a record of an attempt to describe a world to the best of the contemporary knowledge. I will try to explain the relation between the knowledge of the world and the particular fictional mode on a special sample to prove the universal validity of the theory principles. And because the very foundation of any reliable science is the reproducibility of the findings, this analysis is an attempt to apply Frye’s theory to Mars—a world completely different to the known Earth, and at the same time a fictional world with a set of universally recognized laws of nature. The scope of the works analyzed will range from Percy Greg’s Across the Zodiac from 1880 to Andy Weir’s Martian, published in 2014.” Bakos, Áron, and Anna Aliz Pokorni. Report on the religious concepts conference held in Budapest in 2011 and sponsored by the Károli Gáspár Reformed University. Report also on other Hungarian conferences devoted to topics of religious interest, such as the Conference of Reflections on the Immediate Experience of God in the European Tradition (2013). https://www. ceeol.com/search/viewpdf?id=801279. Balaban, Delia Cristina. “Myths, Archetypes and Stereotypes in Contemporary Romanian Advertising.” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 9, no. 26 (Summer 2010): 244–8. Review of Madalina Moraru’s Mit si publicitate [Myth and Advertising]. “The first chapter uncovers a wide range of aspects: from the classic myths (the heroic myth, the return to the origins
of myths, the erotic myth) to their features in the field of advertising (the narrative character, exemplarity, the etiological function, the temporal dimension, the collective character) to the concept of archetypes and its relationship to the myth, the classification of archetypes. Madalina Moraru starts from the distinction suggested by Roger Caillois between heroic myths and situational myths. Other authors referred to are Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Michael Palmer, Northrop Frye, Claude LéviStrauss and Gilbert Durant.” Balaga, Venkataramana. “Saul Bellow’s Quest Hero— Henderson the Rain King.” Researchers World 5, no. 1 (January 2014): 109–13. Balassa, Péter. “Leonóra papírjai (esszétöredék)” [Leonora’s Papers (Fragment of an Essay)]. Jelenkor 12 (2003): 1137–49. In Hungarian. Frye speaks in many places about the comic story of men in the Bible: Job and Jonah. Baldick, Chris. “The High-Tide of New Criticism.” Criticism and Literary Theory 1890 to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2014. Considers the revolution in criticism that was attendant on both Fearful Symmetry and Anatomy of Criticism. Baldwin, Barry. “On Earth as in Heaven.” Presbyterian Record 131, no. 1 (January 2007): 23. Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ and similar books “concentrate on discrediting the Gospels as biographical sources. In fact, the Gospels can be left out of the argument. What counts are the ancient non-Christian sources, enough to refute Northrop Frye (The Great Code: The Bible and Literature): ‘There is practically no real evidence for the life of Jesus outside the New Testament.’” Balfour, Ian. “Frye, Northrop, 1912–1991.” Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. – “Northrop Frye beyond Belief.” In Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, ed. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. 36–47. On the conflicted matter of belief in Frye’s work: its relation to his views on the Bible, where belief and disbelief are willingly suspended; its being defined primarily by action; its separation from the creations of the imagination; its Christian form as faute de mieux. Frye generally distances himself from doctrinal pronouncements, and so his tendency in matters of religion is to go beyond belief. – “Paradox and Provocation in the Writing and Teaching of Northrop Frye.” University of Toronto Quarterly
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81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 50–9. “Focuses on the place of paradox in Northrop Frye’s writing and teaching, principally by way of several key examples. Paradox tends to counter, at least superficially, popular opinion and common sense, though in the interest of common enlightenment. The figure of paradox is linked by Frye to metaphor as a kind of logical contradiction that can nonetheless be a vehicle of truth, foremost in literature and religion. Such paradoxes are both a topic for Frye’s elucidations of literary and scriptural texts but also a mode enlisted in the very performance of Frye’s critical writing and teaching.” (author’s abstract) – “Reviewing Canada.” In Aithal, The Importance of Northrop Frye, 73–91. An examination of Frye’s writings on Canadian culture. – “Shelley and the Bible.” In Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Michael O’Neill, Anthony Howe, and with the Assistance of Madeleine Callaghan. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012. “Northrop Frye, a critic as attuned to biblical resonances and paradigms as can be, finds little need to educe biblical connections in his substantial chapter on Shelley in his A Study of English Romanticism specifically devoted to imagery and mythical patterns in the poetry. Indeed, Frye can say: ‘For Shelley, the canon of imaginative revelation was Greek rather than Hebrew.’” – “Take the Theory and Run: On Culler’s Theory of the Lyric and Its Reader.” Diacritics 45, no. 4 (2017): 116–29. “It seems to me that the hardest and most imperative thing to do in thinking about literature and the arts generally is to do justice to form, history, and theory at the same time. . . . Among this trinity, ‘theory’ has hardly ever been explicitly on the agenda, much less foremost on it. Northrop Frye—also mobilized in Culler’s book to good effect—could complain, a bit hyperbolically, in his Anatomy of Criticism that the theory of literature had not really progressed an awful lot between Aristotle and the 1950s. Culler restores theory to the forefront, on the far side of decades in which something called ‘theory’ had flourished and then declined, though ‘theory’ here was a looser, baggier monster than in Frye’s day.” Balinisteanu, Tudor. “Spellbinding Stories. Gender Theory and Georges Sorel’s Concept of Social Myth.” Critique 42, no. 1 (January 2014): 107–26. Frye’s view of myth in the context of “Georges Sorel’s concept of social myth for contemporary feminist theory that focuses on performativity.” Ballingall, Alex. “Tale of the Traipse.” Toronto Star (3 July 2017). “Northrop Frye, the famed thinker from the last
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century at the University of Toronto, called Canada ‘our huge, unthinking, menacing and formidable physical setting.’ The wild that surrounds us provokes a sense of ‘deep terror,’ he argued. Those of us who’ve walked alone in the woods at night or been lost in the backcountry, far away when it’s cold, will know what he’s talking about. Frye thought the terror of our natural setting actually gave us the distinct Canadian quality of looking out for each other. The land itself, in other words, accounts for the communitarian quality that . . . makes us different from Americans. Frye called it our ‘garrison mentality.’ This country is scary and inhospitable, so we need to stick together to get by.” Bandici, Adina. “Manuscris găsit într-o sticlă şi cuirasatul ‘tod’: O perspectivă comparativă asupra simbolului acvatic” [“MS. Found in a Bottle and Battleship ‘Tod”: A Comparative Perspective of the Symbol of Water]. Studii de ştiinţă şi cultură 13, no. 1 (March 2017): 153– 62. In Romanian. Makes use of Frye’s theory of modes (myth, romance, high and low mimetic, irony), which are differentiated by the hero’s power of action. Also remarks on Frye’s schema for apocalyptic and demonic imagery. – “Multiple Selves and Otherness: Gothic Identity in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride.” Confluenţe: Texts and Contexts Reloaded 1 (2009): 26–40. “Rama Gupta asserts that Atwood’s characters “are motivated by intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts. Her protagonists are obsessed with some kind of fear, which leads them either to hide their identity or to assume double identity so as to escape reality. All of them are self-alienated. Canadian literary critic and theorist Northrop Frye also alludes to ‘the famous Canadian problem of identity’ that may seem a rationalized, self-pitying, or made-up problem to those who have never had to meet it, or have never understood that it was there to be met. . . . the question of identity is primarily a cultural and imaginative question.” – “Realitatea propriei existenţe: Casanova ca artist al autoprezentării în trei poeţi ai propriei vieţi de Stefan Zweig” [The Reality of One’s Own Existence: Casanova as an Artist of Self-Presentation in Stefan Zweig’s Adepts in Self-Portraiture]. Studii de Ştiinţă şi Cultură 14, no. 1 (2018): 95–104. In German. “According to Northrop Frye, most autobiographies are of a creative and therefore fictional impulse,” and this very important form of prose literature can be seen as professional writing. Banita, Georgiana. “North American Literature and Global Studies: Transnationalism at War.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American
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Literature, ed. Reingard M. Nischik. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. “In a Canadian context, Herb Wyile tries by his own admission to ‘steer between the Scylla of a homogenizing, parochial localism and the Charybdis of a potentially imperializing hemispheric scope.’ Many years earlier, even Northrop Frye in The Bush Garden maintained that ‘in our world the sense of a specific environment as something that provides a circumference for an imagination has to contend with a global civilization of jet planes, international hotels, and disappearing landmarks.’ Frye diagnoses the emergence of a country that is ‘post-Canadian,’ as it is post-American, post-British, and post everything except the world itself, which seems not to contravene the binary thinking that mobilizes transnational American Studies.’” – “Translated or Traduced? Canadian Literary and Political Theory in a German Context: Northrop Frye, Michael Ignatieff, and Charles Taylor.” In Translating Canada: Charting the Institutions and Influences of Cultural Transfer: Canadian Writing in Germany, ed. Luise von Flotow and Reingard M. Nischik. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2007. 187–217. Focus is on literary and political theory of Frye and others and their confrontation with German traditions in the same domains. Considers Frye’s work to be retrograde and irrelevant. Banjanin, Milica. “Aleksandr Blok: Poised between a Visionary Utopia and Petrified Reality.” Slavic Almanac: The South African Journal for Slavic, Central and Eastern European Studies 20, no. 1 (2014): 1–18. Calls upon Frye’s “Varieties of Literary Utopias” in this reading of Aleksandr Blok’s poem The Twelve, which is seen as a pursuit of an ideal, visionary, imaginative literary meta-utopia of Russian society. Blok’s visionary utopia is undercut by his awareness of the encroaching reality that shattered his maximalist utopian ideal. Bánki, Éva. “A költészet születése: Sámuel I. könyve” [The Birth of Poetry: The Book of Samuel I]. In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 181–5. Glances at Frye’s treatment of the Song of Hannah. Banting, Sarah. “If What We Do Matters: Motives of Research in Canadian Literature Scholarship.” English Studies in Canada 42, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2016): 27–64. “A historical survey of our [Canadian] professional critical genres must include, as Michael Greene indicates, the journalistic essays of nineteenthcentury critics. It must include anthologies of Canadian literature, with or without critical introductions . . . as
well as book reviews, particularly the scholarly genres of review practised mid-twentieth century by Northrop Frye or by contemporary contributors to Canadian Literature. It must also include creative-critical and theoretically informed essays published in essay collections or small literary magazines. . . . A survey of our professional genres must also include works of meta-criticism and literary theory, such as Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” Barač, Dubravko. “Gorjupjupove Hrvatasko/Kanadske Knejiæevne Veze” [Branko Gorjup’s Croatian/Canadian Cultural Association]. Hrvatski Iseljenički Zbornik 2005 [Croatian Emigrant Almanac 2005]. Zagreb, 2004. 213–19. In Slovenian. On the role of Branko Gorjup in establishing a Croatian/Canadian cultural exchange, including the translation of Frye’s work into Croatian. Includes a 1990 photo of Gorjup and Northrop and Elizabeth Frye in Zagreb. Barad, Dilip. “Northrop Frye: The Archetypes of Literature.” Welcome: Dilip Barad’s Blog (29 December 2014). http://dilipbarad.blogspot.com/2014/12/ northrop-frye-archetypes-of-literature.html. On Frye as an archetypal critic. Barclay, Glen St. John, and Caroline Turner. “A Unique Institution in the World of the Humanities (1981– 1991).” In Humanities Research Centre: A History of the First 30 Years of the HRC at The Australian National University. Canberra: ANU Press, 2004. 87–130. Comments on the seminar held with the collaboration of the Canadian government and the University of Sydney in honour of Frye, “hailed in his Festschrift as the father figure to the present generation of literary theorists and esteemed widely himself as the most systematic and brilliant of literary theorists and as the proponent of symbolist literary criticism in English.” Barclay, Michael. “We Came to Support Gord.” Maclean’s 129, nos. 35–6 (5 September 2016): 60. In a story about the Tragically Hip band, notes that two of the songs refer to Frye. Barilli, Renato. “Le tesi di Frye di McLuhan a confronto. In Canada Platone dialoga con Pound” [A Comparison of the Theses of McLuhan and Frye: In Canada Plato Dialogues with Pound]. Il Corriere della Sera (26 May 1989): 3. In Italian. Observes that the Canadian environment is reflected in the theoretical works of Frye and McLuhan: their thought is open to every contemporary cultural situation and offers profound insights to people of all cultures. Barkley, Christine. “Donaldson as Heir to Tolkien.” Mythlore 38 (Spring 1984): 50–7. Uses Frye’s theory
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of modes to chart the differences between Tolkien’s Bilbo and Frodo (high mimetic and low mimetic heroes respectively) and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Covenant (an ironic hero though moving toward a mythical one). Barr, David L. “The Apocalypse as a Symbolic Transformation of the World: A Literary Analysis.” Interpretation 38, no. 1 (1984) 39–50. Taking his cue from the work of Frye, argues that the Book of Revelation, like all literature, creates its own symbolic world. Barrera, Julio Trebolle. “Teatralidad en la Biblia y la Biblia en el teatro. Eslabones perdidos” [Theatricality in the Bible and the Bible in the Theater. Missing Link]. ‘Ilu, Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones 18 (2013): 219–38. In Spanish. As against such commentators as Wittgenstein, Steiner, and von Balthasar, Frye maintains that the basic structure of the Book of Job is a comedy. Barrett, Aminah. “Northrop Frye: Structuralism and Semiotics.” Prezi.com. (1 February 2016). https://prezi.com/nujxylk0oour/ northrop-frye-structuralism-and-semiotics/. Barrett, Paul. “‘Our words spoken among us, in fragments’: Austin Clarke’s Aesthetics of Crossing.” Journal of West Indian Literature 23, no. 1 (April 2015): 89–106. Finds it curious that Clarke has received so little attention from the critical establishment. His work has been around for a long time, preceding the question in Frye’s famous conclusion to the Literary History of Canada, “Where is here?” – “Paraphrasing the Paraphrase: OR What I Learned from Reading Every Issue of Canadian Literature/Littérature canadienne and Studies in Canadian Literature Études en littérature canadienne.” Canadian Literature 228–9 (Spring–Summer 2016): 208–25. “The second topic’s attention to ‘place,’ ‘home,’ ‘land,’ ‘landscape,’ ‘space,’ ‘Toronto,’ and ‘myth’ suggests that these articles engage Northrop Frye’s infamous question of the relationship between Canadian identity and space. Based on the dominance of this topic (as represented by its probability), we could posit that either Frye’s intuition—that Canadian writers are concerned with the experience of alienation from the surrounding space—is correct or that he continues to frame debates in the field. A temporally organized topic model, one which compares the dominant topics by year or decade, might offer a historical periodization by revealing whether Frye’s influence has waned in the decades subsequent to his writing.” Barry, Jackson G. “Form or Formula: Comic Structure in Northrop Frye and Susanne Langer.” Educational Theatre Journal 16 (1964): 333–40. Rpt. in Jackson G.
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Barry, Dramatic Structure: The Shaping of Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. 190–202. Argues that Frye’s theory of comic form leads one outside of particular dramatic works and thus fails to describe or evaluate them accurately. Says that Frye’s archetypal criticism looks through a work of art to a myth beyond it that contains the artistic meaning and form; the meaning is then read back into the work itself. Concludes that such a method “can both equalize and transcend the specific works it operates on.” Bashford, Bruce. “Literary History in Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” Connecticut Review 8 (October 1974): 48–55. Seeks to answer the question, What kind of literary history is presented in the First Essay of Anatomy of Criticism? Argues that Frye is writing a “formal” rather than a conventionally descriptive literary history; that is, the principles of Frye’s theory of modes are the deductive consequence of the basic categories with which he begins. Frye is not a philosophical historian. Rather his theory of modes represents the scale of thematic and fictional possibilities. Concludes by comparing Frye’s kind of literary history with Aristotle’s. – “Northrop Frye: Thoughts on Disputed Questions.” Unpublished typescript. 9 pp. Poses two questions about Frye’s work: “in what sense is criticism a ‘science’ for him? and what is the explanatory power of archetypal criticism?” Argues that the discovery of a coordinating principle is the fundamental step Frye takes in establishing a systematic criticism and that this principle for Frye is found in the archetypes of the anagogic phase of symbolism. Finds that by using archetypes to identify the controlling form of a literary work Frye relies on a conventional kind of explanation: he explains by identifying the type of thing the form is. – “Oscar Wilde and Subjectivist Criticism.” English Literature in Transition 1890–1920 21 (1978): 218–34. Compares Wilde’s subjectivist theory of criticism with Frye’s view that literary works determine their own significance. Finds a resemblance, on the level of principle, between both critics’ understanding of a comprehensive human desire. Sees a difference, however, between Frye’s view of apocalyptic reality, where all human beings become one human being, and Wilde’s view, in which human beings maintain their separate identities. Comments also on the two critics’ different views of literary education and their different approaches to practical criticism. Bašić, Sonja. “Northrop Frye kao mitski i arhetipski kriticar” [Northrop Frye as a Mythical and Archetypal Critic]. Umjetnost rijeći: ćasopis za nauku o književnosti
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14 (1970): 35–84. In Croatian. Examines the development of Frye’s mythopoeic criticism in relation to the New Criticism, neo-Aristotelianism, and structuralism. Looks also at Frye’s precursors (Frazer, Jung, Jacobe, Bodkin, and Murray) in order to illustrate how the archetypal tradition found its synthesis in Anatomy of Criticism. In the absence of a translation (in 1970) of Anatomy of Criticism for the Croatian reader, gives a comprehensive overview and summary of the book. Notes that Frye rejects the New Critics’ approach by insisting that criticism concern itself with moral, social, and educational matters. Bassard, Katherine Clay. Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. An examination of African American women writers’ intellectual and theological engagements with the book Frye referred to as the “great code” of Western civilization. – “‘And the greatest of these.’” In Toni Morrison: Memory and Meaning, ed. Adrienne Lanier Seward, Justine Tally, and Carolyn C. Denard. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. “While the subject of love takes a variety of forms in Morrison’s work from her first novel, The Bluest Eye, to her latest, Home, I propose here to look at her meditation(s) on love in light of her readings and (re)readings of the Christian Bible, the book Northrop Frye has described as ‘the Great Code’ of Western art and literature. In what sense is Morrison playing with the implications of the Johannine edict that ‘God is love’ (John 4:8) as an absolute equivalence, in both its New Testament form and its inverse (love is god)?” (author’s abstract)
politicians and journalists that are the target of its ridicule.” Bate, Jonathan. “Silly Willy.” London Review of Books 13, no. 8 (25 April 1991): 19–20. “Because it is immersed in the books that Blake knew and loved and thought that he was re-authoring, Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry is a far better introduction than a book like [James] King’s [William Blake: His Life]. . . . Now that Frye is dead, Blake’s best living critic is Harold Bloom.” Bate, Walter Jackson. “Northrop Frye.” Criticism: The Major Texts. Enlarged ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. 597–601, 609, 615–17. An overview of Frye’s work from his early study of Blake to his later writings in cultural and social criticism. Sees Frye as “the most controversial and probably the most influential critic writing in English since the 1950’s.” Reprints, in addition to two of Frye’s essays, the introduction and conclusion to Anatomy of Criticism, and gives a brief summary of the argument of that book. Says that essentialism, or the desire to return to fundamentals, is Frye’s greatest strength. Bates, Catherine. “Recent Studies in the English Renaissance.” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 59, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 203–41. “Colin Lahive invokes Northrop Frye on romance as a quintessentially ‘antirepresentational’ form.”
Bassler, O. Bradley. Kant, Shelley and the Visionary Critique of Metaphysics. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Is indebted to Frye throughout, while disagreeing with his thesis that literature is a “critique of pure reason.”
Bates, Catherine, Gillian Roberts, and Fiona Tolan. “Introduction” to papers presented to the Literature Group of the 2011 symposium of the British Association of Canadian Studies. British Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 2 (2013): 165–71. “The theme for the symposium revisits the question asked by the editors of Essays on Canadian Writing (ECW)’s 71st volume, published in 2000, a special issue intended to explore how Canadianist scholars ‘were thinking and feeling about the past, present, and future of Canadian literature, and, to a certain extent, to address a sense of ‘[m]illennial [a]ngst’ in relation to the discipline. Much of the Where is here Now? issue of ECW focused on the development of Canadian literary studies from Northrop Frye’s suggestion that ‘the Canadian sensibility’ is ‘less perplexed by the question ‘Who am I?’ than by some such riddle as ‘Where is here?’”
Basu, Laura. “British Satire in The Thick of It.” Popular Communication 12, no. 2 (April 2014): 89–103. “This article intervenes in ongoing debates around the democratic potential of new television satire through an analysis of the content and reception of The Thick of It (TTOI). TTOI is popular not only with a notoriously cynical British public, but even more so with the
Bates, Jennifer Ann. “Absolute Knowing.” Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 21, no. 3 (September 2016): 65–82. “In [Hegel’s] Phenomenology, reason develops by thinking the absolute thing through culture, politics, morality, and religion, reaching completion in ‘Absolute Knowing.’ That absolute is reason’s comprehensive insight into its phenomenological
Bassett, Sharon. “The Uncanny Critic of Brasenose: Walter Pater and Modernism.” Victorian Newsletter 58 (Fall 1980): 10–14. Sees a similarity between Pater’s Greek Studies, with its “transhistorical psychology,” and Frye’s ethical criticism.
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absolutes, and (is) its own absolute sublating (aufheben). Northrop Frye’s cited claim about myth can be understood in this phenomenological way.” (author’s abstract) Bates, Ronald. “Northrop Frye, Teacher.” CEA Critic 42 (November 1979): 29–36. Recollections of Frye as a person, scholar, and teacher. Comments especially on the absence in Frye of narrow professionalism and on his genuine humanism. Batista, Eliane. “A Teoria Arquetípica de Northrop Frye: O mito e o Rito em Macbeth, de Shakespeare” [Northrop Frye’s Archetypal Theory: The Macbeth Myth and Ritual by Shakespeare]. XV CELLIP, 2002, Curitiba—PR. XV Seminário do CELLIP- Políticas de Linguagem para o Brasil, 2001. In Portuguese. – “A Teoria Arquetípica de Northrop Frye: A visão trágica e a teoria dos mundos em Macbeth, de Shakespeare” [Northrop Frye’s Archetypal Theory: The Tragic Vision and Macbeth’s Theory of Worlds]. XIII Semana de Letras da UEM, 2001, Maringá. Outras Palavras. Maringá: UEM, 2001. 293–301. In Portuguese. Battistini, Robert. “Federalist Decline and Despair on the Pennsylvanian Frontier: Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s Modern Chivalry.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 133, no. 2 (April 2009): 149–66. Notes toward the end that “Modern Chivalry ought to be read as a modern Menippean satire. The Menippean satire can be grouped with the picaresque and the encyclopedic compendium as literary modes that eschew narrative as an organizational imperative.” Baudemann, Kristina. “I Have Seen the Future and I Won’t Go: The Comic Vision of Craig Strete’s Science Fiction Stories.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 29, no. 4 (Winter 2017): 76–101. Calls on Frye’s view of irony. Baulch, David M. “Romantic Madness and the Playwright/ Psychoanalyst: Dr. Thomas Beddoes’s Hygëia (1802) and Thomas Lovell Beddoes’s The Brides’ Tragedy (1822).” European Romantic Review 25, no. 2 (March 2014): 139– 59. Cites Frye’s essay on Beddoes’s Death’s Jest-Book in his (the former’s) A Study of English Romanticism. Bawoł, Dariusz. “‘Święta poezja’ starożytnych Hebrajczyków. O literackiej lekturze Biblii” [“Sacred Poetry” of the Ancient Hebrews: On the Reading the Bible as Literature. Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich 3 (2016): 57–79. In Polish. On kerygma as the factor that distinguishes the biblical text—that makes the text more than literature. Baxter, Katherine Isobel. Joseph Conrad and the Swan Song of Romance. London: Routledge, 2018. “In both
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Anatomy of Criticism and The Secular Scripture, Northrop Frye sets out to identify and categorize the elements of romance that, once thus enumerated, can be traced backwards and forward through Indo-European literature at will.” Baykal, Gökçe Elif, and Ilgim Veryeri Alaca. “Representations of Intergenerational Relationships in Children’s Television in Turkey: Inquiries and Propositions.” In Connecting Childhood and Old Age in Popular Media, ed. Vanessa Joosen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018. “In contemporary Turkish children’s fiction, the elderly are often cast in secondary roles as grandparents who share similar visual characteristics and secondary traits. This practice contributes to a sense of uniformity among elderly identities. As a result, it appears that their typological status corresponds to Maria Nikolajeva’s view that contemporary characters ‘tend to become more like “real people,” appearing on low mimetic and ironic levels.’” Following Frye, she argues that unlike high mimetic, fairy-tale, or romantic heroes, low mimetic characters display traits that are neither superior nor inferior to other humans’ while negotiating ordinary situations in their search for identity. Bayley, Sally. “Pursuing the Form of a Ghost: Emily Dickinson Thinks about Death through Hamlet.” The Emily Dickinson Journal 23, no. 2 (2014): 46–68. “Dickinson’s poem [‘One need not be a chamber’], then, encourages rapid, fleeting associations, a blink of the eye, a visual mimicry of the cognitive process of metaphorical association: one image in quick pursuit of another. The poet’s textual shape-making may not have been fully conscious; we cannot know how far the intentions of her visual poetics reached, or how much of an eye she had on publication. That she may simply have been ‘doodling’ (to adopt Northrop Frye’s term) is impossible to know—although Dickinson’s textual shapes are [as Frye says] very graphic.” Beale, Nigel. “Readings to Put You Off Books: Too Many Academics Have Abandoned Clarity and Enthusiasm for Cliquey Obscurity.” The Guardian (20 December 2000). https://www.theguardian.com/books/ booksblog/2007/dec/20/readingstoputyouoffbooks. Frye’s prose is a model of clarity, “crystalline and vital from the very start.” Beard, William. “The Canadianness of David Cronenberg.” Mosaic 27, no. 2 (June 1994): 113–33. Finds affinity between Cronenberg’s films and the classic paradigm of Canadian culture by Frye, Atwood, and others.
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Beardsall, Sandra. “Northrop Frye as a Guide for Interpreting the Protestant Spiritual Heritage.” Touchstone 21, no. 3 (2003): 21–33. Examines the method developed by James F. Hopewell, based on Frye’s theory of myths, for characterizing four different kinds of Protestant congregations: charismatic negotiation (Frye’s romance), canonic negotiation (Frye’s tragedy), agnostic negotiation (Frye’s comedy), and empiric negotiation (Frye’s irony). The four categories become a template for describing the different approaches Protestants take to the spiritual life.
Bečanović-Nikolić, Zorica. “бaхтин и тумaчeњa шeкспирових историјских дрaмa: кaрнeвaл и хeтeроглосијa” [Bakhtin and Interpretations of Shakespeare’s Historical Dramas: Carnival and Heteroglossia]. Зборник Матице српске за књижевност и језик [Proceedings of the Matica Srpska for Literature and Language] 2 (2007): 265–88. In Croatian. Bakhtin’s emphasis on the carnivalesque in Shakespeare is theoretically much less conservative than the theory of Shakespearean comedy advanced by Frye and C.L. Barber.
Beasley-Murray, Tim. “Between the Rock of Social Scientism and the Hard Place of Liberal Humanism: Czech, Slovak, Minority Subjects and Discipline.” Britské Listy (13 December 2004). “One might agree with Sir Philip Sidney, writing in the 1570s that ‘no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to virtue, and that none can both teach and move thereto so much as poetry.’ Or one might quote Northrop Frye: ‘the study of literature does not solve social problems. What it does is to base education on the sense of a participating community which is constantly in process and constantly engaged in criticizing its own assumptions and clarifying the vision of what it might and could be.’ In so doing, however, one must be aware that these are social and political arguments. In any case, Czech and Slovak Studies must learn to convince governments and itself that more than narrow political and economic interests are at stake and that the broadest range of national and human interests are best served by a more profound engagement with Czech and Slovak culture.”
Bechter, Clemens. “Advertising between Archetype and Brand Personality.” Administrative Sciences 6 no. 2 (2016): 1–11. “Using archetypes in advertising has affinities to mythology, literature and communications. An alternative approach to studying the archetypal aspects of brand image is the literary or cultural view of archetypes, such as the one advanced by Northrop Frye, whereby an archetype is seen as a symbol, usually an image, which reoccurs as a pattern to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience.”
Beáta, Thomka, et al. “Northrop Frye.” Az Irodalom Elméletei [Theories of Literature] III. Pécs: Jelenkor, 1996. In Hungarian. Frye takes his place alongside other twentieth-century theorists of literature. Beaugrande, Robert de. “Northrop Frye.” Critical Discourse: A Survey of Literary Theorists. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1988. 45–75. Also at http://www.beaugrande. com/CRITBOOKFRYE.htm. Outlines the principles underlying Anatomy of Criticism and provides a detailed summary of some of the “major tactics” Frye uses throughout that book. Says that Frye’s method of counterpoint anticipates “the later urgency, expressed by Jameson and Culler, of transcending the static binary oppositions so rampant in structuralism, whose practitioners Frye seems to both resemble and overreach.” Argues that Frye’s “range, depth, and complexity make [his] presence on the theoretical scene hard to ignore, even many years later,” and notes that Frye is expressly cited by thirteen of the fourteen other critics whose works are examined in this survey.
Beck, Boris, and Danijel Berković. “Narativ i dramatika psalma 73: Orijentacija, dezorijentacija i reorijentacija” [Narative and Dramatics of Psalm 73: Orientation, Disorientation and Reorganization]. Anafora— časopis za znanost o književnosti 1 (2019): 107–23. In Croatian. Regarding the narrative shape of the biblical myth: “The whole Bible, viewed as divine comedy, is contained in the story in the form of the letter U, in which man . . . loses the tree and water of life at the beginning of Genesis and acquires them again at the end Revelations.” Beebee, Thomas O. “Geographies of Nation and Region in Modern European and American Fiction.” Comparative Literature and Culture Web 10, no. 3 (2008): article 7. http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1377. In discussing Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory, remarks that “Schama is the Northrop Frye of landscape studies; his book amounts to an ‘Anatomy of Landscape.’ As with Frye, the trees are obscured somewhat by the forest of archetypes, but archetypal identification provides a consistent technology of diataxis [movement through].” Beecher, Donald. “Determining Displacements in the Farewell to Military Profession of Barnaby Riche.” Cahiers Elisabethains: Late Medieval and Renaissance Studies 44 (October 1993): 1–8. Uses Frye’s concept of displacement as a strategy for reading Riche’s stories. – “Nostalgia and the Renaissance Romance.” Philosophy and Literature 34, no. 2 (October 2010): 281–301. Calls on Frye’s study of romance: “home is, in Northrop
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Frye’s term, a component of ‘deliverance,’ a means to the recovery of a lost self, a place of integration and reconciliation with much that life holds dear. There is value in anchoring the self emotionally in the past as the only context for establishing the continuity of the self in the present. Insofar as romance routinely performs this ritual, the term for describing the desires realized by these events must either be nostalgia broadened to include such positive connotations, or an entirely different term.” Frye’s Secular Scripture “relied upon archetypes to profile the bedrock features of the psyche.” – “Romance and the Universality of Human Nature: Heliodorus, Aethiopica and Robert Greene, Menaphon.” In Adapted Brains and Imaginary Worlds: Cognitive Science and the Literature of the Renaissance. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016. “Northrop Frye detected the archetypal traits profiled in romance, but he was powerless to provide more than a mythological rationale for their pervasive and iterative presence; the genres may be our last hope. For if the genre is to become a ‘scripture,’ as it was for Frye, its truth factor must pertain to the triumph of human wishes in actualizing courtship grounded in desire and loyalty, themselves the emotionalized belief conditions that sustain human reproduction.” Beedham, MA “Northrop Frye.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 246: Twentieth-Century American Cultural Theorists, ed. Paul Hansom. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 140–54. A biographicalcritical introduction, focusing on Frye’s early writings (Anatomy of Criticism, The Educated Imagination), with a glance at his books on the Bible. Behiels, Michael D. “Introduction to Myth and Ideology: Contributions of Canadian Thinkers.” Journal of Canadian Studies 34, no. 4 (Winter 1999–2000): 9–14. In introducing the articles in this issue, Behiels explains that Frye, along with Nellie McClung, Frank Scott, George Parkin Grant, and Margaret Laurence, have contributed to Canada’s ability to survive and thrive as a nation and have helped Canadians develop their own particular way of looking at the world. Behrendt, Stephen C. “The Ineffable.” In The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, ed. David Duff. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. 566–76. Draws on Frye’s view of myth to help establish the importance of individual and social mythology for the British Romantics. Behrman, Mary. “The Waiting Game: Medieval Allusions and the Lethal Nature of Passivity in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” Studies in the Novel 42, no. 4 (2010):
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453–70. Relies heavily on Frye’s theory of romance in this study of the intertextuality of McEwan’s novel. Bei, Zhang. “On Frye’s Theory of Literary Narrative and Meaning.” Journal of Jiangsu Institute of Education (Social Sciences) 1 (2006). In Chinese. Beker, Miroslav. “O Recepciji Aristotelove Poetike” [On the Reception of Aristotle’s Poetics] Umjetnost riječi 1–2 (2002): 1–19. In Bosnian. Frye believes that although we can reduce literature to a few basic themes and that literature is permeated by one basic myth, best manifested by the fate of the protagonist. Bell, Alana. “Musicians’ Lives and National Identity: The Year in Canada.” Biography 42, no. 1 (2019): 20–7. “These stories of Canadian musicians are about more than just music and the lives of those who create it. As Barclay said about the Hip, they are ‘the story of Canadian culture itself, from Northrop Frye to Drake, from Jacques Cartier to Justin Trudeau, and everything in between.’” Bell, Bernard. “Myth, Symbol and Reality in the Apocalypse.” http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:u4O3c AABXWUJ:www.pbcc.org/contactus/bell/ApocalypseMyth .pdf+%22northrop+Frye%22+dissertation&cd=67&hl= en&ct=clnk. “What is myth? What is real and unreal? Like Northrop Frye reading Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, when we attempt to analyze the Book of Revelation, we find ourselves entangled in the discomfiting words of myth, symbol, ritual and archetype.” Belline, Ana Helena Cizotto. “Espaço Real e Espaço Poético no ‘Cancioneiro’ de Fernando Pessoa” [Real Space and Poetic Space in Fernando Pessoa’s Cancioneiro]. Estudos sobre Fernando Pessoa. 1986. 31–57. In Portuguese. Belliveau, John Edward. “Three Scholars.” Atlantic Advocate 69 (October 1978): 40, 43–7 [40, 45–7]. On the lives and contributions of three of the most famous citizens of Moncton, NB: astronomer Simon Newcomb, Justice Ivan Cleveland Rand, and Frye. Sketches Frye’s contributions as a literary critic, comments on the impressions he made as a high school student upon the author, and traces his career from Moncton to Toronto. Bell-Villada, Gene H. “Northrop Frye, Modern Fantasy, Centrist Liberalism, Antimarxism, Passing Time, and Other Limits of American Academic Criticism.” In Reinventing the Americas: Comparative Studies of the Literature of the United States and Spanish America, ed. Bell Gale Chevigny and Gari Laguardia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 278–97. Claims
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that Frye is not interested in process or change, that his system of modes cannot accommodate fantasy, and that he does not accept the contributions of Marxism. Thinks that Frye’s criticism, therefore, is of little use in understanding Latin American literature. Bellomi, Paola. “El conflicto bélico como motivo literario en la novela el sefardí romántico (2005) de Angelina Muñiz-Huberman” [War Conflict as a Literary Mode in Angelina Muñiz-Huberman’s Novel El Sefardí Romántico]. Naveg@mérica 20 (2018): 1–24. In Spanish. “Based on the theories of Northrop Frye, Vladimir Propp and Mikhail Bakhtin, my objective is to analyze how the warlike confrontations described in the novel are linked to the narrative framework and literary language in order to reflect on the representation of the concept of conflict.” Belsey, Catherine. “Northrop Frye.” Critical Practice. London: Methuen, 1980. 21–9. Places Frye’s criticism in the context of the New Criticism. Argues that his formalism rests upon a concept of human nature and culture in which desire is the fundamental category, and that his theory of literature transcends history and ideology. Sees Frye’s assumptions, finally, as quite similar to the idealist-empiricist assumptions of the New Critics. Belyea, Barbara. “Butterfly in the Bush Garden: ‘Mythopoeic’ Criticism of Contemporary Poetry Written in Canada.” Dalhousie Review 56 (Summer 1976): 336–45. Argues that the variety of Canadian poetry contradicts the claims of recent literary critics (Reaney, Jones, Atwood) who have made Frye’s mythopoeic approach a parti pris, and that there is not a Canadian national literature “definable by a number of dominant archetypes contributing to a coherent mythic evolution in a search for cultural identity.” Ben, Wang Fan. “Northrop Frye on Culture: Its Source and Character.” http://translate.google.com/translate?hl= en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://www.tmdnb.com/zl/jz/167753. html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/ search% 3Fq% 3Dnorthrop%2Bfrye%26start% 3D100%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26lr%3Dlang_zh -CN%26sa% 3DN%26as_qdr % 3Dall. Ben Antabi, Mimo Amir. “Præsentation og diskussion af Northrop Fryes bibelteori med henblik på The Great Code og Words with Power” [Presentation and Discussion of Northrop Frye’s Theory of the Bible with Special Reference to The Great Code and Words with Power]. In Danish. Odense: Syddansk Universitet, Institut for Litteratur, Kultur og Medier, Center for Litteraturvidenskab og Semiotik, 2002. 38 pp.
Benavides, Idalia Villanueva. “La deconstrucción del sujeto cartesiano, de su tiempo y espacio en Todas las familias felices de Carlos Fuentes [The Deconstruction of the Cartesian Subject, of His Time and Space in All the Happy Families of Carlos Fuentes]. La Palabra 26 (January 2015): 97–114. In Spanish. Bence, Erika. “The Demystification of the Concept of Homeland in the Hungarian Literature from Vojvodina.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 1 (2011): 45–59. “In his theory of myth criticism Northrop Frye conceives the formation history of encyclopedic forms originating in the epic worldview in terms of spatial topoi. Here as well, the three basic forms are the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid.” – “Műfajváltozatok és -diskurzusok. A 19. századi magyar történelmi regény” [Different Genres and Discourses of the Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Historical Novel]. Iskolakultúra 3–4 (2008): 50–61. In Hungarian. Uses Frye’s distinction between the novel and the romance to examine the different varieties of the Hungarian historical novel and discusses the similarities and differences in such fiction based on their generic features. Believes that Frye’s theory both confirms and questions the place of certain works in the tradition of the historical novel. Refers to a well-known case of a Frygean rereading by László Szilasi of some of the works of the famous Hungarian Romantic novelist Mór Jókai: Szilasi claims that some of these “novels” are more fruitfully read as romances. – Referential and Fictional Features in Márk Mezei’s Novel Utolsó Szombat (The Last Saturday). Hungarológiai Közlemények 2 (2019): 84–99. In Hungarian. Notes the difference between the historical psychology in Lukács and the archetypal psychology in Frye. – “A toldi-trilógia: A románc, a történelmi és a verses regény diskurzusa” [The Toldi-Trilogy: Discourse in Romance, Historical and Verse Novel]. Tanulmányok 1 (2017): 95–111. In Hungarian. Indebted to Frye’s “The Four Forms of Prose Fiction.” Benczik, Vera. “Gendered Quest in Recent Hungarian Fantasy Films.” Hungarian Cultural Studies 12 (2019): 290–8. “Despite the later scholarly criticism Joseph Campbell’s work has garnered, and despite its somewhat outdated and reductive aspects, it still remains the basis for the literary analysis of the quest, and has been used extensively by archetypal theoreticians like Northrop Frye or Kathryn Hume. . . . Frye’s analysis differs slightly from that of Campbell, as he works less from a psychoanalytical standpoint, but rather from the discursive context of literary criticism; he
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calls the monomyth ‘quest romance’ and identifies the tripartite structure journey—exaltation—return, adding a transcendental layer to the conscious-unconscious dichotomy invoked by Campbell.” – “Hero out of Time: Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘Dancing to Ganam’ as the Subversion of the Quest Narrative.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 18, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Fall 2012): 177–92. Le Guin’s “narratives frequently employ the traditional quest, identified by Joseph Campbell as the monomyth, in the service of exteriorizing the process of growth her protagonists go through. Like Campbell, Le Guin works from a theoretical background that owes much to Jungian psychoanalysis and the archetypal theory put forth by Northrop Frye. Far from simple reiterations of the pattern, Le Guin’s narratives can be read as critical reenactments of the traditional quest romance, which, while more or less straightforwardly follow the course prescribed by the Campbellian system, are at the same time in critical dialogue with it.” Benković, Zvonko. “Tisuću i jedna noć konzum-(n)acije” [A Thousand and One Nights Consum-(N)Ation]. Narodna umjetnost—Hrvatski časopis za etnologiju i folkloristiku 2 (2011): 63–82. Notes Frye’s observation that the soap opera follows the conventions of romance. Bennett, Chad. “The Queer Afterlife of Gossip: James Merrill’s ‘Celestial Salon.’” Twentieth-Century Literature 64, no. 4 (December 2018): 387–412. Says that the concluding scene of Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover “seems to riff on Northrop Frye’s version of Mill’s figure for the lyric poet, who, ‘so to speak, turns his back on his listeners.’” Bennett, Donna. “‘As the last morning breaks in red’: Frye’s Apocalypse and the Visionary Tradition in Canadian Writing.” University of Toronto Quarterly 70 (Fall 2002): 813–26. Frye saw the Christian conception of apocalypse as destroying the way of seeing the order of nature that confined human beings to the world of time and history. He regarded the apocalypse as the vision of universal events followed by existence as part of a single, infinite body. – “Frye, Apocalypse and Canadian Poets.” Englishes: Rivista quadrimestrale di letterature inglesi contemporanee 7, no. 17 (2002): 33–48. Bennett, Eric. “Dear Humanities Profs: We Are the Problem.” Chronicle of Higher Education (13 April 2018). “Three generations ago, literature professors exchanged a rigorously defined sphere of expertise, to which they could speak with authority, for a much wider field to which they could speak with virtually no power
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at all. No longer refusing to allow politics to corrupt a human activity that transcends it, they reduced the literary to the political. The change was sharp. From World War I until the 1960s, their forerunners had theorized literature as a distinct practice, a fine art, a realm of its own. Whether in the scholarship of the Russian Formalists, in T.S. Eliot’s archconservative essays, or in such midcentury monuments as Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis (1946), René Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature (1948), and Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957), literature was considered autonomous. Then, starting in the 1970s, autonomy became a custom honored only in the breach.” Bennett, Kenneth C. “The Affective Aspect of Comedy.” Genre 14 (Summer 1981): 191–204 [192–3]. Bennett, Phillippa. ‘Radical Tales: Rethinking the Politics of William Morris’s Last Romances.” In To Build a Shadowy Isle of Bliss: William Morris’s Radicalism and the Embodiment of Dreams, ed. Michelle Weinroth and Paul Leduc Browne. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2015. Begins her conclusion with a quotation from Frye: “A great romancer should be examined in terms of the conventions he chose,” writes Northrop Frye. “William Morris should not be left on the sidelines of prose fiction merely because the critic has not learned to take the romance form seriously. Nor, in view of what has been said about the revolutionary nature of the romance, should his choice of that form be regarded as an ‘escape’ from his social attitude.” Earlier remarks that, as Frye has demonstrated, the romance contains a “world of exciting adventures,” but these adventures invariably involve “separation, loneliness, humiliation,” and even “pain.” Benoit, Raymond. “Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The Explicator 55, no. 1 (Fall 1996): 15. “Ichabod’s feeling is indeed an ‘all-embracing’ experience, like the poet’s experience described by Northrop Frye, ‘where the mind behind the subject and the world behind the objects are united, where nature and personality are one, as they formerly were in the sea-gods and sky-gods of ancient mythologies’—and in the tree-gods of American mythology.” Benson, Peter, and Stuart Kirsch. “Corporate Oxymorons.” Dialectical Anthropology 34, no. 1 (2010): 45–8. “Literary critic Northrop Frye describes how advertising ‘says what it does not wholly mean, but nobody is obliged to believe its statements literally. Hence it creates an illusion of detachment . . . even when one is obeying its exhortations.’ In the same way, corporate oxymorons are a particular type of branding that conveys a political
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message intended to ease the mind of an otherwise critical consumer.” Bentley, Allen. “Herman Northrop Frye.” New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/f/ frye_herman_northrop.html. A full account (6,000 words) of Frye’s life and work. – “Vic, Canada’s Letters, and Northrop Frye.” Acta Victoriana 79 (November 1954): 11–13. On Frye’s contribution to the criticism of Canadian literature. Bentley, David M.R. “Annex: Northrop Frye’s Garrison Mentality,” in chap. 12, “‘The Music of Rhyme, the Rhythm of Planes, the Shape Emblazoned’: Earle Birney’s West-Coast Architexts.” Canadian Architexts: Essays on Canadian Literature and Architecture, 1759–2005. http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/ architexts/index.htm. Gives his reason for being sceptical about Frye’s notion of the “garrison mentality” in Canadian literature. – “Jumping to Conclusions: Northrop Frye on Canadian Literature.” In Rampton, Northrop Frye, 55–78. A critique of several of Frye’s central theses about Canadian literature, including his thesis about a “garrison mentality” among Canadian writers. – “A New Dimension: Notes on the Ecology of Canadian Poetry.” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 7 (Fall–Winter 1980): 1–20. Addressing the issue of the importing of forms, as opposed to content, into the Canadian poetic tradition, draws on Frye’s discussion of the topic in his “Conclusion” to Literary History of Canada and elsewhere. Such a study may contribute to an answer to Frye’s question regarding Canadian identity: Where is here? – “Psychoanalytical Notes upon an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides): Mrs Bentley in Sinclair Ross’s As for Me and My House.” University of Toronto Quarterly 73, no. 3 (2004): 862–86. “If there is indeed, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and others have persuasively argued, a close affinity between the hermeneutic practices associated with paranoia and the hermeneutic strategies deployed by literary criticism, then surely this is as evident as almost anywhere else in the modes of reading and interpretation that undergird both the compositional and the critical practices of high modernism—in the rage for order and pattern that drives alike the structuralism of Freud and Claude LéviStrauss, the classicism of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, the formalism of I.A. Richards and Cleanth Brooks. Certainly, Canadian creative and critical writing from the late 1920s to the early 1960s (and beyond) contains numerous instances of paranoiac interpretation, none
more prominent, perhaps, than in the work of two of the period’s most dedicated avatars of order: A.M. Klein and Northrop Frye.” – “Reflections on the Situation and Study of Early Canadian Literature in the Long Confederation Period.” Home Ground and Foreign Territory: Essays on Early Canadian Literature. Ed. Janice Fiamengo. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2014. 17–44. “In his 1965 ‘Conclusion’ to the Literary History of Canada, Northrop Frye is right to stress that Canadian literature is ‘a part of Canadian life’ and rewards study as such, but he is very clearly wrong both in exiling it from the realm of ‘verbal relationships’ and in regarding that realm as ‘autonomous.’” – “Rummagings, 5: Northrop Frye’s ‘Garrison Mentality.’” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 58 (Spring 2006): 5–9. Is skeptical about the existence of the “garrison mentality,” which Frye posited as a chief feature of the Canadian imagination. Bentley, G.E., Jr. “Blake on Frye and Frye on Blake.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 177–89. A biobibliographical study of the Frye/Blake relationship, with special attention to Fearful Symmetry. Bentley, G.E., Jr., and Martin K. Nurmi. A Blake Bibliography: Annotated Lists of Works, Studies, and Blakeana. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1964. 25–6. An assessment of Frye’s contribution to Blake criticism. The authors maintain that with Fearful Symmetry “Blake criticism came of age, for here at last was a book that overcame most of the major obstacles to understanding his thought and art. Frye brought to bear on Blake a criticism which was not merely a collection of critical perceptions, analyses of ideas, histories of traditions and the like, but a unified critical method of the kind needed to understand a unified mind and sensibility like Blake’s.” Gives a brief account of the central argument of Fearful Symmetry. Eugene Benson and William Toye, eds. Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. 2nd ed. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997. The main entry for “Frye, Northrop” is written by George Woodcock (see below). Frye’s place in Canadian literature is reinforced by the fact he is mentioned in some forty of the entries in the Oxford Companion. Béres, András. “Text si context: Consideratii despre interpretarea scenica a textelor dramatice” [Text and Context. Considerations about the Scenic Interpretation of Dramatic Texts]. Symbolon 1(2000): 7–14. In Romanian.
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– “Tragikum és tragédia” [Tragedy and the Tragic]. Symbolon 1 (2000): 70–82. In Romanian. Quotes Frye’s definition of tragedy. Bergamo, Edvaldo, and Ana Clara Magalhaes de Medeiros. “Lixboa revisitada ou o império retornado: A mitopoética da Mensagem (e uma saudade lusíada) n’As naus de Lobo Antunes” [Lixbon Revisited or the Returned Empire: The Mythopoetic of Mensagem (and a Longings of Lusiads) in As Naus by Lobo Antunes]. Navegações 10, no. 2 (July–December 2017): 121–30. In Portuguese. The authors adopt Frye’s views on myth and poetry. Berger, Arthur Asa. Li’l Abner: A Study in American Satire. Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1970. Calls on Frye’s theory of satire throughout. Berger, Harry, Jr. “The Renaissance Imagination: Second World and Green World.” Centennial Review 9 (Winter 1965): 36–78 [47–50]. On Frye’s conception of the “green world” versus the “normal world” in Elizabethan comedy. Bergeron, David M. “Shakespeare’s Intents in Tents.” Shakespeare Studies 45 (January 2017): 161–83. Glances at what Frye calls Shakespeare’s “green world” comedies. Bergh, Bruce G. “Volkswagen as ‘Little Man.’” Journal of American Culture 15, no. 4 (1992): 95–119. “The analytical framework for the study presented is an integration of interpretative approaches borrowed from literary criticism, anthropological and cultural studies, and depth psychology (Frye, Joseph Campbell) that converge at the point where the role played by archetypal forms or structures reveals the primal origin of motifs in the arts that might otherwise (as was the case with the Beetle campaign) be considered entirely new. The various approaches tend to focus on the study of religious themes and motifs as the place where both literary and psychological structures will reveal themselves in their most abstract form devoid of confusion from representational or local content. The purpose of the study was to discover an archetypal structure within the Volkswagen Beetle advertising campaign. The specific archetypal pattern studied was the characterization of the Beetle’s personality as the Fool, the Trickster, and the Little Man.” Bergonzi, Bernard. “The Catholic Novel.” Commonweal 134, no. 9 (May 4, 2007): 10–12. “The literary form of the novel as it developed in England and France was not well adapted to the exploration of religious drama. Its dimensions were social or individual, presenting people fairly like ourselves, with this-worldly ambitions or destinies or griefs that readers can readily identify with. It was, in Northrop Frye’s phrase, ‘low mimetic,’
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with the focus on what Renaissance thinkers called the sublunary world.” Bergvall, Åke. “The Blake Syndrome: The Case of Jerusalem.” Literature/Film Quarterly 1, no. 4 (2013): 254–65. Glances at Frye’s musical interests, particularly Blake’s hymn Jerusalem. Beriault, Janie. “The Sublime and Picturesque Aesthetics in John Richardson’s Wacousta.” Canadian Literature 228–9 (Spring–Summer 2016): 189–205. “Although the ways in which the impulses of community and individuality are reflected in Wacousta’s aesthetic practice and have much in common with Northrop Frye’s famous concept of the ‘garrison mentality,’ my reading ultimately distinguishes Richardson’s vision from Frye’s by demonstrating that progression towards social community does not necessarily lead to a breakdown of conventional forms and a breakthrough of ‘greater freedom,’ but rather promotes a social (and aesthetic) model that seeks organization.” Berman, Art. “Scientific Criticism: Frye.” From the New Criticism to Deconstruction: The Reception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. 96–101. Maintains that Frye wants to develop a scientific criticism but not at the expense of the idea of human freedom. In this respect his work lies firmly in the tradition of American criticism, especially in its reaction to structuralism in the U.S.: once it comes up against the logical consequences of empiricism and determinism, it interjects the humanistic idea of free will. Frye’s work differs from that of the structuralists and poststructuralists in that it develops no theory of mind or self and has “no sophisticated linguistic theory.” Bernard, J.F. “Comic Symmetry and English Melancholy.” Shakespearean Melancholy: Philosophy, Form, and the Transformation of Comedy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. “Each work [The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost] closely follows established structures in terms of theories of melancholy and comic conventions. The comedies are predicated on a symmetrical model of characterization as suggested by critics such Northrop Frye or Harry Levin, one that emphasises acts of couplings and doubling. This model is intended to reflect the ‘real world,’ as Harry Levin explains, and ‘to act as an aid to self-correction, but it also operates, as Frye suggests, as an inherent dramatic device which, through structure, dictates the comic mood. The multiple melancholic iterations help further the plays’ symmetry while catering to the expectation of the humour’s eventual purgation. In each case, the drive to dispel melancholy becomes inexorably conflated
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with ideas of comic resolution and closure. In this sense, the plays acquiesce to traditional galenic philosophy in advocating for balance, suggesting that the comic crises they explore can be resolved through heterosexual symmetrical pairings.’” Bernd, Zilá, and Eloína Prati dos Santos. “Canadá: País homenageado na 60a feira do livro de Porto Alegre—2014 [Canada: Country Honoured in the 60th Book Fair in Porto Alegre—2014]. Organon 29, no. 57 (July–December 2014): 221–8. “Frye writes that English Canada was first part of wilderness, then part of North America and the British Empire, and then part of the world. He writes also about the fact that Canadians have always had to confront a nature with its radical characteristics. Politically, Canada was the scene of the dispute between two European powers—France and England—in the eighteenth century, in addition to having promoted an independence movement against its powerful neighbor, the United States, in the nineteenth century. To understand English-language Canadian literature, therefore, one must take into account the central issue of national identity, the diversity of regional identities, history, geography and climate, as well as the dynamics of its multiculturality.” Bernhart, Walter. “‘Musikalische Verse’: ‘Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten’” [‘“Musical verses’: ‘I don’t know what it is supposed to mean’] Die Vorstellung von Musik in Malerei und Dichtung. Jahresschrift der österreichischen Gesellschaft für Musikwissenschaft, ed. Barbara Boisits and Cornelia Szabò-Knotik. Musicologica Austriaca 25. Vienna: Praesens Verlag, 2006. 111–21. In German. Looks at different theories, including Frye’s, of what constitutes “musical” when that attribute is applied to literary verse. Bernstein, Carol L. “‘Happy Endings’/Unendings: Narratives of Evil.” In Rethinking Evil, ed. Maria Pia Lara. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 229–31. On Frye’s understanding of evil as argued in The Secular Scripture. Berry, Ralph. “Shakespearean Comedy and Northrop Frye.” Essays in Criticism 22 (January 1972): 33–40. Aims to refute Frye’s thesis in A Natural Perspective that Shakespearean comedies embody typical patterns. Objects especially to Frye’s claim that the normal action of comedy moves from irrational law to festivity. Concludes that Frye’s theory of comedy applies to only a few Shakespearean plays and that to use his theoretical framework, therefore, is to oversimplify the complexity of these plays.
– Shakespeare’s Comedies: Explorations in Form. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972. 3–5. Argues against Frye’s method of building a theoretical model or meta-form for studying Shakespeare’s comedies: “one cannot accumulate data from certain plays, use them to construct a ‘genre’ model that implies a more than cognate relationship with ‘genus,’ and then deploy the ‘genre’ pattern as a triumphant interpretation of a recalcitrant specimen.” Says that such a procedure distorts the individual comedies. Berryman, Charles. “Atwood’s Narrative Quest.” Journal of Narrative Technique 17 (Winter 1987): 51–6. Argues that the narrative pattern of Atwood’s Surfacing is heavily dependent on Frye’s descriptions of the archetypal patterns of comedy and romance. Berryman, Jerome. “Laughter, Power, and Motivation in Religious Education.” Religious Education 93, no. 3 (1998): 358–78. “We are drawn toward tragic people. They arouse pity and fear. We sometimes call them heroes, but at the same time something about them makes us draw back. This ‘drawing back’ is our impulse toward life. This is because, as Northrop Frye has described, tragic figures become rigid, and more and more committed to the pursuit of their goals. They will endure pain or even death to carry on in the pursuit of their goal. One can become tragically stuck. One can also become stuck in comedy. In pure comedy Frye observed that the primary theme is the happy integration of the central character into society. While a tragedy might end with people dying on stage, the comedy ends with people getting married.” Berszan, Istvan. “Die Textualitat: Eine neue Stereotypie der Komparatistik” [Textuality: A New Stereotype of Comparative Literature]. Caietele Echinox 6 (2004): 73– 7. In German. The archeotypology as practised by Frye and Gilbert Durand is no longer central to the research of comparative literature. Bertacco, Simona. “Rescaling Robert Kroetsch: A Reading across Communities, Borders, and Practices.” Canadian Literature 238 (2019): 30–45. “As a matter of fact, while he figured as the general editor [of the Canadian issue of boundary 2], Kroetsch turned to his colleagues in Canada for the actual editorial work: Eli Mandel oversaw the selection of criticism, Margaret Atwood and Warren Tallman selected the poetry and were listed as guest editors, while the two world-renowned Canadian critics of the time—Frye and McLuhan—were discussed in a section called ‘Context,’ their roles reviewed, respectively, by George Woodcock and Wilfred Watson. The Foreword marked Kroetsch’s famous first words as a critic, recording his attempt to locate and define
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the Canadianness embedded in the works produced by contemporary poets and novelists north of the border: ‘The country that invented Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye did so by not ever being Modern.’ Kroetsch’s project to tell a different story of Canadian literature started with this bold statement and would be developed, from that moment onward, in his critical essays.” Bertea, Cristina. “Frye e la fiaba” [Frye and the Fairy Tale]. In Lombardo, Ritratto, 225–35. In Italian. On Frye’s view of fairy tales as an archetypal form towards which more complex literary forms tend to return. Bertea looks at the connections between fairy tales and both ritual and romance. Bertolio, Johnny L. “‘La vita solitaria: A Fryean Idyll?” In Mapping Leopardi: Poetic and Philosophical Intersections, ed. Emanuela Cervato, Mark Epstein, Giulia Santi, and Simona Wright. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. 144–55. “Aims to demonstrate the ways in which La vita solitaria fits the idyllic phase in Frye’s scheme through a close comparison with other literary texts of the same genre: Theocritus, Moschus, translated by Leopardi himself, and, quite surprisingly, Giovan Battista Marino.” Besbes, Mongia. “Literary Piracy and the Art of Experimental Narratives.” Cultural Intertexts 8 (2018): 7–31. “Northrop Frye contends that ‘Romance is the structural core of all fiction: being directly descended from folktale, it brings us closer than any other aspect of literature in the sense of fiction, considered as a whole, as the epic of the creature, man’s vision of his own life as a quest.’” Besharati, Mohammad Hossein, Golnar Mazdayasna, and Sayed Mohammad Anoosheh. “Orwell’s Satirical View of Romantic Love in the Terrorized World of Nineteen Eighty-Four.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 6, no. 6 (September 2017): 78–82. “We try to investigate Winston Smith’s romantic life in a satiric manner with respect to Northrop Frye’s theme of romance which includes the three phases of agon, pathos and anagnorisis.” Besner, Neil. “Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays.” Canadian Encyclopedia. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1998. Overview of Frye’s magnum opus. Bessai, Diane. “Counterfeiting Hindsight.” World Literature Written in English 23, no. 2 (1984): 353–66. Argues that Frye’s comprehensive overview of Canadian literature neglects “the positive elements of literary colonialism.”
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Bessason, Haraldur. Guðir og men [Gods and Men]. Reykjavík: Ormstunga, 2009. Throughout this collection of essays, Bessason has connected the Icelandic scholar with foreign theorists like Georges Dumézil, Claude Leví-Strauss, Joseph Campbell, Roman Jakobson, Noam Chomsky, and Frye. Besses, P. “Métaphore vive et référence chez N. Frye: Poétique et théologie; Eléments d’une critique du discours opaque” [Vivid Metaphor and Reference in N. Frye: Poetics and Theology. Elements of a Critique of Opaque Speech]. Bulletin de la Société de Stylistique Anglaise 7 (1985): 53–67. Bethune, Brian. “Thinkers, Seekers, Crusaders.” Maclean’s 115, no. 11 November 2002): 80–2. “Non-fiction is rapidly becoming literature’s poor cousin in this country. Rather than the two main Governor General’s prose awards being held up as the twin pinnacles of Canadian literary honour, as was once the case, media attention increasingly focuses on the fiction list and its Giller rival. That tends to leave non-fiction in the same slough of despond that’s home to poetry and drama, a black hole that’s particularly unfair to it. For all the accolades garnered abroad by recent Canadian fiction, its global influence pales beside works by Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye. And first-rate non-fiction, as passionate and well-written as any novel, is still produced in Canada, even if Governor General’s juries sometimes seem to have trouble recognizing it.” Bettina, Sister Mary. “Teaching Frye’s Theory of Modes.” English Journal 54 (February 1965): 124–5. Maintains that Frye’s theory of modes is easily grasped by high school students. “Whatever teenage students conceive of its end, Frye’s theory is provocative to them.” Betts, Gregory, and Julia Polyck-O’Neill. “Contesting Vancouver: Case Studies in a Cultural Imaginary.” Canadian Literature 235 (2017): 6–11. “If, in the midtwentieth century, Northrop Frye led a significant sector of Canadian authors and scholars to pursue the taxonomical cleanliness of archetypes, national symbols, and regional essences, Vancouver art and writing during the same period followed a different path that was more attuned to the messier collage modality of Marshall McLuhan’s theories of mediation.” Bevis, Matthew. “Endgames.” Comedy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 12–20. Glances at the place Frye’s mythos of summer has in a theory of comedy. Bewell, Alan, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. “Introduction.” Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future. Montreal
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and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. 3–15. The editors note that the centenary of Frye’s birth provided “an ideal moment” for reassessing his contribution to criticism, and they provide an overview to the twelve essays in the collection. Beye, Charles Rowan, and M. Carpitella. La Tragedia Greca: Guida Storica e Critica. Bari: Laterza, 1974. In Italian. On Frye’s theory of tragedy in the context of current critical approaches to Greek tragedy—literary, sociological, and anthropological. Bhattacharya, Rima. “Godless, yet Not Lacking in Divinity: Sexuality and Religion in Updike’s Couples.” British and American Studies 24 (2018): 105–14. “In his 1969 preface to Fearful Symmetry, Northrop Frye, while commenting on Blake’s mythology, states that the poet ‘thought of the essential “mental fight” of human life as the revolt of desire and energy against repression.’ Blake, who believed that ‘it is impossible for a human being to live completely in the world of sense’ saw all evil in ‘self-restraint or restraint of others.’ Consequently, Blake bridges the insurmountable gap between man and a distant wrathful God by identifying him with human imagination and thereby locating him within mankind.” Bhoil, Shelly, and Enrique Galvan-Alvarez. Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage: Negotiating Dispossession. New York: Lexington Books, 2018. “Northrop Frye tells us that an archetype is ‘a literary symbol, or cluster of symbols, which are used recurrently throughout literature, and thereby become conventional. Hell has always been an archetypal image in traditional Tibetan literature in that it has signified fear, horror and karmic retribution among other undesirable things. However, as other Tibetan writers have increasingly come to employ it for depicting an occupied Tibet, it has gained a new archetypal usage. Tibet’s bloody encounter with Communist China and its subsequent subjugation have turned hell into a recurring image that stands for Tibet’s modern political experience characterized by repression.” Bialostosky, Don H. “Literary ‘Romanticism and Modernism’ in Robert Langbaum’s The Poetry of Experience and Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” Cahiers roumains d’études litteraires 1 (1982): 110–17. Examines the terms Frye uses in his account of the relation between romanticism and modernism and compares them with Langbaum’s treatment of the relation. Looks especially at Frye’s definition of romanticism in his theory of modes in Anatomy of Criticism, where the conventions of the “low mimetic” mode are distinguished from the ironic mode of modernism. Argues that Frye is an idealist in his
method but that he does not go far enough: “he fails to distinguish radically enough between his conceptual modes and the historical eras to which he applies them” and to be aware of “the problematic relation between forms and actual experience.” Sees Frye’s enterprise, however, as a more worthy and “higher” one than Langbaum’s because it asks the more universal questions. Bickle, Alex Christopher. “Oswald Spengler.” Geni (22 January 2019). https://www.geni.com/people/OswaldSpengler/6000000043261712658. “Northrop Frye argued that while every element of Spengler’s thesis has been refuted a dozen times, it is ‘one of the world’s great Romantic poems’ and its leading ideas are ‘as much part of our mental outlook today as the electron or the dinosaur, and in that sense we are all Spenglerians.’ Frye said he ‘practically slept [with The Decline of the West] under my pillow for several years’ while a student. Spengler’s book inspired him to have his own ‘vision of coherence,’ resulting in Anatomy of Criticism. Frye later criticized the over-reading of Spengler’s metaphorical system as actual history rather than an organizing principle.” Bidini, Dave. “Northrop Frye in Tacts.” Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2011. Bieger, Laura. “No Place Like Home; or, Dwelling in Narrative.” New Literary History 46, no. 1 (2015): 17–39. “Applying Northrop Frye’s formalist model to historiography, Hayden White famously argues that historiography follows the same basic narrative modes as fiction (comedy, tragedy, romance, satire), which are, in turn, inclined to use different kinds of figurative language (from tragedy to metonymy, romance to synecdoche, satire to irony).” Biegoń, Dominika. “Narrative Legitimation: The Capitalist Market Economy as a Success Story. In Capitalism and Its Legitimacy in Times of Crisis, ed. Steffen Schneider, Henning Schmidtke, Sebastian Haunss, Jennifer Gronau. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Uses narrative discourse analysis, as advanced by Frye and Hayden White, to understand the capitalist market economy. Bielik-Robson, Agata. “The Jewish Ulysses: Adorno and Joyce on Modernity.” University of Bucharest Review: Literary and Cultural Studies Series 2 (2006): 25–9. “I saw, spoke Yahweh, I beheld the burden my people held in Egypt. I come down to lift them out of Egypt’s hand, to carry them to a broad, open land. This great image— Northrop Frye would have said, ‘the great code’—of
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lifting, releasing, letting free, is one of the most recurrent figures of Western culture, and, especially, the Western modernity.” Bilbro, Jeffrey. “Sounding the Darkness and Discovering the Marvellous: Hearing ‘a Lough Neagh Sequence’ with Seamus Heaney’s Auditory Imagination.” Irish Studies Review 19, no. 3 (2011): 321–40. “An aspect of Heaney’s auditory imagination involves its power as a muse; the sounds of language assist Heaney to discover his poetry. Poetic scholars have noted how some poems follow aural patterns that may originate subconsciously. Northrop Frye describes how babble can become the organizing principle of lyric poetry, and Roman Jakobson argues that this aural intuition operates even when neither author nor reader are consciously aware of it.” Bilić, Anica. “Sveti Bono—na presjecištu književne riječi i teorijske misli” [Saint Bono—At the Crossroads of Literature and Theoretical Thought]. Diacovensia: Teološki prilozi 13, no. 2 (2005). In Bosnian. This article is an analysis of all the texts preserved in literary tradition related to the figure of Saint Bono. The saint exists in legends and in hagiographic and vernacular literature as a result of a typified literary procedure which reflects the medieval and popular perception of the saint. The article certifies the power of the actions of this early Christian martyr and explains his death according to the theory of Northrop Frye. – “Lik svetoga Kapistrana u hrvatskoj stihovnoj epici” [The Character of Saint John Capestranus in Croatian Epic Poetry]. Umjetnost riječi 1 (2004): 1–23. In Croatian. Applies the principles of Frye’s theory of modes to the figure of St. Ivan Kapistran. Billings, Bradly S. “Is Anzac Day an Incidence of ‘Displaced Christianity’”? Pacifica: Journal of the Melbourne College of Divinity 28, no. 3 (October 2015): 229–42. “Drawing on the conceptual language of a ‘displaced Christianity’ (Northrop Frye), together with the notion of the ‘numinous’ (Rudolf Otto), this article seeks to explain, and interpret, the cultural phenomenon of Anzac as a worldview embedded in a ritual capable of bringing us into contact with a narrative that both invokes and conveys a sense of meaning and purpose, and invites identification with something that is both wholly greater to and wholly other than ourselves.” (from author’s abstract) Binder, Guyora. Literary Criticism of Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 211–13, 280, 283–4. On Frye’s views of narrative as applicable to the understanding of law and Robin West’s (see below) appropriation of these views.
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Binder, Werner, and Dmitry Kurakin. “Biography and Form of Life: Toward a Cultural Analysis of Narrative Interviews.” Sociológia—Slovak Sociological Review 6 (2019): 563–83. Bingöl, Ulaş. “Eleştirinin Anatomisi: Dört Deneme” [Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays]. Uluslararasi Türkçe Edebiyat Kultür Eğitim Dergisi Sayi [International Turkish Literature Cultural Education Journal] 4, no. 3 (2015): 1366–81. In Turkish. – “Eleştirinin anatomisi adli eser üzerine” [On the Anatomy of Criticism]. International Journal of Turkish Literature, Culture, Education 4, no. 3 (2015): 1366–81. In Turkish. On the translation by Hande Koçak in 2015 of Anatomy of Criticism into Turkish. Provides what amounts to a long review of the book. Binhammer, Katherine. “The Story within the Story of Sentimental Fiction.” Narrative 25, no. 1 (January 2017): 45–64. Relies on Frye’s standard account of the Age of Sensibility. Binni, Francesco. Modernismo letterario angloamericano: Permanenza e irrealtà di un’istituzione del progresso [Anglo-American Literary Modernism: Permanence and Unreality of an Institution of Progress]. Rome: Bulzoni, 1978. In Italian. Biondo-Hench, Susan C. “Shakespeare Troupe: An Adventure in Words, Fluid Text, and Comedy.” The English Journal 99, no. 1 (September 2009): 37–43. “Northrop Frye was interested in Shakespeare’s comedies as a whole, and he found the plays unified by a clear pattern. First, the comedy is a movement toward identity, which, by the end of the play, finds its fulfillment in marriage. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, and Two Gentlemen of Verona are all examples of comedies that either end just after, in, or in anticipation of a wedding. In each of these plays the wedding marks the end of a conflict—either with an unrelenting law, a resentful sibling, a controlling parent, or a jealous rival who has necessitated that one or more characters retreat from formal society by escaping into a forest or by counterfeiting death.” Bird, John. “Legend of Comedy Who Inspired Several Generations.” The Independent (London Daily Edition) (12 May 2019): 35. “A satirist is what he was, but only if you use the term for its richest and most complex connotations. Northrop Frye wrote of satire that ‘it demands (at least a token) fantasy, a content recognized as grotesque, moral judgements (at least implicit), and a militant attitude to experience.’ Its distinguishing mark is the ‘double focus of morality and fantasy.’”
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Bird, Robert. “Schematics and Models of Genre: Bakhtin and Soviet Satire.” In Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics, ed. Ilya Kliger and Boris Maslov. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. “Calls for a Historical Poetics that would construe and construct genre not as a schema, to which a given text may conform, but as a model of engaging with the reality, a model that would affect the audience. . . . such a theory of genre would seek not only an empiricist description of literary-historical evolution but a forward-looking account that participates in the molding of the future. Such an approach, opposed to the Aristotelian or neoclassicist notion of genre as well as to the transhistorical theories of genre (e.g., Northrop Frye’s), is well established within Historical Poetics.” (publisher’s abstract) Birdwell, Robert Z. “The Coherence of Mary Barton: Romance, Realism, and Utopia.” Victoriographies 5, no. 3 (2015): 185–200. Birney, Earle. “Epilogue.” Earle Birney, ed. Bruce Nesbitt. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974. 213. Claims that in a review of his David and Other Poems, Frye misunderstood the prosody. Birns, Nicholas. “Failing to Be Separate: Race, Land, Concern.” Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2015. Uses Frye’s category of concern to explore Australian fiction. – “The System Cannot Withstand Close Scrutiny: 1966, the Hopkins Conference, and the Anomalous Rise of Theory.” Modern Language Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2014): 327–54. Bishop, Kyle William. “Vacationing in ‘Zombieland’: The Classical Functions of the Modern Zombie Comedy.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 22, no. 1 (2011): 24–38. Frye’s theory of modes appealed to repeatedly to characterize the form of zombie films. Bishop, Liam. Review of Desolate Market, by Julian Turner. Singapore Review of Books (25 September 2018). https://singaporereviewofbooks.org/2018/09/25/julianturner-desolate-market/. “We could momentarily turn our attention to Blake again, in particular to Northrop Frye’s reminder that images of his poetry shouldn’t be ‘regarded as a flagrant misuse of ‘pathetic fallacy’ and that ‘the “states” Blake deals with can seldom be identified with . . . a political event.’” Bishop, Sarah. “‘I’m Only Going to Do It If I Can Do It in Character’: Unpacking Comedy and Advocacy in Stephen Colbert’s 2010 Congressional Testimony.”
Journal of Popular Culture 48, no. 3 (June 2015): 548–57. “While the majority of Colbert’s appearance in Congress depended on comedy for its effect, his brief moment of out-of-character candor at the end of the hearing works to confirm that his presence was seriously meaningful. Northrop Frye reveals the ways these types of breaks in humor appear across comedic genres. He writes, ‘Everyone will have noted in comic actions, even in very trivial movies and magazine stories, a point near the end at which the tone suddenly becomes serious [or] sentimental.’ These moments, Frye argues, exist to play into our conventions about what is necessary to ensure a happy, successful ending.” Bishop, Tom. Review of The Staging of Romance in Late Shakespeare by Christopher Cobb. Comparative Drama 43, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 126–9. Says that Cobb takes his description of the romance mode largely from Frye. Bissell, Claude. Halfway up Parnassus: A Personal Account of the University of Toronto, 1932–1971. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974. 75–6. On the unofficial literary coterie in the early 1940s at Toronto, which included Earle Birney, A.J.M. Smith, E.J. Pratt, Pelham Edgar, and Frye. See also pp. 15, 50, 80, 180, 190. Bjarnadóttir, Birna. “Another Notable Insomniac in the World of Literature.” Review of Viðar Hreinsson’s biography Wakeful Nights by Stephan G. Stephansson. Canadian Literature 220 (Spring 2014): 164–5. “This book has also much to offer to the subjects of the poetics of immigration and the translation of cultures. As a living testament to Northrop Frye’s view that literature shapes cultural identity, readers can make themselves familiar with the Icelandic immigrant who became a key writer of Icelandic literature on both sides of the Atlantic; the farmer who ferried with him an entire cultural heritage across the Atlantic; the disciple of Emerson in the ranks of North American poets and philosophers; and the notable insomniac in the world of literature who worked in the field during the day and read and composed in the night.” BjerringNielsen, Bent. “Om The Inklings myteopfattelse som omdrejningspunktet mellem litteratur og kristendom i deres æstetik” [The Inkling’s Perception of Myth as the Focal Point in Their Aesthetics of Literature and Christianity]. FØnix 1 (1999). In Danish. Uses Frye extensively in discussing myth as the connection between literature and Christianity in the writings of The Inklings, including C.S. Lewis. Black, Max. “Foreword.” The Morality of Scholarship, ed. Max Black. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967). v–xi [ix–x]. A brief observation about some
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
of the qualities of Frye’s essay “The Knowledge of Good and Evil,” included in this anthology: looks at its construction of a general conceptual framework, its metaphysics, and its attention to the social side of morality. Black, Scott. “The Novel’s High Road: A Review Essay.” Eighteenth-Century Life 40, no. 2 (2016): 136. Review of Thomas G. Pavel, The Lives of the Novel: A History. – “Quixotic Realism and the Romance of the Novel.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42, no. 2 (June 2009): 239–44. On the usefulness of Frye’s account of romance in reading realistic novels. “Argues that modern, realist ways of reading fail to satisfy fully their own claims about the novel as a genre self-consciously located in history. Rather, novels cycle through the kinds of narrative named by Ian Watt and Northrop Frye and show how each is necessary to the other—indeed, how each can turn into the other. In recycling anachronistic forms like romance, novels do not simply supersede them but rather offer tools of a literacy adequate to a history much longer and more active than historicism tends to allow.” (author’s abstract) Blackshaw, Tony. “The Crisis in Sociological Leisure Studies and What to Do about It.” Annals of Leisure Research (26 May 2014): 1–18. “Sociology will never be quite equal to the complexity and infinite nuance of what takes place in everyday life, but it is impossible to think sociologically without arriving at some kind of interpretation, or another. However, and to paraphrase what the great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye in his Massey Lecture “Giants in Time,” drawing on Aristotle’s idea of the ‘universal event,’ said of the work of poets, what we meet in any interpretation is neither ‘real’ nor ‘unreal’: it is the product of the educated imagination—if by imagination we mean not, as is sometimes thought, the ability to invent, but the ability to disclose that which exists.” Blaetz, Robin. “Retelling the Joan of Arc Story: Women, War, and Hollywood’s Joan of Paris.” Literature/Film Quarterly 22, no. 4 (1994): 212–21. “My methodological approach in this essay assumes that any work about Joan of Arc is recognizable as such because it follows what Northrop Frye describes as the romance plot. . . . the romance structure, what Frye calls the analogy of innocence, is a lesser counterpart to the apocalyptic world of myth. It presents the desirable in ‘human, familiar, attainable, and morally allowable terms.’” Blake, Jason. “Roguish Self-Fashioning and Questing in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything.” Text Matters 9,
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no. 9 (2019): 100–17. Cites Frye’s reference to the quest romance. Blasing, Mutlu Konuk. American Poetry: The Rhetoric of Its Forms. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. Examines the poetic strategies of Poe, Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson and relates them to the four levels of symbolism in Frye’s Anatomy. Blattberg, Charles. Shall We Dance? A Patriotic Politics of Canada. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. 50–2, 72–3. On Frye’s notion of the “garrison mentality” and his view of the three levels of cultural identity. Blau, Sheridan. “Literary Competence and the Experience of Literature.” Style 48, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 42–7. Addresses the question, posed by Frye, of whether or not literature can be directly taught. Blazina, S. “Romanzi di sogno” [Dream Novels]. Alfabeta 41 (1982): 7–8. In Italian. Considers the novels of Svevo, Berto, Ottievi, and Malerba in light of both Anatomy of Criticism and Starobinski’s L’oeil vivant. Bleich, David. “The Subjective Paradigm in Science, Psychology, and Criticism.” New Literary History 7 (Winter 1976): 313–34 [331]. About Frye’s pursuit of dianoia, the knowledge about literature, as opposed to nous, the knowledge of literature, which is experiential and subjective. Bliss, Frank W., and Earl R. MacCormac. “Two Poles of Metaphor: Frye and Beardsley.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 11 (January 1977): 33–49. An analysis of Frye’s and Beardsley’s theories of metaphor, which stand as polar opposites. “Frye attempts to protect metaphor from losing its tension and decaying into ordinary language. He wants metaphor to retain its suggestiveness and its absurd juxtaposition to referents. At the other extreme, Beardsley wants to ground metaphor in the literal. . . . Neither presents a theory of metaphor that can account for the variety of metaphoric uses one finds in literature.” Blodgett, Edward D. “Comparative Literature in Canada: A Case Study.” In Comparative Literature for the New Century, ed. Giulia de Gasperi and Joseph Pivato. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018. Notes the differences between comparative literature as a discipline at the University of Toronto, where Frye was the chief luminary, and at the University of Alberta, where M.V. Dimić’s influence was paramount. “Although he did not possess either Frye’s rootedness in Canada nor his public éclat nor the international reputation acquired through his book on
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Blake, in his literary theory, and his studies of the Bible, Professor Dimić was more firmly rooted in comparative literature, which resulted, inter alia, in our hosting one of the congresses of the ICLA/AILC.” – “European Theory and Canadian Criticism.” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 11, no. 2 (1986): 5–14. Begins this survey with Frye, who “represents the grid through which theory in general has been in large measure perceived for some two decades.” Blodgett, Harriet. “Through the Labyrinth with Daniel: The Mythic Structure of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 9 (March 1988): 164–79. A study of Eliot’s novel from the point of view of “the theories of symbolic imagery proposed by Jung and . . . the narrative patterns for literature identified by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism.” Bloom, Harold. The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon. Ed. David Mikics. New American Library, 2019. “For more than 50 years, Bloom has produced incisive literary criticism, offering both close readings of writers’ works and their place in what he considers to be the American canon. Drawing from published volumes, several long out of print, and assorted other sources, David Mikics gathers a sampling of Bloom’s essays on writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to represent the scope and depth of the critic’s capacious interests. . . . Besides defending his own evaluations, Bloom sets his views alongside those of many major critics, including Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson, Nina Baym, Irving Howe, and Northrop Frye.” – “‘Before Moses Was, I Am’: The Original and Belated New Testaments.” In Poetics of Influence. Ed. John Hollander. New Haven, CT: Henry R. Schwab, 1988. – “Foreword: Northrop Frye in Retrospect.” In Frye, Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000. vii–xi. “Frye’s criticism will survive because it is serious, spiritual, and comprehensive, but not because it is systematic or a manifestation of genius. If Anatomy of Criticism begins to seem a period piece, so does The Sacred Wood of T.S. Eliot. Literary criticism, to survive, must abandon the universities, where ‘cultural criticism’ is a triumphant beast not to be expelled. The anatomies issuing from the academies concern themselves with the intricate secrets of Victorian women’s underwear and the narrative histories of the female bosom. Critical reading, the discipline of how to read and why, will survive in those solitary scholars, out in society, whose single candles Emerson prophesied and Wallace Stevens celebrated. Such scholars, turning Frye’s pages, will find copious
precepts and examples to help sustain them in their solitude.” – “Harold Bloom” [an interview with Bloom]. In Salusinszky, Criticism in Society, 45–73 [61–4, 71]. Replies to questions about Frye’s influence on his own work and about his differences with Frye on value judgments and the social function of poetry. Says that Frye is his “authentic precursor” and refers to him as “a kind of Miltonic figure . . . the largest and most crucial literary critic in the English language” since Pater and Wilde. – “Literary Love.” Yale Review 99, no. 1 (January 2011): 15–26. “The article presents the author’s views regarding literary criticism, including his reading of Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, by Northrop Frye.” – A Map of Misreading. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. 30. Argues that Frye’s myths of freedom and concern are a Low Church version of Eliot’s AngloCatholic myth of tradition and the individual talent, but that such understanding of the relation of the individual to tradition is a fiction. Believes that we now need a theory of literary history that highlights the interplay of repetition and discontinuity rather than simply the theory of continuity he sees in Frye’s work. – “The Point of View for My Work as a Critic: A Dithyramb.” The Hopkins Review 2, no. 1 (Winter 2009), New Series: 28–48. “I do not recall reading any literary criticism, as opposed to literary biography, until I was an undergraduate. At seventeen I purchased Northrop Frye’s study of William Blake, Fearful Symmetry, soon after its publication. What Hart Crane was to me at ten, Frye became at seventeen, an overwhelming experience. Frye’s influence on me lasted twenty years but came tumbling down on my thirty-seventh birthday, when I awakened from a nightmare and then passed the entire day in composing a dithyramb, ‘The Covering Cherub.’” – “Preface.” In Essayists and Prophets. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House, 2003. Considers Frye’s view of biblical typology. Bloom, Michael. “Woyzeck and Kaspar: The Congruities in Drama and Film.” Literature/Film Quarterly 8, no. 4 (1980): 225–31. “During this century, as Northrop Frye notes, European literature’s centre of gravity has become situated firmly in the ironic mode. This modernist perspective has undoubtedly helped bring about not only the avid critical interest in Büchner and Woyzeck but also the rediscovery of the Kaspar legend, most notably in Peter Handke’s play Kaspar and Werner Herzog’s film Jeder Für Sich und Gott Gegen Alle (Every Man for Himself and God against All).”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Bloor, Michael, Neil McKeganey, and Dick Fonkert. “Introduction.” One Foot in Eden: A Sociological Study of the Range of Therapeutic Community Practice. London: Routledge, 2019. Glances at Frye’s conception of the literary utopia. Blue, William R. Spanish Comedy and Historical Contexts in the 1620s. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. In chapter 2 analyses twenty plays, based on a modification of Frye’s comic mythoi, suggesting that women as well as men can guide the action in these plays. Blyth, Molly. “James Reaney’s Poetic in The Red Heart.” Essays on Canadian Writing 2 (1975): 2–8. Argues that The Red Heart reveals the influence of Frye’s theories, but not to the extent suggested by Alvin Lee’s James Reaney. The Red Heart reveals rather a “mythology which is the daemonic, post-lapsarian counterpart” to Frye’s vision of innocence. Bogdan, Deanne. “Betwixt and Between: Working through the Aesthetic in Philosophy of Education.” George F. Kneller Lecture, Conference of the American Educational Studies Association Savannah, Georgia, 30 October 2008. Educational Studies 46, no. 3 (2010): 291–316. Outlines the three phases of her professional career, the first of which, philosophy of literature, was heavily indebted to Frye. – “A Case for Re-Educating the Imagination.” Textual Studies in Canada 2 (1992): 211–14. “I wish to put forward the proposition that the legacy of the educated imagination, as enunciated by Frye and the humanist tradition in literary criticism, cannot cope with its own claim to empower student readers at all times and in all situations. Basic assumptions about the intrinsic educational value of literature, which have underwritten the classic defenses of poetry in the history of criticism, are now being thrown open to question by the politics of the engaged reader within an educational setting and reinforced by pedagogies grounded in reader-response theory.” – “From Stubborn Structure to Double Mirror: The Evolution of Northrop Frye’s Theory of Poetic Creation and Response.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 23 (Summer 1989): 33–43. Examines “the role of the reader in The Great Code and . . . what Frye’s conception of poetic response in it can tell us about his theory of literature.” Discovers that in The Great Code Frye has shifted from his earlier positions on both response and creation. His earlier associations of temporality with centrifugal meaning and spatiality with centripetal meaning have been modified, so that he now encourages
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a direct, participating response no longer separated from the critical response. – “Is It Relevant and Does It Work? Reconsidering Literature Taught as Rhetoric.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 16 (Winter 1982): 27–39. Argues that Frye’s apology for poetry can help counter the Platonic fallacies about the relationship between art and life. Frye, like Sidney and Shelley, justifies the extrinsic value of literature on the basis of its aesthetic integrity. – “Let Them Eat Cake.” English Journal 70 (November 1981): 33–40. Outlines Frye’s conception of the centrifugal fallacy in criticism (seeing literary meaning as referring to some extra-literary truth) and the centripetal fallacy (seeing literary meaning as aesthetically self-referential). Discovers that the first fallacy lies behind a great deal of thinking in those current educational theories that seek to make literature relevant (e.g., the Language and Learning Movement) and that the second fallacy appears in educational theories that want to make literary form affect, emotional response, or morality. Argues that both fallacies base the value of art on something that it is not. – “Literary Response as Dialectic: Modes and Levels of Engagement and Detachment.” Cuadernos de Filología Inglesa 2 (1986): 45–62. An expanded version of “Response to Literature” (see below). Uses Frye’s concepts and some of his language to analyse and classify the different kinds of literary response. – “Music, McLuhan, Modality: Musical Experience from ‘Extreme Occasion’ to ‘Alchemy.’” Media Tropes 1 (2008): 71–101. EJournal. Bogdan’s notes contain a number of references to Frye’s views on music. – “Musical/Literary Boundaries in Northrop Frye.” Changing English 6, no. 1 (1999): 57–79. Relates the fugue and the lyric to the principles of Frye’s criticism, particularly his views on centripetal meaning and his notion of the “cultural envelope.” – “Northrop Frye and the Defence of Literature.” English Studies in Canada 8 (June 1982): 203–14. Examines Frye’s work as a “defence of literature” in the tradition of Sidney and Shelley. Believes Frye’s system resolves the philosophical problem of the Platonic paradox or Socratic dilemma: the poet as a licensed liar. Sees Frye’s contribution to the question of the value of literature in his broad conception of the dialectic between poetic creation and response: in this framework literature can successfully delight without injuring its seriousness and instruct without destroying its integrity. Concludes that Frye resembles Plato himself, in that the true artist becomes the wise man and the ultimate art-form
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becomes the ongoing process of the dialectical action between literature and life. – “Pygmalion as Pedagogue: Subjectivist Bias in the Teaching of Literature.” English Education 16 (May 1984): 67–75. Argues against the simplistic separation of subjective and objective responses to literature. Calls upon Frye’s conception of the social value of literature to argue that the response to literature should be to its structure as well as its content and that such an approach to literature can lead to valuable practical and pedagogical results. – “The (Re)Educated Imagination.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 84–96. An account of her longstanding and sometimes agonistic relationship with Frye’s idea of the educated imagination from a feminist perspective. Proposes to reconfigure Frye’s view with one that revises the gendered subject/object hierarchy she finds in Frye. – Re-Educating the Imagination: Toward a Poetics, Politics, and Pedagogy of Literary Engagement. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, Heinemann; Toronto: Irwin, 1992. A critique, largely from a feminist perspective, of Frye’s theory of the educated imagination. Although Frye’s presence is felt on practically every page of this book, chapters 3–5 examine specifically Frye’s answers to what Bogdan calls the “metaproblem”: what literature should be taught, why we should teach it, and how it should be taught. – “Response to Literature.” Paper presented at the 1984 International Federation of Teachers of English Conference, East Lansing, MI. 5 pp. Photoduplicated. Draws upon Frye’s theory of literary value to argue that aesthetic response should be properly conceived as a dialectic of engagement and detachment.
Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society, ed. Audrey Thompson. Normal, IL: Philosophy of Education Society, 1993. An account of a classroom experience in which students reacted to Bogdan’s feminist critique of Frye. Bogdan, Deanne, E. James Cunningham, and Hilary David. “Reintegrating Sensibility: Situated Knowledges and Embodied Readers.” New Literary History 31, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 477–507. This essay seeks to provide a framework for literary sensibility by theorizing an approach to literature that balances emotional response and objectivity. Analyses Frye’s theory about the relationship between reader and text, focusing on the reintegration of sensibility into literary study. Bohm, Arnd. “Northrop Frye: The Consolation of Criticism.” Monatshefte für Deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur 95, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 310–17. A rereading of Frye’s Anatomy fifty years after. Begins by saying that “even an attentive observer to the current state of literary theory and discussion would be hard put to cite specific instances of Frye having any immediate influence on critical practice.” Concludes by saying that we cannot take Anatomy of Criticism too seriously because it is, by the terms of Frye’s own definition of the anatomy as a fictional form, a satire. Boitani, Piero. “Codex Fryeanus 0-15-136902-X: A Medieval Reading of The Great Code.” In Lombardo, Ritratto, 121–34. Examines the ways in which Frye blends medieval and modern ways of reading in The Great Code. – “La letteratura del ‘Grande Codice.’” MondOperaio 40 (June 1987): 105–9. In Italian.
– “A Taxonomy of Responses and Respondents to Literature.” Journal of the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society 1, no. 1 (1987). “This paper grows out of three research interests: the philosophical bases of aesthetic/literary response, a developmental approach to the pedagogical treatment of student responses to literature, and the critical theory of Northrop Frye, in whose work the concepts and some of my terminology originates.”
Boje, David M. Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001. Reports on an experiment in which MBA students were asked to write about the plots in Marx’s Das Kapital based on their understanding of Frye’s four mythoi. Summarizes the readings of six students, which illustrate disagreements over whether Marx’s emplotments were tragic, ironic/satiric, or romantic.
– “Virtual and Actual Forms of Literary Response.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 20, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 51–5. Reveals a substantial debt to Frye’s views on the different kinds of literary response.
Bolin, John. “‘This is not a parable’: Transformations of the Prodigal Son in Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Coetzee.” Studies in the Novel 50, no. 2 (Summer 2018): 233–54. Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel “approvingly cites Northrop Frye’s claim that this is the defining characteristic of the novel: ‘the alliance of time and Western man.’”
– “When Is a Singing School (Not) a Chorus? The Emancipatory Agenda in Feminist Pedagogy and Literature Education.” In Proceedings of the Forty-Ninth
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Bollinger, Heidi Elisabeth. “Crimes of Racial and Generic Mixing in John A. Williams’s Clifford’s Blues.” Journal of Narrative Theory 44, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 267–303. “Genre theory is rife with metaphors of purity and contamination, incarceration, and racial segregation. In Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye comments, ‘the forms of prose fiction are mixed, like racial strains in human beings.’” Bomher, Noemi. “Critica lui Northrop Frye” [Northrop Frye’s Criticism]. Cronica 8, no. 15 (1973): 12. In Romanian. Bona, Nicolas Dalla. “Carl Jung and Northrop Frye: The Fathers of Archetypes.” Prezi (15 April 2015). https:// prezi.com/wrs032sjvihp/carl-jung-and-northrop-fryethe-fathers-of-archetypes/. Devotes a section to Frye’s archetypal characters, in particular the alazon and eiron, and to the tragic and ironic mythoi. Bonafin, Massimo. “Gli archetipi e i testi: Modelli, metodi, interpretazioni” [Archetypes and Texts: Models, Methods, Interpretations]. L’immagine riflessa: Testi, società, culture 27, nos. 1–2 (January–December 2018): 1–16. In Italian. – “Materiali per un dialogo postumo tra Northrop Frye e Michail M. Bakhtin.” [Materials for a Posthumous Dialogue between Northrop Frye and Michail M. Bakhtin]. L’immagine riflessa, N.S. 25, nos. 1–2 (2016): 53–66. In Italian. “Although Frye and Bakhtin seem to ignore each other’s writings, there is more than one evidence that their thinking and ideas about literature can be compared and partially superposed. Focusing on Anatomy of Criticism this paper stresses the similarity with Bakhtinian concept of satire and carnivalesque (in a Christian sense), with dialogism and intertextuality; moreover the two thinkers share a comparatistic and anthropological approach to Western literature.” Bond, Garth, et al. “Milton and Poetry: 1603–1660.” The Year’s Work in English Studies 93, no. 1 (2014): 482–520. Bond, Robin. “The Augustan Utopia of Horace and Vergil and the Imperial Dystopia of Petronius and Juvenal.” Scholia: Studies in Classical Antiquity 19 (2010): 31–52. Notes at the beginning Frye’s position that utopias are fundamentally conservative. Bondor, George. “Paul Ricoeur and the Biblical Hermeneutics.” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 27 (Winter 2010): 203–18. “The idea of analyzing the text in itself induces the thesis according to which the text exercises a form of authority, which points to the issue of forming the biblical canon. Ricoeur takes over several data from the analysis
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made by Northrop Frye in his book The Great Code. According to Frye, the biblical text constructs its unity along a network of images and metaphors. The literal meaning of the Bible refers only to itself, as a ‘unique, gigantic and complex metaphor.’ The evidence of the Bible’s statements is supported only through the relation between the Old and the New Testament. ‘The two testaments form a double mirror, each reflecting the other one, but none the world outside.’ According to Frye, the Bible’s literal basis exists, but it is not ‘natural’; to be more precise, it does not come from the external world that exists outside the Bible.” Boné, Ferenc. “Áldozat, vallomás, prófécia—Függelék a Javított kiadáshoz” [Sacrifice, Confession, Prophecy— An Appendix to [Péter Esterházy’s novel]. Javított kiadás. Kalligram 5 (2003): 3–32. In Hungarian. Notes Frye’s typological method of interpreting the Bible. Bong, Youl Kim. “Collision of Genres: Three Perspectives on Pamela.” Studies in English Language and Literature 49, no. 4 (2007): 53–70. Considers Richardson’s Pamela from the theory of the novel put forth by Ian Watt, on the one hand, and Claude Lévi-Strauss and Frye, on the other. “Watt maintained that Pamela is the first novel because it satisfies his premises that the novel rose out of Protestantism and capitalism, and that the novel represents formal realism. But Lévi-Strauss and Northrop Frye consider the novel as the exhaustion of myth. Frye considers genre as coming from literary tradition,” in which case the genre of the first novel is not realism. Boon, James A. “The Shift to Meaning.” Review of Meaning in Anthropology, ed. Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Shelby. American Ethnologist 5, no. 2 (2009). “A rich field of candidate criticisms awaits the curious anthropologist: Northrop Frye’s typological genre-mythos theory, which, launched from Frye’s monumental reappraisal of Blake, has expanded deepeningly through the range of variant conventions that organize Western literary, religious, and political imagery. Booth, Laura. “Want a ‘Norrie’ Bobble Head? There’s Only Two Ways to Get One.” Times–Transcript [Moncton, NB] (24 April 2017): A6. Frye Bobble Heads are given only to Frye Festival board members who have served for a long time and to winners of the festival’s Frye Academy. Booth, Wayne C. “The Use of Criticism in the Teaching of English.” College English 27 (October 1965): 1–13 [5–13]. Sees no evidence for Frye’s claim that there is a total order of literature and an ideal science of criticism.
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“One way to test my misgivings would be to take the five most respectful readers of the Anatomy and give them a work not mentioned by Mr. Frye and ask them to decide whether it is comedy, romance, tragedy, or irony or some combination, and then to describe the archetypes they detect. The chaotic results can be predicted.” As an alternative to Frye’s approach, proposes a more inductive method based on literary response. – “Preface.” The Knowledge Most Worth Having. Ed. Wayne C. Booth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. v–xl. Comments on Frye’s view of general education as contained in his “The Instruments of Mental Production.” Borklund, Elmer. “Frye, (Herman) Northrop.” Contemporary Literary Critics. London: St. James Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977. 212–18. 2nd ed. [London]: Macmillan 1982. 228–34. A summary of Frye’s critical views, analysed from the perspective of Aristotle’s four causes. The second edition does not change the text but brings the bibliography up to date. Boshego, L.P., and D.W. Lloyd. “G.H. Franz’s Modjadji: Archetypes of Time and the Transcendence of History.” Literator: Journal of Literary Criticism, Comparative Linguistics and Literary Studies 30, no. 3 (2009): 157–78. Calls on Frye’s theory of myth to help interpret Franz’s Modjadji. “Franz seems to be creating a mythical world untied to everyday historical limitations, deliberately. Some of the ideas of the most famous and all-embracing literary myth critic, Northrop Frye, are helpful in this respect.” Bosmajian, Hamida. “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Other Excremental Visions.” The Lion and the Unicorn 9 (1985): 36–49. Examines Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from the perspective of Frye’s five modes of action. Bosman, Hendrik L. “The Exodus as Negotiation of Identity and Human Dignity between Memory and Myth.” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 70, no. 1 (2014): 1–6. Frye “considered the Bible to be a ‘gigantic myth’ to escape the false distinction between ‘history’ and ‘story,’ as if the first was equal to ‘fact’ and the second to ‘fiction.’ He distinguished ‘two parallel aspects’ with regards to the concept of ‘myth’: ‘[A] story that is poetic and is recreated in literature’ and as a ‘story with a special function . . . a program of action for a specific society.’ It is interesting that even the Bible as canon is according to Frye a collection of related myths that functioned as an important means to maintain the identity of a culture’s identity.”
Bottez, Monica. “Another Penelope: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad.” University of Bucharest Review: Literary and Cultural Studies Series 1 (2012): 49–56. “We consider that the main purpose of Atwood’s epic is to offer a female counterpart to the archetypal epic/ romance pattern in its ‘threefold structure’ (Frye): the (mythical) hero’s birth (with the possible announcement of an exceptional destiny), the hero’s deeds (preparation, quest, tests of prowess), and reward. [Frye was Atwood’s teacher at Victoria College.] – “Cyclical Time and Linear Time in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” University of Bucharest Review: Literary and Cultural Studies Series 1 (2009): 74–80. “The doctor [in King’s novel] is modelled on Northrop Frye, whose rigid and compartmented theory of literature is the very opposite of the Native tradition that King’s novel embodies. Dr. Hovaugh is uneasy with the Canadian landscape, missing his garden (an allusion to Frye’s book on the Canadian imagination entitled The Bush Garden) and he always looks for ‘occurrences and probabilities and directions and derivations.’ . . . Frye’s emphasis on the importance of archetypes and myths rather than history in his synchronic view of literature as expounded in his Anatomy of Criticism and The Great Code is paralleled by Dr. Hovaugh’s reclusive retreat to his garden which, by association with Eden, suggests his refuge into timelessness and a world of his own making.” – “Metaphor and Myth: Northrop Frye and the Messianic Interpretation of Psalm 2 and the Psalter.” In OuTestamentiese Werksgemeenskap van Suid-Afrika. Pretoria, 1997. – “Postmodern Identity in Robert Kroetsch’s Gone Indian.” University of Bucharest Review: Literary and Cultural Studies Series 1 (2006): 115–21. “The pattern (symbolic) death-resurrection that Frye mentions as specific to the hero of romance is repeatedly reinforced” in Gone Indian. Boudjadja, Mohamed. “Autofiction et Double Culture chez Nina Bouraoui” [Autofiction and Double Culture at Nina Bouraoui’s]. Limba și literature—Repere Identitare în Context European 19 (2016): 187–95. In French. Bourget, Jean-Loup. “American Film Genres: Approaches to a Critical Theory of Popular Film.” Positif 190 (February 1977): 76–7. Review of American Film Genres by Stuart M. Kaminsky, who “placed himself under one of the best possible invocations, that of Northrop Frye and his Anatomy of Criticism.” – “Classical Hollywood Comedy.” Positif 415 (September 1995): 69. Review of Classical Hollywood Comedy under the direction of Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry
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Jenkins. Notes that romantic comedy is similar, on the one hand, to Frye’s conception of “new comedy” and, on the other, to melodrama. Bousé, Derek. “Two Brothers.” Film Quarterly 59, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 52–8. Uses Frye’s observation “that at its essence the narrative of the literary Romance has three stages: ‘the perilous journey . . . the crucial struggle . . . and the exaltation of the hero.’” Bové, Paul A. Destructive Poetics: Heidegger and Modern American Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. ix, 49, 109–10. Sees Frye’s archetypal criticism as “only the completion of the New Critical impulse to stabilize literary conventions to produce meaning.” Claims that for Frye literature is “hermetic and nonrelational.” Observes a parallel between Frye’s theory of modes and Cleanth Brooks’s interpretation of Yeats. – “Misprisions of Utopia: Messianism, Apocalypse, and Allegory.” Field Day Review 6 (2010): 70–93. On the intimate connection between Frye’s view of allegory and that of Fredric Jameson. – “The Novel, the State, and the Professions: On Reading Bruce Robbins.” Comparative Literature 62, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 179–88. Places Robbins in the tradition of Frye’s grand project. Bozedean, Corina. “Pour une approche litteraire de l’imaginaire du mineral” [For a Literary Approach to the Mineral Imagination]. Journal of Romanian Literary Studies 4 (2014): 154–9. In French. On the strong symbolic values in the imagery of the mineral world, which is one of the levels of Frye’s great chain of being. Božić, Jadranka. “Menipeja, karneval, skandal: Homo festivus i homo fantasia” [Menipea, Carnival, Scandal: Homo Festivus and Homo Fantasia]. Kultura 126, no. 2 (2010): 117–34. In Bosnian. Sees Frye as providing the impetus for discussing the Menippean satire. Bowering, George. “Why James Reaney Is a Better Poet (1) Than Any Northrop Frye Poet (2) Than He Used to Be.” Canadian Literature 36 (Spring 1968): 40–9. Rpt. in Bowering, A Way with Words. N.p.: Oberon Press, 1982. 24–36. A critique of what Bowering calls the “Frye school” of Canadian poets—poets who are overconscious about myth and critical theory in constructing their verse. Objects to Frye’s stressing that literature is made out of other literature. Claims that for Frye and for the poets influenced by him poetry is without moral content or experiential reference and criticism is nothing more than a game.
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Bowman, Frank Paul. “Utopie, imagination, espérance: Northrop Frye, Ernst Bloch, Judith Schlanger” [Utopia, Imagination, Hope: Northrop Frye, Ernst Bloch, Judith Schlanger]. Littérature 21 (February 1976): 10–19 [11–15]. In French. Contrasts the theories of utopia of Frye, Bloch, and Schlanger. Says that Frye gives a rigorous theoretical elaboration of the literary form but that he risks emptying the utopia of its problems and its contents. Summarizes Frye’s essay “Varieties of Literary Utopias.” Bown, Alfie. “Mr Wopsle’s Comic Hamlet and Pip as Comic Narrator.” The Dickensian 112, no. 500 (Winter 2016): 230–42. “Dickens’s comedy has been framed in relation to that of Shakespeare. Shakespearean comedies have been read as characterised by a hidden organic unity between the characters, making everything come to its rightful resolution at the end of each play, no matter how disruptive the temporary comic chaos may have been. As Leo Salingar writes, ‘whilst this kind of ending is conventional in comedy, what is strongly or distinctively Shakespearean is the accompanying suggestion of harmonization with the natural order. In these readings, comedy is a liberating departure from norms, which acts as a kind of safety-valve that allows normative society to continue unharmed.’ In 1969 Northrop Frye made this point about Dickens in relation to Shakespeare and suggests a contrast between the two writers, claiming that ‘whilst Shakespeare’s green world may be interested in revitalizing society without altering its structure, Dickens’s world does not have this conserving force.’” Boyagoda, Randy. ‘The Anatomy of a Scholar.” National Post (7 April 2009). “In his sarcastically titled ‘Pity the Northrop Frye Scholar,’ Robert Denham vigorously undermines the notion that Frye has become little more than another Dead White Male.” Boyarkina, Iren. “Utopia in the Future Histories of H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon.” Foundation 47, no. 129 (2018): 6–19. Draws on Frye’s definition, in his taxonomy of genres, of the Menippean satire. Boyd, David. “Mode and Meaning in 2001.” Journal of Popular Film 6, no. 3 (1 January 1978): 202–16. Uses Frye’s theory of modes to illuminate Kubrick’s film. Boyd, David, and Imre Salusinszky, eds. Rereading Frye: The Published and Unpublished Works. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Papers that originated from a research seminar at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in July 1994. Boyer, Ronald L. “The Sign of Jonah: Initiatory Symbolism in Biblical Mythopoetics.” Coreopsis: A
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Journal of Myth & Theater 6, no. 2 (Autumn 2017): 1–22. “The interpretive framework for this literary analysis is grounded in a cross-cultural, trans-medial, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective derived from the psychological criticism of Carl G. Jung and scholars influenced by Jung’s archetypal theories, including Joseph Campbell (comparative mythology/ literary mythology), Mircea Eliade (history of religions), Northrop Frye (archetypal literary criticism), and others. The study contributes to an interdisciplinary hermeneutic of archetypal, mythico-ritual imagery found in dreams, fairy tales, and religious myths and rituals, as well as literary and film narratives.” (from author’s abstract) Boys, Mary C. “Principles and Pedagogy in Biblical Study.” Religious Education 77 (September–October 1982): 487–507 [489–90]. Argues for the necessity of reading the Bible as, among other things, a work of literature that transcends time, using Frye’s concepts of the non-linear and imaginative nature of literature to reinforce the claim. Bracken, Christopher. “Reconciliation Romance: A Study in Juridical Theology.” Qui Parle 24, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 1–29. “Fredric Jameson borrows the notion of ‘mode’ from Northrop Frye, who maintains that ‘in every age’ a ruling class projects ‘its ideals’ in some version of romance, such as the ‘chivalric romance’ of ‘the Middle Ages,’ ‘the ‘aristocratic romance’ of ‘the renaissance,’ the ‘bourgeois romance’ of ‘the eighteenth century,’ or the ‘revolutionary romance’ of ‘mid-twentiethcentury Russia.’ Romance, for both Jameson and Frye, is fundamentally iterable. It can graft itself anywhere. It disseminates. It harbors ‘a genuinely “proletarian” element’ that restlessly seeks out new audiences and adapts to new contexts: ‘no matter how great a change may take place in society,’ Frye explains, ‘romance will turn up again, as hungry as ever, looking for new hopes and desires to feed on.’ “The problem is to determine what hopes and desires the reconciliation romance is feeding on now.” Frye notes that a typical romance is a quest that unfolds in three stages: a perilous journey; a crucial struggle in which the hero or his enemy, or both, have to die; and a recognition scene in which the hero is exalted. The recognition scene usually brings about a moment of reconciliation in which the hero and his enemy acknowledge each other as friends. But the moral transformation of the hero lies at the heart of the quest. The hero, who is usually, but not necessarily, a young man, suffers a lapse and is regenerated under the guidance of an older, wiser person, a parent figure.” Brackett, Virginia. “Jung, Campbell, and Frye: Recognizing the Hero’s Journey in YA Literature.” Dr. Bickmore’s
YA Wednesday [blog]. http://www.yawednesday.com/ blog/jung-campbell-and-frye-recognizing-the-herosjourney-in-ya-literature. “Savvy authors and teachers understand that readers’ early and repeated exposure to the quest plot, aka the hero’s journey, makes its elements and stages familiar and reliable for continued use in story-telling. We learn its patterns and feel comfortable as we encounter them at all levels, in most cases subconsciously cataloguing elements and their symbolic significance. We owe that ability to twentiethcentury philosopher Joseph Campbell. Campbell studied tales from many cultures and recognized repeated patterns, which he collected into a ‘monomyth’—one myth composed of elements shared world-wide. Close similarities in the mythology of disconnected cultures seem startling until we consider all focus on our shared human condition. We all fear, hope, celebrate and mourn. Work by Campbell, Carl Jung, and Northrop Frye can help us better understand the usefulness of such patterns, especially to young readers.” – “Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as Secular Scripture.” Wildean: A Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies 32 (January 2008): 43–56. – “Romantic Archetypes in Peppermints in the Parlor.” Mosaic 34, no. 2 (June 2001): 165–79. An analysis of romantic archetypes in Barbara Brooks Wallace’s Peppermints in the Parlor that draws from Carl Jung, Northrop Frye, and Joseph Campbell, among others. Bradley, Adam James, and Ullyot, Michael. “Machines and Humans, Schemes and Tropes.” Early Modern Literary Studies 20, no. 2 (May 2018): 299–301. “A challenge of this interdisciplinary method, however, is the difficulty of bridging the discrete yet interrelated epistemologies of literature and scientific inquiry. David N. Wear calls these ‘different ways we see the world . . . our constitutive metaphors.’ Northrop Frye identifies them as imagination (for literary arts) and reason (for science). . . . I.A. Richards distinguishes scientific from literary writing with the same reference to the writer’s imagination or feelings. . . . Both Richards and Frye make these distinctions in order to advocate for more rigorous and regularized methods of textual analysis, a ‘science of literature’ that compares literary criticism (analysis of texts) to physics (analysis of nature). Frye even posits that ‘the poet’s job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind.’” Braga, Adriana. “Mind as Medium: Jung, McLuhan and the Archetype.” Philosophies 1, no. 3 (2016): 220–7. Examines the influence of Frye’s notion of the archetype on Marshall McLuhan.
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Braga, Corin. “Altérité et imaginaire” [Otherness and the Imaginary]. Caietele Echinox 36 (2019): 21–33. “The archetypologies of Gaston Bachelard, Northrop Frye, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, or Gilbert Durand are synoptic macrostructures which offer typologies and taxonomies for constellations of images, symbols, figures, etc., staged by the creators and teachers of mythological or fiction universes. On the other hand, the superstructures are formal diagrams that provide the framework organization of texts at different structural levels from the prosody of verse and from and tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, and irony.” – “Du Paradis Terrestre a l’utopie: Avatars Migrants du Theme du ‘ Lieu Parfait.’” Journal: Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai—Philologia 55, no. 2 (2010): 105–13. In French. Glances at Frye’s distinction in “Varieties of Literary Utopia” between Sidney’s Arcadia and More’s Utopia. – “Jules Verne et la fin d’une tradition—Du Paradis interdit a l’anti-utopie scientist” [Jules Verne and the End of a Tradition: From the Forbidden Paradise to the Scientistic Anti-Utopia]. Caietele Echinox 9 (2005): 171–99. In French. “According to Frye, Christianity is polarized between two myths, that of the origins and that of the end, or that of the Garden of Eden and that of the City of God. The myth of creation is the equivalent of a contract between God and humanity; a breach of contract caused the Fall. Humanism opposes these terms with another set: the social contract and the Utopia.” – 10 studii de arhetipologie. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1999. In Romanian. “Frye projects an anatomy of criticism, a true image of invariants that can be found in all literary works since antiquity.” Likens Frye’s work to that of Adrian Marino, “a project in which comparative literature is ‘recapitulated’ in a theory and poetics of world literature by extracting invariants common to all European, Asian, African literature.” – ‘“A Thousand and One Nights’—An Anarchetypal Epos.” Caietele Echinox 20 (2011): 277–86. “In thematic terms, all the great myths, whether archaic or modern, may form an archetypal scenario, as happens with Joseph’s episode from the Book of Genesis in Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers, or with the Homeric Odyssey in James Joyce’s Ulysses. It was not by chance that Northrop Frye saw the Bible as the ‘great code’ of European literature. World literature may thematically be divided into large corpuses of texts whose familial gene derives from an archetypal pattern.” Brandabur, A. Clare, and Nassar AlHassan Athamneh. “Problems of Genre in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom:
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A Triumph.” Comparative Literature 52, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 321–38. Based on Frye’s definition of the four forms of fiction, argues that Lawrence’s Seven Pillars is a confession. Brandtzæg, Siv GØril. “Aversion to Imitation: The Rise of Literary Hierarchies in Eighteenth-Century Novel Reviews.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 51, no. 2 (2015): 171–85. Braun, Will. “The Long Path Back to the Bible.” Canadian Mennonite 19, no. 19 (28 September 2015): 11. “The Bible . . . behaves poorly as an historical account. Scholar Northrop Frye writes that, if the Bible were intended as a history text book, it would be a badly flawed one, with differing accounts of creation, numerous inconsistencies between the gospel accounts and many details left out.” Braund, Susanna Morton. “The Solitary Feast: A Contradiction in Terms?” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 41, no. 1 (1996): 37–52. “It is only his fall which causes Knemon [in Menander’s Dyskolas] to change from his selfish (or, as he would have it, self-sufficient) attitude. And it is typical of the genre of comedy that at the end this misanthropic misfit is reintegrated into society by his participation in the dance and the wedding,” which Frye describes in Anatomy of Criticism as the reintegration of the blocking character. Brautović, Helena. “Intertekstualnost drama Aut Cezar i Lear, Bivši Kralj Žarka Milenića” [Intertextuality in Žarko Milenić’s dramas Out Ceznar and Lear, Former King]. Riječ 3–4 (2013): 97–109. In Serbian. Calls on Frye’s theory of modes from the First Essay of Anatomy of Criticism. Braz, Albert. “The Missing Continent: Canadian Literature and Inter-American Identity.” Paper presented at the Conferências do Núcleo de Estudos Canadenses (NEC), Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil, November 2007. Says that it has become fashionable to dismiss Frye’s famous 1965 claim that Canada is “less perplexed by the question ‘Who am I?’ than by some such riddle as ‘Where is here?” which supposedly is not only dated but also misleading. Argues, however, that Frye’s teaser remains as pertinent as ever, since Canada continues to be extremely ambivalent about its spatial location. – “United in Oppression: Religious Strife and Group Identity in the Cavan Blazers.” Literature & Theology 16, no. 2 (June 2002): 160–71. “In his celebrated 1965 essay ‘Conclusion’ to a Literary History of Canada,” Northrop Frye writes that ‘Religion has been a major—perhaps the major—cultural force in Canada, at least down to the last generation or two.’ Religion, though, has now
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become one of the great non-factors in both scholarly and literary examinations of Canada’s cultural life, as elsewhere in the Western world.” Brebanović, Predrag. “Antitetički kanon.” Reč 79 (2009): 75–105. Frye’s views on the Western canon as opposed to others’ views, particularly Harold Bloom’s. – “Književnost kao biblija” [The Bible as Literature]. Reč 80, no. 26 (2010): 19–32. In Bosnian. Frye’s writing on the Bible and literature is treated alongside that of other eminent literary critics: Harold Bloom, Robert Alter, Eric Auerbach, and Frank Kermode. Bregman, Alvan, and Caroline Haythornthwaite. “Radicals of Presentation in Persistent Conversation.” Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3–6 January 2001, Maui, Hawaii. Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society, 2001. Online at http:// alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~haythorn/HICSS01_radicals.html. Beginning with the idea from Frye’s genre theory about radicals of presentation or root characteristics, the authors propose three of such radicals that are persistent in conversation: visibility, relation, and copresence. Bresky, Adolfo de Nordenflycht, and Hugo Herrera Pardo. “Poesía de la distancia en Valparaíso: Exilio, memoria y lugar de enunciación en Eduardo Embry, Luis Mizón y Osvaldo Rodríguez Musso” [Poetry of the Distance in Valparaíso: Exile, Memory and Place of Enunciation in Eduardo Embry, Luis Mizón and Osvaldo Rodríguez Musso]. Taller de Letras 52 (2013): 69–84. In Spanish. Poetic language is often related to ritual. For Frye ethical criticism associates the individual and the social perspectives, incorporating ritual into his theory of “ethical criticism”: “poetry unites the social rite or unlimited social action with the total dream or unlimited individual thought.” Breton, Rob. “Utopia and Thomas Carlyle’s ‘Ancient Monk.’” English Language Notes 51, no. 1 (Spring– Summer 2013): 211–22. “To admit and study the utopian program or its near realization in Thomas Carlyle’s Past and Present, section II, ‘The Ancient Monk,’ is not to claim that Carlyle was a utopianist or that he was especially attracted to the idea of utopia. Judging only by the way he undermines ideals, insisting on ‘mournfullest barren realities,’ and is quick to point out flaws in his heroes, it is apparent that Carlyle did not think in terms of perfection or perfectibility. Defining utopia, Northrop Frye points out that ‘The popular view of utopia, and the one which in practice is accepted by many if not most utopia writers, is that a utopia is an ideal or flawless state, not only logically consistent
in its structure but permitting as much freedom and happiness for its inhabitants as is possible to human life.’ Here, Breton argues that the utopianizing or totalizing features of Carlyle’s thought constitute the radical element of his radical conservatism and suggests that the utopianism of ‘The Ancient Monk’ exemplifies nineteenth-century concepts of radicalism, whether conservative or not.” Brewster, Scott. The Lyric. London: Routledge, 2009. Looks at Frye’s definition of the lyric according to its “radical of presentation” (poets speak with their backs to the audience and are overheard) and considers also Frye’s thesis about the musical boundaries of the lyric (melos), its pictorial boundaries (opsis), and the primordial forms of each (babble and doodle). Brezicki, Colin G. “The Pilot Light: Teaching for Life.” Phi Delta Kappan 92, no. 6 (1 March 2011): 80. “Northrop Frye spoke of ‘the powers of repression in the student’s mind that keep him from knowing what he knows.’ But what of the powers of repression in the teacher’s mind that keep him or her from knowing what he or she knows, that keep us all from teaching and learning gladly?” Brian, Thomas. An Underground Fate. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Applies Frye’s critical taxonomies to Graham Green’s fiction. Bricker, Andrew Benjamin. “Is Narrative Essential to the Law? Precedent, Case Law and Judicial Emplotment.” Law, Culture and the Humanities 15, no. 2 (June 2019): 319–31. “Emplotment for [Hayden] White involves the recasting of the historical record into an identifiable explanatory narrative structure. ‘Emplotment is the way by which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a particular kind,’ he writes, and proposes, after Northrop Frye, at least four ‘modes of emplotment’: romance, tragedy, comedy and satire. Historians, in effect, actively shape the unprocessed historical record into a preexisting or seemingly archetypal model.” Bridgeman, Mary. “Brigman Award Winner—Forged in Love and Death: Problematic Subjects in the Vampire Diaries.” Journal of Popular Culture 46, no. 1 (2013): 3–19. The epigraph to this paper is from Frye’s The Secular Scripture: “The improbable, desiring, erotic, and violent world of romance reminds us that we are not awake when we have abolished the dream world: we are awake only when we have absorbed it again.” Brienza, Susan D., and Peggy A. Knapp. “Imagination Lost and Found: Beckett’s Fiction and Frye’s Anatomy.” MLN 95 (May 1980): 980–94. Seeks to determine whether
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Frye’s theory of fictional modes is adequate to account for Beckett’s “Imagination Dead Imagine,” “Ping,” and “The Lost Ones.” Discovers that these “stories” are displaced myths and that Frye’s criteria for the ironic and satiric mythoi do define many of the characteristics of Beckett’s fiction written in the 1960s. Brljak, Vladimir. “The Review of English Studies Prize Essay: The Satanic ‘or’: Milton and Protestant AntiAllegorism.” The Review of English Studies 66, no. 275 (2015): 403–22. Glances at Frye’s commentary on Satan’s use of the word “allegory” in Paradise Lost. Brill, Lesley. The Hitchcock Romance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Offers a corrective to those critics who conceive of Hitchcock primarily as an ironist, not simply because he identifies the centrality of the romance narrative in Hitchcock’s works, but because he offers an account of the place of irony within them through the category of the mixed romance. His analysis of the mixed romance is developed from the literary theory of Frye, where romance and irony are conceived as contrasting narrative archetypes that can conjoin in any text. – “Hitchcock and Romance.” In A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 89–108. Uses Frye’s mythoi or pre-generic elements of narrative to examine the genre of Hitchcock’s films. – “North by Northwest and Hitchcockian Romance.” Film Criticism 6, no. 3 (Spring 1982): 1–17. Discussion of romance relies heavily on Frye’s account of the heroic quest. Bringhurst, Robert. “Reading between the Books: Northrop Frye and the Cartography of Literature.” In Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, ed. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2015. 16–35. An eloquent defence of Frye’s central tenets, as against the position of such postmodern critics as Christopher Norris, that literature is real and that it constitutes a whole that can be charted. Frye is “one of the great modern cartographers and taxonomists of reality.” He had no interest in disciples, but he does offer those who come after the opportunity to correct the map and fill in its missing features. Bristol, Michael D. “From Politics to Sensibility.” Chapter 7 of Shakespeare’s America, America’s Shakespeare. New York: Routledge, 2014. 167–88. Juxtaposes Frye’s view of Shakespeare with that of Harry Levin, C.L. Barber, and others.
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– Review of Shakespeare and Literary Theory by Jonathan Gil Harris. Shakespeare Quarterly 64, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 99–101. “Theories are comprehensive explanatory models that pertain to a well-defined object domain. In this sense, it is not altogether clear what would count as a specifically literary theory. Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism was a notable attempt at the comprehensive ordering of the literary universe. A close friend and colleague recently described Frye as ‘the Darwin of literary studies.’ If that’s true, then Frye still hasn’t yet found a Thomas Huxley to be his bulldog. Frye’s work is nowhere mentioned in Shakespeare and Literary Theory, even though he published widely on Shakespeare. Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence—also not mentioned—might also be a kind of analogue to the idea of natural selection that could fit in with Frye’s more comprehensive theory, despite its willfully obscure vocabulary and the general messed-up-ness of Bloom’s ideas.” Brivic, Sheldon. “Badiou and the Multiple Subject of Joyce’s Ulysses.” In Revolutionary Damnation: Badiou and Irish Fiction from Joyce to Enright. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2017. Regarding Stephen Dedalus’s mentioning Adam Kadmon in Joyce’s Ulysses, Brivic writes, “Northrop Frye, in Fearful Symmetry, says of Adam Kadmon that this ‘universal man who contained within his limbs all heaven and earth’ is central to Blake’s vision and to all poetic mythology. So one cannot develop a model of imaginative thought without it. Frye adds, ‘whether we see the larger unit as one man or as a multitude of individuals is a matter of perspective.’” Brković, Dragana Kršenković. “Međusobna povezanost tekstova: Mitsko zaleđe i arhetipska simbolika E.S. [Eduarda Sama]” [The Shaping of a Text’s Meaning by Another Text: Mythical Hinterland and Archetypal Symbolism of E.S.]. Folia Linguistica et Litteraria 23 (2018): 91–108. In Croatian. On Frye’s understanding of the archetype as symbol. Brnardić, Ana, Sead Begović, Damir Radić, Dubravka Đurić, and Branko Maleš. [Review] “Kritički pristupi: Poezija—Časopis pjesničke prakse]. Critical Approaches: Poetry—Journal of Poetry Practice 1–2 (2010): 105–12. In Croatian. “Frye says that in satire, the irony is militant. Satire wears elements of aggression, attack, symbolic destruction of order, wounded conventions. Or, as the poet quite directly says in the song ‘How to Become a Satirist,’ the satirist has a wasp sting on top of language.” Brnčić, Jadranka. “‘Živa’ i ‘mrtva’ metafora” [“Live” and “Dead” Metaphor]. Filozofska istraživanja 129 (2013): 21–36. In Bosnian. Notes that in Anatomy of Criticism
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Frye uses the word “hypothetical” to refer to things fictional or poetic. Brodie, Ian. “Pretend News, False News, Fake News: The Onion as Put-On, Prank, and Legend.” Journal of American Folklore 131, no. 522 (Fall 2018): 451–9. Draws on Frye’s view of satire, which links the realistic to a parallel world more expressly motivated by ‘stereotypes, fossilized beliefs, superstitious errors, crank theories, pedantic dogmatisms, oppressive fashions, and all the other things that impede the free movement of society.’” Brody, Jules. “Fate, Philology, Freud.” Philosophy and Literature 38, no. 1 (April 2014): 1–29. “After Freud and Ricoeur, Northrop Frye is one of the few writers on the subject to have faced up to the implications of tragedy’s scandalous theology. The tragic hero, he tells us, ‘enters a world in which existence is itself tragic, not existence modified by an act, deliberate or unconscious; merely to exist is to disturb the balance of nature.’ In this perspective, which is also Freud’s and Ricoeur’s, flaw-hunting must be denounced for what it is: a futile exercise in the denial of a millennial existential paradox, a desperate last-ditch effort to repress the suspicion that life and the human condition may in fact be devoid of meaning.” Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught. “Hemingway’s In Our Time: A Cubist Anatomy.” Hemingway Review 17, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 31–46. A reading of Hemingway’s short story collection from the point of view of its genre as an anatomy, in Frye’s sense. Brooke-Rose, Christine. “Historical Genres/Theoretical Genres.” New Literary History 8 (Autumn 1976): 145–59 [145–9]. Rpt. in Brooke-Rose, A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 55–71. On Frye’s theory of modes and the criticism of this theory by Todorov. “Frye’s theory of modes is a theory of historical modes, not theoretical modes. Inasmuch as Frye tells us explicitly that it is historical (and even cyclical), Todorov’s criticism is unjustified. Inasmuch as Frye calls his critical work theoretical, Todorov is right.” Brooks-Motl, Hannah. “From the Middle Distance: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s War Pastorals.” Modernism/ modernity 26, no. 2 (April 2019): 289–304. “Pastoral’s persistence was remarked upon by Northrop Frye, who declared it one of the ‘central conventions of literature at every stage of its development.’” Brooks, David. “Value-Judgments and Literature.” The Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics 1 (1991):
39–59. Paper given to the Inaugural Colloquium of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics, 4–5 October 1990, 39–59. “Frye excluded value-judgements from his system of literary criticism on the ground that they are subjective, and therefore not directly communicable.” Brooks, Kevin. “National Culture and the Firstyear English Curriculum: A Historical Study of ‘Composition’ in Canadian Universities.” American Review of Canadian Studies 32, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 673–94. Includes a discussion of the role Frye played in the changing views of teaching composition in Canadian universities in the 1950s and 1960s. Brown, Ashley. “Eudora Welty and the Mythos of Summer.” Shenandoah 20 (Spring 1969): 29–35. Sees Welty’s The Robber Bridegroom as an excellent example of Frye’s mode of romance—the mythos of summer. Brown, Louise. “‘Key to Education’ Is Love of Learning.” Toronto Star (10 May 1987): A1. Reports on an interview of Frye by Bill Schiller. The interview is published in Collected Works 24: 821–5. Brown, Molly. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Hidden Stories and the Hidden Star.” Mousaion 26, no. 2 (2008): 162–76. An analysis of K. Sello Duiker’s The Hidden Star, which is about the adventures of an eleven-year-old named Nolitye. Before she can regain contact with her true mother, Nolitye has to descend into the underworld, “a variant of what Northrop Frye calls the ‘night world, often a dark and labyrinthine world of caves and shadows where the forest has turned subterranean, and where we are surrounded by the shapes of animals.’ If the meandering and descent patterns of Paleolithic caves, along with the paintings on their walls, have anything like the same kind of significance, Frye argues, ‘we are here retracing what are, so far as we know, the oldest imaginative steps of humanity.’” Brown, Paula. “Gnostic Magic in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 23, no. 2 (2012): 239–59. This study of Susanna Clarke’s novel is informed throughout by Frye’s view of romance. Brown, Russell M. “The Northrop Frye Effect.” In Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence, ed. Branko Gorjup. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. 279–302. A three-part essay that treats (1) the influence of Frye on James Reaney and other poets, (2) Frye’s relation to thematic criticism of Canadian literature, and (3) Frye’s “profound effect on the perception and study of Canada’s literary culture.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
– “The Practice and Theory of Canadian Thematic Criticism: A Reconsideration.” University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 653–89. An extensive analysis of thematic criticism, as it was said to have been institutionalized by Frye, Margaret Atwood, David Jones, John Moss, and others, and then attacked by a series of detractors. Urges a more careful consideration of the different meanings of “theme” and proposes three expanded types of thematic criticism: explicative, comparative, and corpus. – “‘The Seriousness of Things beyond Your Understanding.’” University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 802–12. Discusses the element of the visionary that runs through Frye, James Reaney, and other Canadian writers. – “Systems and Cities.” University of Toronto Quarterly 74, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 881–3. “If a history of American theology can be traced from Puritanism to existentialism to consumerism, Linda Munk [in her review of Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible] turns our attention to theology as more formally construed, arguing that Northrop Frye’s religious writing does not stand up to rigorous examination. Her rereading of Frye is an invitation to pursue another avenue . . . for inquiry into Canada’s intellectual inheritance, and Frye is one of the shapers of a context we have come to take for granted in Canada, and we need to ask how Canadian cultural thought looks in terms of the reassessments of Frye now taking place.” Brown, Stephen. “Selling Poetry by the Pound: T.S. Eliot and The Waste Land Brand.” Consumption Markets & Culture, 3 April 2015, 1–16. – “Bow to Stern: Can Literary Theory Plumb an Unfathomable Brand?” Marketing Theory 15, no. 4 (2015): 445–64. Brown, Stephen, and Adriana Campelo. “Do Cities Have Broad Shoulders? Does Motown Need a Haircut? Urban Branding and the Personification of Place.” Journal of Macromarketing 34, no. 4 (2014): 421–34. The authors say that Frye’s view of personification is “nothing less than the cradle of civilization.” Browne, Timothy Di Leo. “National Style in the Architecture of Parliament: Whose Nation, Whose Style?” Canadian Journal of Urban Research, suppl. Ottawa Studies Special Issue 25, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 49–62. Notes the gendering of the landscape in Frye’s commentaries on Canadian literature. Brož, Jaroslav. “Biblická interpretace po začátku 21. století: Stav a vize” [The Biblical Interpretation at the Beginning
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of the 21st Century: The Status and a Vision]. Acta Universitatis Carolinae Theologica 2 (2014): 179–95. Notes the new emphasis on the Bible and literature that grew out of the attention accorded in the 1970s to literary theory and philosophical hermeneutics, such as in the work of Frye and Stephen Prickett. Bruce, Jean. “Home Improvement Television: Holmes on Homes Makes It Right.” Canadian Journal of Communication 34, no. 1 (2009): 79–94. “In blending genres, Holmes on Homes [a Canadian home improvement TV show] is equally concerned with melodrama’s aim to locate and articulate the ‘moral occult’ of home renovation. The documentary effect is balanced with the melodramatic tone of the series; thus ‘renovations gone wrong’ becomes the primary narrative obstacle, but not in the sense of reality TV’s ‘stories of transformation.’ Rather, the obstacle operates as a pretext for the melodramatic rescue Holmes performs. This is more in keeping with Northrop Frye’s description of the central theme of melodrama as ‘the triumph of moral virtue over villainy, and the consequent idealizing of the moral views assumed to be held by the audience.’ While Frye claims condescendingly that audiences do not take melodrama seriously enough to do them any real harm, Peter Brooks, in contrast, argues that the melodrama’s dramatization of a villainous nightmare world is quite personal and worthy of greater attention.” Bruce, Susan. “Shakespeare: The Comedies.” In Teaching Shakespeare and Early Modern Dramatists, ed. Andrew Hiscock and Lisa Hopkins. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 75–90. Notes that Frye’s understanding of Shakespearean comedy is related to archetypal myths. Such comedy had a tripartite structure, beginning with disorder, moving to a “green world” outside of culture, and returning to the courtly world of culture. Brueggemann, Walter, and Amy Erickson. “The Disclosure of Binding.” The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2015. 19–55. Notes that Frye’s dialectic of the “myth of concern” and the “myth of freedom” is crucial for understanding the Torah as gospel. Bruns, Gerald L. “Voices of Construction: On Susan Howe’s Poetry and Poetics (A Citational Ghost Story).” Contemporary Literature 50, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 28–53. “Years ago, Northrop Frye wrote, ‘Poems can only be made out of other poems, novels out of other novels’: all of literary history is a recomposition of received texts. Likewise Howe and her Emily Dickinson: ‘Forcing, abbreviating, pushing, padding, subtracting,
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riddling, interrogating, re-writing, she [Dickinson] pulled text from text,’ an activity that produces or reflects something more complex than the structuralist’s ‘intertextuality.’” – Review of Radical Indecision: Barthes, Blanchot, Derrida, and the Future of Criticism by Leslie Hill. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (1 March 2010). https://ndpr. nd.edu/news/radical-indecision-barthes-blanchotderrida-and-the-future-of-criticism/. “Hill insists indecision is not indecisiveness but responsibility to the alterity of the particular text. For someone of my age his project recalls Northrop Frye’s argument in the Anatomy of Criticism (1957) that criticism should consist in the comparative and contrastive analyses of literary texts, not in evaluative judgments: philological attention to the details of the text against a background of historical research whose horizon extends from Homer to the most refractory experiments in recent European and North American poetry—this is what the once and future practice of criticism comes down to, and one cannot imagine that this philological/historical principle does not have a place in most humanistic disciplines, including philosophy.” Brūzgienė, Rūta. “The Musicality of Literature and the Semiotics of Music.” In Readings in Numanities [sic], ed. Oana Andreica and Alin Olteanu. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018. 145–57. Notes that in Frye’s theory of myth there are two poles, the apocalyptic and the demonic. Brydon, Diana. “It’s Time for a New Set of Questions.” Essays on Canadian Writing 71 (Fall 2000): 14–25. Examines the issues concerning the state of Canadian literature and literary criticism, including the influence of Frye. – “Mobile Localities beyond Monocultures of the Mind.” Localities 4 (1 November 2014): 7–49. “Employing insights from contemporary postcolonial, decolonial, and indigenous theory, argues that home, identity, and the politics of naming “here”—in the sense of Frye’s famous question about Canadian identity, Where is here?—are emerging as complex “mobile localities” with implications for how a globalizing world is understood. The Cartesian reasoning that enabled Eurocentric perspectives to lay sole claim to universality is now being challenged. Bubeníček, Petr. “Alegorické a reálné v románu a filmu Cesta” [The Allegorical and the Real in the Novel and the Film The Road]. Bohemica litteraria 1 (2018): 156–68. In Czech. On the two worlds in Frye’s theory of romance that are realized in Cormac McCarthy’s The
Road: the world of innocence, light, and happiness and the demonic world of darkness, experience, and pathos. Buccola, Regina. “Introduction.” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: A Critical Guide. New York: Continuum, 2010. 1–14. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream stands as the most conventional of comedies. Indeed, one can study an array of comic conventions in the course of studying this play. To begin at the ending, the play concludes with the joyous celebration of a triple wedding; happy marriages, either planned or celebrated, are characteristic of the final scenes of comedies even in today’s favourite entertainment genre, film. In Shakespeare’s era, the classical tradition of new comedy featured the generational conflict that figures so prominently in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which the elder generation has to be coaxed and cajoled into agreement with the desires of the younger generation, often with respect to their romantic choices. In the formulations of Northrop Frye and C.L. Barber, the excursion of the four young lovers of A Midsummer Night’s Dream into the fairy wood also marks the play out as a ‘green world’ comedy in which the central characters resolve crises in their lives by leaving the environment where the trouble originated for a remote, ‘green’ location like the fairy wood outside Athens, where resolution is achieved.” Buchanan, Ian. “Allegory.” A Dictionary of Critical Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. “Allegory is important to the work of Northrop Frye and Walter Benjamin, both of whom devise multi-layered modes of allegory.” See also Buchanan’s entry on “myth criticism,” where he lists Frye as one of the most prominent myth critics. In addition, see also Buchanan’s entry for “metahistory,” about which he writes: “The consideration of what history is in a philosophical sense. The Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye was the first person to use this term, but it is American historian Hayden White who has given the term its most complete meaning. For Frye it meant simply the speculative philosophy of history, while for White it is the examination both of what history is and how that has changed over time. White is particularly interested in the problematic posed by the fact that history is a form of narrative, a feature it shares with fiction, and as he shows in Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-Century Europe, this has a significant influence on the range of meanings that can be given to a set of basic facts.” In the entry “Frye, Northrop,” Buchanan writes that “Frye’s work has fallen into a state of relative neglect,” an assertion that the present volume is intended to refute.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
– “Frye, Northrop (1912–91).” In A Dictionary of Critical Theory, 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. – “Metahistory.” In A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. “Frye was the first person to use this term, but it is American historian Hayden White who has given the term its most complete meaning. For Frye it meant simply the speculative philosophy of history, while for White it is the examination both of what history is and how that has changed over time.” See also the entry “Symbol.” Buchanan, Bruce. “Assessing Human Values.” Kybernetes 26, nos. 6–7 (1997): 703–15. Points to Frye’s observation in The Double Vision “that more advanced societies value the aim of developing the individuality and potential creativity of its members.” Buckman, Ty. “‘Arthurian Torsos’ and Professor Nohrnberg’s Unrepeatable Experiment.” Arthuriana 21, no. 1, Special Issue on Renaissance Arthurian Literature and C.S. Lewis (Spring 2011): 39–45. “In his preface . . . Professor Nohrnberg submits that the book [The Analogy of “The Faerie Queene”] began ‘as a criticism of the poem’ but later ‘evolved into a commentary.’ There is an analogy here, and an instructive contrast as well, to the work of Professor Nohrnberg’s mentor Northrop Frye, who learned the critic’s trade and gathered his seminal ideas in the ‘School’ of William Blake, much as Professor Nohrnberg benefited from a long sojourn in the ‘House’ of Spenser. However, Frye’s critical sensibilities typically led him away from the work toward his own reorganization of its pattern and method and meanings, whereas Professor Nohrnberg started in that direction and ended instead with a commentary that treats the poem in its entirety and its particulars, but not in the order or style that most readers associate with or expect from commentaries.” Bucossi, Alessandra. “Scriptural Citation in Andronikos Kamateros.” In Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond, ed. Teresa Shawcross and Ida Toth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 296–314. “In 1982, Northrop Frye described the Bible as ‘The Great Code’ for the decryption of western art and culture. It is a truism to say that the same ‘Great Code’ is the key also to understanding much of Byzantine literature.” Budac, Alexandru. “Summer Dresses on a Map of Anxiety: Recursive Tropes and Philosophical Memes in Donald Barthelme’s Short Stories.” British and American Studies 24 (2018): 43–53. “Barthelme is also a particularly late romantic. He wrote urban romances, damaged ‘Mythoi of Summer,’ to use Northrop Frye’s famous metaphor, anxious adventures, unsuccessful quests for a Paradise
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that never was, in which the heroine’s/hero’s worst antagonist is herself/himself. Barthelme’s stories are not quite sunny, but they are gleeful nevertheless.” Budick, Sanford. Review of Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition: Backing into the Future, by Stephen Prickett. Religion & Literature 44, no. 3 (Autumn 2012): 285–7. “Stephen Prickett is one of the subtlest, most learned literary historians of our time. Northrop Frye himself would surely have envied Prickett his encyclopedic control of vast terrains of English and European literature as well as theory and, indeed, of history.” Buell, Lawrence. “Emerson and the Idea of Microcosmic Form.” In Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973. 145–65. In speaking of Emerson’s remark about the universal order being a beehive or spider web, Buell says that the “kind of literary structure to which these metaphors point would seem to be close to what Frye calls ‘encyclopedic form’—namely a structure that will be atomistic, discontinuous, yet comprehensive and essentially unified by the artist’s vision of the cosmic order.” Bugari, Sulejman, Nezir Krčalo, and Adnan Džafić. “O filozofijskim i religijskim aspektima Dijaloga” [On Philosophical and Religious Aspects of Dialogue]. DHSDruštvene i humanističke studije: Časopis Filozofskog fakulteta u Tuzli 10 (2020): 231–46. In Bosnian. According to Aristotle, sounds expressed by voice are symbols of mental states, and written words are symbols of words expressed by voice. Although the symbol and the sign are closely related, on certain occasions they are identical. Still there is a difference, both visible and profound, because a sign carries only one meaning, and a symbol a multitude of meanings. According to Northrop Frye, it is best called an image, because the human imagination has the ability to clothe spirituality into sensory form. Bugeja, Michael. “Twitter Is a Test of Iowa’s ‘Nice’ Culture.” Des Moines Register (3 June 2018): OP3. “Like everyone else, I have convictions, fears and biases about the state of politics and the world. In private conversation with my spouse or with myself while grousing at the television, I am apt to espouse strong beliefs that I would never tweet or post to social media. Reason? I have beloved students, book readers, good neighbors and treasured colleagues and take pains to post my views in tempered language. I learned this early on in my academic career from the great Canadian social critic, Northrop Frye, author of ‘The WellTempered Critic,’ one of the best literary books of the
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20th century. Frye wrote that we should strive for a rich, conscious life empowered by elegant language and enhanced by ethical considerations. That’s just a fancy way of saying ‘Iowa nice.’” Buitenhuis, Peter. “Northrop Frye’s Iliad: The Alexander Lectures, 1965–66.” Varsity Graduate 12 (June 1966): 2, 4–6, 8, 10, 98–100. A detailed and thorough summary of Frye’s lectures on Shakespearean tragedy, published as A Natural Perspective. Bullough, Robert V., Jr., and Stefinee Pinnegar. “Guidelines for Quality in Autobiographical Forms of Self-Study Research.” Educational Researcher 30, no. 3 (April 2001): 13–21. Some of the insights about selfstudy in education are drawn from literary conventions, especially Frye’s four mythoi or modes of emplotment. Buning, Marius. “Modernity and Medievalism in T.F. Powys’s Mature Fiction.” Year’s Work in Medievalism 5. Papers from the Fifth Annual General Conference on Medievalism, 1990. http://www.powys-lannion.net/ Powys/medievalism.htm#N15. Argues that allegory in Powys’s mature fiction can best be grasped in the light of modern, post-romantic allegorical theory, such as that advanced by Frye and others. Buonanno, Milly. “The ‘Sailor’ and the ‘Peasant’: The Italian Police Series between Foreign and Domestic.” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy 115 (May 2005): 48–59. Considers Frye’s “classification of literary works according to the stature and capacity of character actions” as developed in the theory of modes in Anatomy of Criticism. Burge, S.R. “Myth, Meaning and the Order of Words: Reading Hadith Collections with Northrop Frye and the Development of Compilation Criticism.” Islam & Christian-Muslim Relations 27, no. 2 (April 2016): 213–28. “The field of Hadith Studies has been grappling and engaging with Ignaz Goldziher’s ideas about Hadith and, in particular, the isnād; but this focus on the isnād [chain of transmission] and the early Islamic period has meant that there has been relatively little reflection on how Hadiths actually work from a theoretical perspective, and even less study on Hadith compilation as a specific scholarly exercise. This article will argue that there is a need to think of Hadith collections not simply as legal works or repositories of information, but rather as literary works, which seek to say something that can only be understood through a process of compilation criticism. This article will use the work of the Canadian literary theorist and critic Northrop Frye to explore issues in the study of Hadiths and their compilation. Frye’s approach to the Bible and
English literature, particularly his ideas concerning the construction of meaning and discourse, adds a great deal to the understanding of the way Hadiths and Hadith collections work and how they can be read.” (author’s abstract) Burger, Patrick R. On the Precipice of Fascism. The Mythic and Political in the Work of Robert E. Howard and Ernst Jünger. Lunenburg, ON: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Pub., 2016. Turns to Frye’s archetypal criticism, among other concepts of contemporary criticism, as a way of foregrounding the work of Howard and Jünger. – “Red Shadows through the Lens of Northrop Frye’s Archetypal Criticism.” Dark Man 2, nos. 1–2 (2005): 38–55. Frye’s work used to illuminate Red Shadows, a collection of stories by Robert E. Howard. Burger, Willie. “‘n Verandering van vorm as die vorm van verandering: Antjie Krog se ‘n Ander tongval” [A Change of Form as the Form of Change: Antjie Krog’s Another Tongue Trap]. Stilet: Tydskrif Van Die Afrikaanse Letterkundevereniging 23, no. 1 (2011): 18–35. In Afrikaans. “For Frye it is important that the essay, like all literary genres, is not primarily aimed at transferring facts or ‘truth,’ since it is subordinate to the literary goal of being a structure of words. In literatuur, questions of fact or truth are subordinated to the primary literary aim of producing a structure of words for its own sake, and the sign-values of symbols are subordinated to their importance as a structure.” Burges, Joel. “Reading by Residual Means.” Out of Sync & Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. 38–77. Glances at Frye’s category of the “low mimetic comedy” from his theory of modes. . . . “Turbo-cum-King Candy [the villain in the Disney video Wreck-It Ralph] remains what Northrop Frye calls an ‘irreconcilable character’ that the narrative expels, with those restored to their jobs benefitting from the death of he who protested when he feared he might lose his own. While such expulsion threatens, as Frye notes in his gloss on The Merchant of Venice, to come ‘as close as possible to upsetting the comic balance,’ there is, to compensate, the character of Q*Bert.” Burges, Sean W. “Canada’s Postcolonial Problem: The United States and Canada’s International Policy Review.” Canadian Foreign Policy 13, no. 1 (2006): 97–113. Argues that a significant problem in Canadian foreign policy formulation is an obsession with the United States. Quotes Frye’s quip that a Canadian is “an American who rejects the revolution.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Burgess, Joanne Harris. “The Methodist Imagination of Northrop Frye.” Paper presented at the Mid-Atlantic Conference on Canadian Studies, Pace University, New York, 15 April 1988. Typescript. 20 pp. Examines the ways that nonconformist Methodism has influenced Frye’s imagination and the structure of his work. – “‘The Search for Acceptable Words’: The Concept of Kerygma in The Great Code and Words with Power.” In Aithal, The Importance of Northrop Frye, 136–55. Shows how Frye’s use of kerygma brings out the power of biblical language. Burgess, Margaret. “From Archetype to Antitype: A Look at Frygian Archetypology.” In Kee, Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word, 103–24. A critique of Frye’s gendered approach to biblical myth, tracing “the implications of Frye’s archetypological theory for the future metamorphoses” of biblical mythology. – “The Resistance to Religion: Anxieties Surrounding the Spiritual Dimensions of Frye’s Thought; OR, Investigations into the Fear of the Enlightenment.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 59–75. Investigates the reasons that the question of Frye’s religious views has been such a confounding one. Burgess, Olivia. “Get Happy: Play and the Utopian Imagination in Mark Osborne’s ‘More.’” Rocky Mountain Review 68, no. 2 (2014): 130–41. “Utopia is as much about alternatives for the individual as it is for society, as Northrop Frye presciently argued in 1965 when he wrote that new Utopias ‘would be rooted in the body as well as in the mind, in the subconscious as well as the conscious, in forests and deserts as well as in highways and buildings, in bed as well as in the symposium.’ However, both utopia and play are too often dismissed as frivolous or even dangerous, perceptions that may keep us from realizing the link between play and our ability to visualize and pursue new ways of being. It is this relationship that I explore in this article by merging Utopian studies and play studies to cast an interdisciplinary spotlight on the power of play to shake up unshakeable worlds. I am particularly interested in the ‘new’ Utopias of Frye’s prediction, Utopias of the body and of the subconscious—the very alternatives explored in play activities.” Buriro, Ahmed Ghulam, Aftab Ahmed Charan, and Muhammad Ali. “The Viewer Perception of the Connotative Portrayal of Superhero Characters in Postmodern Screen Fiction.” International Research Journal of Arts and Humanities 47 (2019): 189 ff. Draws on M. Jofré’s “Northrop Frye Anatomy of Criticism:
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Four Essays.” Revista chilena de literatura 72 (2002): 261–8. Burke, Alan. Review of Frye’s essay “Dickens and the Comedy of Humours.” Dickens Studies Newsletter 4, no. 3 (1 September 1973): 86–9. A careful and detailed exposition of the matter and manner of Frye’s essay, which is “one of those few essential essays—worth any number of recent books on Dickens—that compels attention and response.” Burke, Anne. “News from the Feminist Caucus.” St@nz@ E-newsletter (The League of Canadian Poets) (April 2008): 1. http://www.poets.ca/linktext/newsletter/ 2008-04-01/feminist%20caucus%20apr.pdf. On the Northrop Frye/Helen Kemp relationship in the 1930s as revealed in their correspondence. Burke, John J. “Reconfiguring the Idea of 18th-Century Literature in a New Epoch: Moving from the Augustan to the Menippean.” Eighteenth-Century Life 31, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 83–95. In a review of a book by Howard Weinbrot on Menippean satire, considers Frye’s views on the same subject. Burke, Meghan A., and Lauren Langman. “From Exceptionalism to Imperialism: Culture, Character, and American Foreign Policy.” Current Perspectives in Social Theory 24 (2006): 189–228. “The basic elements of American character that have been described, individualist, tough, yet moral, are clearly embodied in the American Monomyth. For Northrop Frye, the hero, on a quest to realize a vision of a free society with desire fulfilled and/or virtue restored, is of the most fundamental human archetypes. Surely found in the Bible, perhaps Moses or Jesus best qualify as examples of loss, the recovery of identity, and redeeming the people. In Greek mythology, Perseus, Jason, or Theseus are its exemplars. Joseph Campbell found this theme so often, he refers to it as the ‘monomyth.’” Burke, Milton. “Dis: Canto 34.” In Words Unbound: Teaching Dante’s “Inferno” in the High School Classroom. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2017. “So Dante uses ‘stars’ as the last word of all three canticles as signals of a comedic intention. Earlier, I followed Northrop Frye in claiming that literary comedy might entail not just any happy ending but one that depends on the ultimate reintegration of the hero into his environment, in some sense. (It might help to remember here that the Commedia is the work of an exile who can never go home to Florence again.) You could raise questions about how far the Hollanders are right in calling this ending comedic and about emotional management in a great work of
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literary art. How much does the poet’s desire to make the ending feel positive affect his handling of Satan earlier in the canto? How would they evaluate the emotional effectiveness of the culminating last canto of Inferno? Get them to thinking about how great writers orchestrate emotion satisfyingly.” Burling, Robbins. “The Metrics of Children’s Verse: A Cross-Linguistic Study.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 68, no. 6 (December 1966): 1418–41. Notes Frye’s emphasis on the four-beat line as the basic stress pattern of English verse. Burney, Shehla. “Edward Said and Postcolonial Theory: Disjunctured Identities and the Subaltern Voice.” Counterpoints, 417. Rpt. in Pedagogy of the Other: Edward Said, Postcolonial Theory, and Strategies for Critique. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 41–60. “Northrop Frye, a leading Canadian literary critic whose structuralist notions of archetypal literary criticism have fallen out of favor since the rise of contemporary literary theory, talks of an ‘identity of place’ rather than an ‘identity of self’ in the Canadian imagination, suggesting that the crucial question is not ‘who am I?’ but ‘Where is here?’ This notion of ‘Where is here?’ is crucial.” Burnham, K. Brian. New Designs for Learning: Highlights of the Reports of the Ontario Curriculum Institute, 1963–1966. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. “This volume, which may be looked upon as a sequel to the Joint Committee’s report, Design for Learning, edited by Northrop Frye (University of Toronto Press, 1962), contains the highlights of the reports of the Ontario Curriculum Institute Study Committees, December 1963 to May 1966.” Burns, Dan Eric. “Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie: Beginning of the End.” Literature/Film Quarterly 7, no. 2 (1979): 137–47. The Book of Thomas in Dennis Hopper’s film “presents us with a universe of what Northrop Frye calls ‘total metaphoric identification’ in which everything is potentially identified with everything else.” – “Pistols and Cherry Pies: Lolita from Page to Screen.” Literature/Film Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1984): 245–50. In his commentary on a film version of Nabakov’s Lolita, Burns calls on Frye’s characterization of the descent phase of romance and the symbols of the fairy-tale world. Burrill, Gary. “Northrop Frye: A Conversation.” The World: Journal of the Unitarian Universalist Association 4 (July–August 1990): 5–6. Reports on a conversation with Frye in connection with the CBC documentary, Northrop Frye: The Great Teacher.
Burrows, Mark S. “Dreaming beside the River: The Mississippi as American Vernacular.” Southern Quarterly 53, nos. 3–4 (Spring–Summer 2016): 211–24, 236. About a poem by Maurice Manning, Burrows writes, “This is poetry that comes not from seeking but from looking, a long and hard double-gaze: at what is before us, for ‘[t]he world is more mysterious,’ and within, for ‘[t]he point is what’s inside the mind.’ Ours is the work that Northrop Frye taught us to think of as ‘a double vision,’ in which everything becomes—at least potentially—not simply something seen but rather nothing less than metaphor, which we come to glimpse through the steady gaze inward, and not simply by means of a looking upon what lies outside of us in what the eye glances from moment to moment.” – “Raiding the Inarticulate: Mysticism, Poetics, and the Unlanguageable.” Spiritus 4, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 173–94. “Iris Murdoch suggested that literature is the art ‘most practically important for our survival and salvation,’ since words constitute what she calls ‘the ultimate texture and stuff of our moral being.’ It may even be, as Northrop Frye once suggested, that literature fills the vacancy carved out of the popular imagination left behind by the displacement of myths and symbolic narrative in modern societies.” Bush, Douglas. “Literature, the Academy, and the Public.” Daedalus 107 (Fall 1978): 165–74 [168]. An essay on the increasing isolation of critical thought from the reading public. Includes a short survey of literary criticism in this century, one phase of which is archetypal criticism. Salutes Frye as its “chief contemporary theorist” and praises his “range of active knowledge, inexhaustible fertility of ideas, and taxonomic genius,” yet believes that his “purely verbal universe” has no ethical or aesthetic foundation and is connected only tenuously with life. Bush, Harold K. American Declarations: Rebellion and Repentance in American Cultural History. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Shows that the use of biblical imagery goes beyond the personal level to the very core of American mythic culture. Makes use of Frye’s two competing myths recurring in American literature: the myth of concern, calling people back to a notion of historic American ideals (often taking the form of a jeremiad); and the myth of freedom, which sees America as a place to shake off tradition and begin anew. Whereas Frye saw the two myths in opposition, held by conflicting groups, Bush believes that they are often held and advocated by the same person at the same time. For a brief analysis by Bush of Frye’s two myths, see his “Structural America: The Persistence of
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Oppositional Paradigms in American Literary Theory.” College Literature 23 (June 1996): 181–8. – “Northrop Frye and American Fiction: What Would Jesus Read? Popular Religious Books and Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century America.” American Literature 88, no. 4 (2016): 863–5. Review of Northrop Frye and American Fiction, by Claude Le Fustec, and What Would Jesus Read? Popular Religious Books and Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century America, by Erin Smith. Both books are part of the “religious turn” in literary studies. – “Re-inventing the Puritan Fathers: George Bancroft, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Birth of Endicott’s Ghost.” American Transcendental Quarterly n.s. 9 (June 1995): 131–52. Contends that Hawthorne’s description of the public sphere in several of his tales anticipates much later models of cultural conflict, such as those posited by Frye and James Davison Hunter. Finds that Hawthorne, Frye, and Hunter all articulate remarkably similar structural oppositions as the basic parties engaged in cultural debate, warns against any unilateral domination of the public sphere, and seeks to foster an openly democratic form of public discourse that might ultimately guarantee the preservation of a civilized order. Bush, Ronald L. The Genesis of Ezra Pound’s “Cantos.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. “Northrop Frye, writing about Paradise Lost, differentiated the epic poem from long poems that are simply narrative (‘the more stories . . . [a narrative poet] tells, the more successful he is’) or simply encyclopedic. The epic, according to Frye, is ‘a poem that derived its structure from the epic traditions of Homer and Virgil and still had the quality of universal knowledge which belonged to the encyclopedic poem.’ That is, the epic structure as it has been passed down from the Odyssey to the Aeneid to Paradise Lost remains uniquely able to evoke enduring patterns of human experience. Frye contends that three structural elements account for much of the epic’s archetypal validity. First, the action is split ‘neatly in two’ between the wanderings of a hero and a comedy of reintegration. Second, the epic begins in medias res with its hero at the furthest point from home (in Paradise Lost from a spiritual home) and in the middle of a cyclical action of desolation, quest, and renewal. Third, the epic hero is presented in need of supernatural guidance for his return, and is forced to negotiate between two types of guidance—divine and demonic revelation.” Buss, Helen M. “Women and the Garrison Mentality: Pioneer Women Autobiographers and Their Relation to the Land.” In Re(Dis)covering Our Foremothers, ed. Lorraine McMullen. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,
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1990. 123–36. “Argues that an unquestioning acceptance of Frye’s phrase [one-woman garrison] has led to a blind spot in our understanding of pioneer women’s relationship to their new environments.” Butler, Marilyn. “Three Feet on the Ground.” London Review of Books 5, no. 12 (7 July 1983): 18–19. “Recent items of Wordsworthiana include The Visionary Company, The Unmediated Vision, ‘The Idiom of Vision,’ and a host of treatments of cognate topics such as Dreams, the Sublime, Paradise or Eden (and the Fall therefrom), and Imagination, along with its primary and secondary variants. This elevated discourse (or vocabulary, if it isn’t yours), which nowadays commands the respect of the graduate schools, can be traced back to the mode of thought of the Canadian critic Northrop Frye, a Jungian, who schematises literature into a rather small series of recurring archetypal themes. According to this view, early Neo-Platonism and Jewish Gnosticism, two anti-materialist and otherworldly habits of thought, offer the most useful parallel to Romanticism. Critics of Frye’s persuasion, a number of whom are gathered at Cornell and Yale, believe in something they call the High Romantic Argument, in which Wordsworth, a key figure, participates. A pronouncement of Northrop Frye’s states grandly what this Argument might be: The great Romantic theme is the attaining of an apocalyptic vision by a fallen but potentially regenerate mind.” Butt, William. “Word and Action in Margaret Avison’s Not Yet but Still.” University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 839–56. “The late works of each—Frye’s The Great Code and Words with Power and Avison’s recent poems in Not Yet But Still—echo one another constantly, as if in mutually assenting conversation. In this essay, I want to suggest several roughly parallel approaches to a theme manifest in Frye’s and Avison’s work.” Buzatu, Alina. “Narativul poetic. Studiu de caz: Zenobia de Gellu Naum” [Poetic Narrative. Case Study: Zenobia by Gellu Naum]. Analele Universităţii Ovidius din Constanţa. Seria Filologie 16 (2005): 53–66. In Romanian. Notes the anagogic phase that Frye locates toward the end of The Divine Comedy. By, Ye. “Literary Anthropology in Frye’s Thought.” Journal of Inner Mongolia University (Humanities and Social Sciences) 3 (2001). In Chinese. – “Myth and Ideology.” Journal of Jilin Normal University (Humanities and Social Sciences) 5 (2004). In Chinese. On the relationship of literature and ideology as argued in Words with Power.
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– “Mythological-Archetypal Criticism: Theory and Practice.” Journal of Shaanxi Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences) 2 (1986). In Chinese. On the development of Frye’s critical approach from the 1950s on. C Caballero-Aceituno, Yolanda. “Centres and Peripheries? The Augustan/Counter-Augustan Dialectics. Interlitteraria 11 (2006): 421–35. “In the 1990s Northrop Frye wondered what, perhaps, many of the counterAugustans had already wondered in the eighteenth century: what happens when a writer ‘runs out of marble’? that is, what happens when s/he gets tired of reducing the complexity of life to fixed stereotypes? Frye’s answer is clear: the Augustan sublime succeeded in “expressing meaning instead of merely throwing words in the direction of meaning,” and, consequently, “literature [was] moving towards a dead end.” Cadbury, William. “The Two Structures of Rob Roy.” Modern Language Quarterly 29 (1968): 42–60. Finds Frye’s concepts of novel and romance helpful in explaining the structure of Scott’s novel. Caesar, Michael. “Leopardi’s Operette Morali and the Resources of Dialogue.” Italian Studies 43, no. 1 (1988): 21–40. Caetano dos Santos, Robson. “Viver é muito perigoso: O mito da grande travessia da vida em Grande Sertão: veredas a partir da perspectiva bíblica de Northrop Frye” [Living Is Very Dangerous: The Myth of the Great Journey of Life in Greater Sertão: Comes from the Biblical Perspective of Northrop Frye]. Cadernos CESPUC de Pesquisa 28 (November 2016): 70–81. Begins with Frye’s assumption that “the Bible, with its immense number of myths, archetypes and metaphors, has become a ‘mythological universe’ that has inspired all Western literature in which consciously or unconsciously writers have searched and reproduced in their literary compositions.” (from author’s abstract) Cahill, P. Joseph. “Literary Criticism, Religious Literature, and Theology.” Studies in Religion /Sciences réligieuses 12 (Winter 1983): 51–62. Draws upon Frye’s conceptions of the literary universe and literary conventions in arguing that the centre of theological discourse is religious literature. Cain, William E. “Kazin on Dreiser: What It Means to Be a Literary Critic.” Society, 55, no. 6 (December 2018): 517–25. “The Canadian theorist and mythographer Northrop Frye noted long ago that each literary critic in his or her career experiences a moment of conversion,
of discovery and identification with one writer in particular. For Frye, it was William Blake. . . . For Alfred Kazin, the writer who made the most powerful impact was Theodore Dreiser.” Cairns, Craig. Associationism and the Literary Imagination: From the Phantasmal Chaos. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Cairns “traces the influence of empirical philosophy and associationist psychology on theories of literary creativity and on the experience of reading literature. It runs from David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature in 1739 to the works of major literary critics of the twentieth century, such as I.A. Richards, W.K. Wimsatt and Northrop Frye.” – “The Modern Scottish Novel.” A Companion to British Literature. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2014. 404–23. “Three works by European and North American critics— George Lukács’ The Historical Novel, André Gide’s introduction to James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and Northrop Frye’s Secular Scripture— provided ways of reading the past of the Scottish novel which also explain its major modern developments. . . . Frye’s emphasis on the archetypal underlines the extent to which the Scottish novel, from Scott to Muriel Spark, seeks to deconstruct the realistic emphasis of the major tradition of the novel in order to reveal the ‘deep structures’ that underlie all narration.” Čale-Feldman, Lada. “Bezdani snovi i njihove strukture: Northrop Frye, anatomija šekspirologije” [Deep Dreams and Their Structure: An Anatomy of Northrop Frye’s Shakespeare Studies]. Kolo 4 (Winter 2002): 147–61. In Bosnian. Also at http://www.matica.hr/Kolo/ kolo0402.nsf/AllWebDocs/lada. Rpt. in Čale-Feldman’s Femina Ludens. Zagreb: Disput, 2005. A critique of Frye’s mythical and archetypal theories as applied to Shakespeare. – “Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Shakespeare Criticism.” Journal of Literature and Culture 4 (2002): 147–61. Discusses the legacy of Frye as a critic of Shakespeare. In Croatian. Rpt. in Čale-Feldman’s Femina ludens. Zagreb: Disput, 2005. Calicman, Richard, ed. Contemporary Japanese Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Shows how Karatini Kōjin, the dean of Japanese criticism, has drawn on the work of a diverse group of critics, including Frye. Călin, Vera. “Prefata.” Anatomia criticii, trans. Domnica Sterian and Mihai Spariosu. Bucharest: Editura Univers, 1972. v–xiv. Contrasts Frye’s aesthetic approach to myth with sociological, psychological, and anthropological approaches. Places Frye’s work in the context of
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archetypal criticism, drawing especially upon the arguments developed in Fables of Identity and Anatomy of Criticism. Gives an overview of Frye’s understanding of the historical modes of literature and of its mythoi, symbols, genres, and archetypes. Calin, William. “Northrop Frye’s Totalizing Vision: The Order of Words.” The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. 118–38. On Frye’s achievement, his methods and presuppositions, and his relation to history, canon formation, current theoretical debates, modernism, and humanism. “The distinguished critics Robert Alter and Harold Bloom object, from a Jewish perspective, to Frye’s biblical hermeneutics. According to Alter the Canadian scholar revives ‘Christian suppressionism’; according to Bloom, he is guilty of ‘Christian appropriation and usurpation.’” Calin’s book reviewed by K. Gale in Choice 45, no. 10 (June 2008): 1754, and by Loui Lo in The Modern Language Review 104, no. 3 (July 2009): 828–9. Callaghan, Barry. Barrelhouse Kings. Toronto: McArthur and Co., 1998. 550–7. Lively anecdotes from several encounters with Frye at dinner parties in the company of Morley Callahan, the actress Gale Garnett, Alice Munro, and others. For a brief account of one of the anecdotes, see Roger Burford Mason, “The Impassioned Exile of Barry Callaghan.” Books in Canada 22, no. 5, (1993): 9–13. Callis, Jonathan P. “Allegories of Error in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 58, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 613–32. In Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa “Lovelace tries to recast tragedy in the terms of romance. Romance is the one generic frame Lovelace unambiguously claims for his life. Northrop Frye has argued that romances are circular because they ‘do not end: they stop, and very frequently they can be easily started again. They are designed to provide a kind of idealized shadow of the continuum of our lives, an endless dream world in which we can keep losing ourselves.’” Calvino, Italo. “Literature as Projection of Desire: On Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” In Calvino’s The Uses of Literature, trans. Patrick Creagh. San Diego: Harcourt, 1986. 50–61; English trans. of “La letteratura come proiezione del desiderio,” which appeared originally in Saggi, 1945–1985, ed. M. Barenghi. Milan: Mondadori, 1995. 1:242–51. Sees the principles of ritual and dream as informing the entire structure of Anatomy of Criticism. Because ritual is the technical or institutional use of myth, the city, to take one example, can be seen as a symbol of the projection of human
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terror, revealed in such mythic constructs as the city of Cain, the labyrinth, or the modern metropolis. But because dream is the projection of desire and the rejection of present institutions, the city can also symbolize the city of God, the New Jerusalem, and the court of the king. Sees the most innovative sections of Anatomy of Criticism as those that treat comedy, romance, and irony. Concludes by contrasting Frye’s criticism with structuralism, seeing the latter as austere and reductive and the former as a game of mirrors in which individual works of literature reflect the encyclopedia of human civilization. Câmara Simões da silva, Rafaela. “A Barca de Salomão: Uma releitura bíblica” [The Boat of Solomon: A Biblical Rereading]. Acta Iassyensia Comparationis 3 (2019): 167–76. In Portuguese. On Frye’s view of typology as a linear and unidirectional principle, moving from Creation to Apocalypse. Cambon, Glauco. “La critica nord-americana” [North American Criticism]. Il Verri [Milan] (May 1959). Cambridge Forecast Group Blog. “Northrop Frye: Literary Criticism.” https://cambridgeforecast.wordpress. com/2006/10/26/northrop-frye-literary-criticism/. A fairly extensive overview of Frye’s achievement and the importance of Vico and Blake for his critical views. Cameron, Barry A. “Tercentenary Celebrations of Paradise Lost.” Seventeenth-Century News 26 (Spring 1968): 17. A report on Frye’s untitled lecture delivered to a conference of Milton scholars, October 1968, at the University of Western Ontario. Later published as “The Revelation to Eve,” in Paradise Lost: A Tercentenary Tribute, ed. Balachandra Rajan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969. 18–47. Cameron, Barry, and Michael Dixon. “Introduction: Mandatory Subversive Manifesto: Canadian Criticism vs. Literary Criticism.” Studies in Canadian Literature 2 (Summer 1977): 137–45 [138–9]. Rpt. in Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence, ed. Branko Gorjup. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. 144–54. The authors ask whether Frye’s views on the achievement of Canadian literature need to be reconsidered and whether the criticism of Canadian literature continues to “reflect the dated letter” of his judgments in Literary History of Canada and to “ignore the liberal spirit of his general theory.” Cameron, Ian, ed. The Movie Book of Film Noir. London: Studio Vista, 1992. In-depth case studies of seminal films noir, drawing on Frye’s narrative theory.
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Camp, Robert Quillen. “The Tragic Spectator: Pig Iron Theatre Company’s Pay Up.” Comparative Drama 48, no. 1 (2014): 117–34. “I would like to consider how a raucous performance piece marked by the everyday victories and disappointments of simple consumer choices might somehow also open out onto something as unlikely as tragedy—how the existentialist dramaturgy of Sartre as well as the classical poetics of tragedy [a la Frye] might be mobilized to treat an interactive performance in which the spectator has become the protagonist.” Campbell, Rebecca. “Canada under the DEWline.” Journal of Canadian Studies 51, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 112–33. “The Distant Early Warning Line (DEWline) marks the intersection of military, technological and cultural discourses. It was both a radar system and a conceptual way-station in the fraught history of Canada’s Arctic, a punctuation point between the utopian socialism of F.R. Scott’s “Laurentian Shield,[”] the “near-future warnings” of Marshall McLuhan, and the ecological anxiety of our contemporary North. . . . “Unlike Northrop Frye’s stone garrisons, which were once supposed to define the Canadian landscape and its subjects, the DEWline is an attenuated border zone rather than a wall, defined by a technology that defends as it surveils, that weaponizes the collection of information.” Campbell, Robert. “From Playful to Ethical: Architecture of the 1990s.” Design Quarterly 153 (Fall 1991): 4–8. On the ways of looking at changes in architecture. Argues, following Frye on literature, that architecture was be seen either as playful or as ethical. Cites examples of ethical and playful architecture. – “Okay, Architects, Lighten Up—But Don’t Lose Your Ideals in the Process.” Architectural Record 192, no. 5 (May 2004): 67–8. Likes to think about architecture with the help of a yin-yang pair of terms he learned from Frye: architecture, like literature, can have two opposite qualities—it can be playful or it can be ethical. Campbell, Wanda. “To Flow Like You: An Interview with James Reaney.” Windsor Review 29, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 9–21. “One of the reasons I did the Doctorate and did it with Frye was to make myself a better poet. So that has sharpened the things you’re talking about. I still find his book Anatomy of Criticism a big poem that tells you about poems. It is like a wonderful music teacher that really gives you some harmony and counterpoint lessons. So all the things you’re talking about lead you to do a variety of things, I think, with some sort of professional skill. I meet so many people that, for example, are trying to tell a story in a dramatic form, and it’s as if their arteries are clogged with cholesterol
or something. It doesn’t have the right rhythms and the right turning point, the kind of things I’ve learned about from Frye. Mind you, there are people that can do that but have no content or anything to say, so there’s more to it than learning harmony and counterpoint. The same thing in music. You have people who don’t box the compass in the things you should be able to. . . . Frye calls that the dance in and out of forms. And I think that’s what takes years to learn, and it comes with practice, not just by thinking about it, like learning to play the piano.” Can, Aytekin, and Faruk Ugurlu. “The Humorous Role of Television: The Example of Sit-Coms Sample Program.” Journal of Research in Gender Studies 4, no. 1 (2014): 699–708. “Television does not completely refuse the traditional humor that comes from ancient Greek and Rome, unlike television which has developed a new comedy format according to Northrop Frye. In this new comedy format, plot and characters are getting involved in a simple order with a dominant form. Usually, the plot is about a damaged relationship between a man and a woman.” Cánovas, Suzana Yolanda Lenhardt Machado. “O ciclo das águas de Moacyr Scliar à luz da hermenêutica simbólica” [The Cycle of Waters by Moacyr Scliar in Light of Symbolic Hermeneutics]. Signótica 23, no. 1 (January–June 2011): 213–29. “This article aims at studying the cyclical images of water in the novel O ciclo das águas, by Moacyr Scliar. We intend to prove that, even though the work belongs to a realistic context, it presents mythical components similar to primitive and archaic societies, which allows us to approach the novel to poems [sic] and ancient reports. However, as the novel by Scliar belongs to a world without religious meaning, it is frequent to observe the deconstruction of myths, which is responsible for the parody intrinsic to the text. Our theoretical background is composed by the conceptions of Mircea Eliade, Northrop Frye and José Lorite Mena.” (author’s abstract) Canfield, Craig. “Response to Fred Johnson’s ‘A Phonological, Existential Analysis of the Book of Job.’” Journal of Religion and Health 45, no. 4 (December 2006): 619–27. Kathleen Raine “shows how Blake incorporated much of the Book of Job into his mythological poems. One of the most significant of the engravings which is on the cover of E.P. Thompson’s book on Blake, Witness against the Beast, as well as the front-page for Northrop Frye’s The Great Code, pictures God pointing to the Behemoth and the Leviathan. Job’s comforters have been separated from Job. They are crouching in fearful apprehension of the coming of the
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Redeemer. Job disagrees that God is punishing him for his unrighteousness, because he feels he has not been unrighteous. His friends say his unrighteousness is the reason for his suffering. The truth, as Northrop Frye tells us, is that Job is suffering not because of evil action (God is beyond good and evil), but because Job is inside of nature, and is without Vision. He does not know what is it is to have Vision and so he suffers.” Canfield, J. Douglas. Heroes and States: On the Ideology of Restoration Tragedy. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999. Drawing on Frye’s work, constructs a new set of generic categories for discussing Restoration drama as it is played out under the ideologies of late feudalism and the emerging bourgeois social order. Cantrell, Carol Helmstetter. “John Hawkes’s Second Skin: The Dead Reckoning of a Northrop Frye Romance.” Rocky Mountain Review 35 (1981): 281–90. Using principles from The Secular Scripture, shows how the “conventions of romance illuminate every aspect” of Hawkes’s novel. Cao, Yuán. “The Displacement of the Biblical Archetype in Coetzee’s Fiction.” Journal of the Yangzhou Vocational University 2 (2012). In Chinese. Capecchi, Luisa. “Literatura: Semántica y temática” [Literature: Semantics and Thematics]. In Métodos de estudio de la Obra Literaria, ed. José Maria Díez Borque. Madrid: Taurus, 1985. 384–8. On Frye’s understanding of literary “theme” (dianoia). Caplan, David. “At Last to a Condition of Dignity”: Anthony Hecht’s Holocaust Poetry.” In Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture, ed. Victoria Aarons and Phyllis Lassner. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 327–42. “‘[I]t is a peculiarity of English,’ Northrop Frye observes, ‘that all obtrusive or ingenious rhymes belong to comic verse.’ Addressing a bleak subject, Hecht’s rhyme approaches the obtrusiveness and ingenuity associated with comic verse as his almost fanciful rhyme conveys.” – “Reduced to Rhyme: On Contemporary Doggerel.” Antioch Review 67, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 164–80. “A kind of verse to be shunned, not appreciated, doggerel has enjoyed little critical attention. In two notable exceptions, George Saintsbury and Northrop Frye attempted to understand its origins and distinguish its types. Both tried to extricate a genre from its disagreeable manifestations.” Frye’s views on doggerel play a prominent role in Caplan’s effort to differentiate between good and bad doggerel, intentional and unintentional doggerel.
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Capone, Giovanna. Canada: Il Villaggio della Terra. Bologna: Patron Editore, 1978. 21–2. Gives a brief account of Frye’s major works in the context of three other masters of Canadian culture: Pratt, Innis, and McLuhan. Points to the critique of McLuhan’s theories in Spiritus Mundi. – “Introduzione all’edizione italiana.” In Frye’s La scrittura secolare: Studio sulla struttura del “romance,” trans. Amleto Lorenzini. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1978. 7–14. Introduces Italian readers to Frye’s central preoccupations and key terms, especially as they relate to romance, which Capone sees as a recurrent theme throughout Frye’s criticism. – “Northrop Frye.” In I Contemporanei: 900 Americano, vol. 2, ed. Elemire Zolla. Rome: Lucarini, 1983. 559–66. Çapriqi, Basri. “Simboli dhe rivalët e ti” [The Symbol and Its Rivals]. Filologji 22 (2018): 9–32. In Albanian. Notes Frye’s definition of myth: the union of ritual and dream. Căpusan, Maria Vodă. “Limbaj, mit şi critică literară” [Language, Myth, and Literary Criticism]. Steaua 37 (September 1986): 52. In Romanian. Carbonell, Curtis D. Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic Creator. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019. “Reworking Northrop Frye’s definition of irony, Dread Trident theorizes an ironic understanding of this process and in particular of its embodied forms.” Carcereri, P. “Problema da indexação em gêneros contemporâneos: Trabalhar Cansa e a perspectiva de uma cinema fantástico nacional” [The Problem of Indexing in Contemporary Genres: Hard Labour and the Perspective of a Fantastic National Cinema]. Orson– Revista dos Cursos de Cinema do Cearte Universidade Federal de Pelotas 5 (2013): 131–43. Uses Frye theories of genres and modes to determine how the Brazilian film Hard Labour fits the descriptions of horror and science fiction movies. Carlson, Kristen. Review of Imagination and Science in Romanticism, by Richard Sha. Configurations 28, no. 1 (2020): 147–9. “Imagination and Science seeks to draw our attention to the epistemological role of the imagination that has been overlooked by Romantic and historicist critics. Sha faults scholars like M.H. Abrams, Harold Bloom, James Engell, and Northrop Frye for too hastily dismissing the Romantic imagination as a transcendental idealism counter to the agenda of philosophical materialism.” Carlson, Marvin. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present Day.
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Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Glances at Frye’s approach to the theatre by way of mythical archetypes. Carlyle, A.J. “An Author’s Journey: Worlds of Medieval Literature (3) Romance & Chivalry 3: Frye’s Essential Aspects.” http://ajcarlisle.wordpress.com/tag/northropfrye-anatomy-of-criticism/. Draws on Frye’s account of the medieval romance from Anatomy of Criticism. Carney, Sean. “Jameson, Frye, Anagogy.” Brecht and Critical Theory: Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics. New York: Routledge, 2005. Fredric Jameson’s comments on the allegory in Brecht’s theatre are indebted to Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. Jameson discovers a dialectic of the individual and the communal in Frye’s adaptation of the medieval levels of meaning. Carocci, Enrico. “Migration, Masculinity and ‘Double Occupancy’ in Paola Randi’s Into Paradiso.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 23, no. 4 (2016): 415–32. Calls on Frye’s view of comedy in this commentary on Randi’s film. Caron, James E. “Patriarchy and New Comedy in Ancient Athens and Rome: Revisiting Northrop Frye’s ‘Mythos of Spring: Comedy.’” Humor: Internal Journal of Humor Research 27, no. 2 (May 2014): 349–83. “Few theoretical statements about comic drama and fiction can match the influence of Northrop Frye’s essay, ‘Mythos of Spring: Comedy.’ Particularly for scholars interested not only in classic comic literary forms such as stage comedy, but also in the popular forms of contemporary films as well as television sitcoms, Frye’s theory continues to be useful for understanding basic structures within large quantities of examples. In this essay, I challenge Frye’s model for comic art. Although a quasi-Oedipal plot dominates extant New Comedy, the model suppresses the fact that it is only one significant plot among others capable of generating variations. More importantly, when one examines plays structured by the quasi-Oedipal plot, Frye’s summary—a generational struggle that ends in the son’s triumph—misrepresents the material: the son’s triumph is not a foregone conclusion. New Comedy’s function as the symbolic womb of the Western comic tradition is thus far from unproblematic. My challenge has serious consequences, not just for those critics who have organized their analyses on it, but also for those critics who might theorize about literary and popular art forms, as well as for scholars who would write a history of comic forms in the West.” (author’s abstract) Carpenter, E.S. Letter to Marshall McLuhan, 20 January 1961. From Cliche to Archetype. New York: Viking Press, 1970. 18. Says that Frye and Robert Graves arrange the
symbols of myths to create “content,” pigeon-hole it to come up with archetypes, “direct their attention towards a most important problem and, like a hedgehog, build humourless, water-tight systems . . . that, instead of answering the problem or even illuminating it, block access to it.” Carr, Nicholas. “‘I Have Not Abandoned Any Plan’: The Rage in Francis Parkman.” Massachusetts Historical Review 17 (2015): 1–34. “One way of understanding romanticism is through a narrative, the mythos of romance. A romance narrative is a quest toward some redemptive goal, a passage from innocence to experience in which the move toward unity figures as progress. This journey is not uncontested, for the ‘fall’ that precedes unity is a descent into trial by chaos wherein the real and ideal are sundered—a trial that is not only unavoidable but necessary as the precondition for higher synthesis. The dualities of romance derive from this dialectical emplotment of death and rebirth, alienation and belonging, division and unity, and so on. Writ large, the narrative of romance becomes the ‘high argument’ of romanticism.” This conception of romance and its relationship to romanticism draws on Frye as well as M.H. Abrams. Carreño-Rodríguez, Antonio. “Costello + Panza = Costanza: Paradigmatic Pairs in Don Quixote and American Popular Culture.” Journal of Popular Film & Television 37, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 80–9. In a commentary on Don Quixote, relies heavily on Frye’s theory of myths from the Third Essay of Anatomy of Criticism. Carrión, César Eduardo. “El ethos barroco: Una lectura desde la teoría de los modos literarios.” [The Baroque Ethos: A Reading from the Theory of Literary Modes]. Universitas, Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la Universidad Politécnica Salesiana del Ecuador 15, no. 26 (2017): 163–78. In Spanish. Assesses the concept of “baroque ethos,” created by the EcuadorianMexican thinker Bolívar Echeverría from a particular interpretation of the theory of literary modes developed by Frye in Anatomy of Criticism and reinterpreted by Hayden White in Metahistory. This exercise responds to the opportunity to read the Echeverrian theory as a model of interpretation of the whole history of the West, called “historical ethos.” Carrión, Gabriela. “‘Burlas en tiempo de tantas veras’: Violence and Humor in Lope de Vega’s Los melindres de Belisa.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 67, no. 2 (2015): 15– 31. “If, as [Sebastián de] Covarrubias suggests, there was greater tolerance for the branding of non-Christians in early modern Spain, then its presence in Los melindres
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is not anomalous. In fact, the dramatization of a slave’s torture has a long-standing tradition in comedy; as Northrop Frye observes, Roman audiences applauded comic works that often included gruesome scenes of a slave’s suffering.” Carroll, Joseph. “Abrams, M.H.” In Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, vol. 1, ed. Gregory Castle. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 1–3. Contrasts Abrams’s romantic criticism with that of Frye and Harold Bloom. – “The Cuckoo’s History: Human Nature in Wuthering Heights.” Philosophy and Literature 32, no. 2 (October 2008): 241–57. “On the structure of romantic comedy and tragedy Frye, after more than half a century, remains the most authoritative source.” – Evolution and Literary Theory. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995. Part 2 of the book contains sections devoted specifically to Darwin, Donald Symons, Northrop Frye, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, John Bowlby, and (in smaller compass) to Richard Lewontin, Richard Rorty, and Thomas Kuhn. Frye and Derrida are presented as offering positive and negative versions of an archetypal teleology rendered obsolete by Darwin. – “Literary Study and Evolutionary Theory: A Review Essay.” Human Nature 9, no. 3 (1997): 273–92. “Frederick Turner’s idea of drawing a parallel between current literary study and pre-Darwinian biology was prefigured at mid-century by Northrop Frye, one of the greatest of modern literary theorists. In Mimesis and the Human Animal: On the Biogenetic Foundations of Literary Representation, Robert Storey quotes the locus classicus from Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: ‘Criticism seems to be badly in need of a coordinating principle, a central hypothesis which, like the theory of evolution in biology, will see the phenomena it deals with as parts of a whole.’ Like Frederick Turner, Storey proposes that biology itself provides this central coordinating principle, and his formulations sound at times very similar to the ethological formulations of Mark Turner.” Carroll, William C. The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. 38–40. Reviews Frye’s theory of metamorphosis in Shakespeare’s comedies in order to show how it reveals “structural connections among all kinds of transformations.” Contrasts Frye’s approach with his own, which is “to discover how metamorphosis works in the comedies rather than to prove that they all coincide with a certain structural pattern.” Agrees with Frye, however, that Shakespeare’s late plays do reflect
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the basic structure of romance, the most fundamental dramatic genre. Carruthers, Jo. “Decoding, Encoding and Code-Breaking: Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd as Cipher of 2 Samuel 11 and 12.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth. University of Toronto, October 4–6, 2013. Carson, Benjamin D. “How to Read Harold Bloom and Why.” CEA Critic 80, no. 1 (March 2018): 3–20. “By reading Bloom’s theory of influence pragmatically, we are reading it ‘aesthetically’ (as a wild orchid rather than Trotsky)—that is, as one artistic enunciation in the long tradition of literary criticism that is itself a series of artistic enunciations that includes, among others, the works of not just Johnson, Hazlitt, and Pater but William K. Wimsatt, Northrop Frye, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, and [Kenneth] Burke.” Carstea, Daniela. “Manoeuvring Rhetoricity: Hollow Constructions in the Wake of Modernity.” University of Bucharest Review: Literary and Cultural Studies Series 2 (2006): 109–12. “In what follows I will explore and develop the account . . . of the proposed topos, namely that of ‘philosophical pairs,’ in connection with the two terms put forward by Corin Braga in From Archetype to Anarchetype, with the proviso that they are not employed in the sense that Northrop Frye does, in his Anatomy of Criticism.” Carter, Adam. “‘A Comic Epic-Poem in Prose’: A Half Century of Engaging Northrop Frye’s Canadian Criticism.” English Studies in Canada 37, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2011): 219–34. Grapples with the legacy of Frye’s criticism of Canadian literature largely by way of the essays in Branko Gorjup’s Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence. – “Correspondences: Frye, De Man, Romanticism.” In Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, ed. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2015. 164–85. “Considers the way in which Frye and Paul de Man questioned the dominant critical belief, most strongly articulated by M.H. Abrams, that the crowning achievement of Romanticism lay in the creation of poetry that sought to achieve a synthesis of subject and object, mind and nature. For different reasons both critics were dissatisfied with any attempt to identify human existence with nature.” (editors’ abstract) – “Cosmopolitan and National Culture in Northrop Frye.” University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012):
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136–56. “Explores a double trajectory in Frye’s writings between a universalist, cosmopolitan, understanding of culture that transcends locality, and an understanding of culture that traces its connections to the specificities of geography and history and, to some extent, embraces the idea of national and regional cultures. I argue that the two concepts in Frye are joined by the common idea of culture as the achievement of a realm of freedom from nature. I defend this oscillating movement in Frye’s thought by viewing it as a suggestively openended dialectic, one which does not seek to impose a static unity or synthesis upon its opposing terms. The dialectic between cosmos and locus allows Frye’s thought to grapple productively with what Pheng Cheah has called ‘the aporias of given culture’—the various material, natural, and social givens that constitute culture even as they trouble its promised freedom for humanity.” (author’s abstract) – “Kingdom of Ends: Nation, Post-Nation and National Character in Northrop Frye.” English Studies in Canada 29, no. 3 (2003): 90–115. What is the status of the nation in Northrop Frye’s literary and cultural theory? Frye foresees the end of nation as inevitable in a globalized world and provides a cogent critique of any national ideology that would view the nation as the biographical narrative of a maturing subject. At the same time, however, reasserting the very concepts he would move beyond, he posits the advanced realization of a “postnational consciousness” to be his own nation’s particular identity and virtue. His ideas belong to a tradition of writing on nation and national character that has always conceived the nation in terms of its beyond and has valorized a particular country’s national character as a non-identity. Carter, David. “Eye on Frye.” Daily Mercury [Guelph, ON] (30 May 2001): A4. News item about Don Harron and his wife, Catherine McKinnon, performing a two-person play based on a collection of letters exchanged between Northrop Frye and his wife Helen Kemp during their student days in the 1930s. Cartlidge, Neil. “Medieval Romance Mischief.” In Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance, ed. Elizabeth Archibald, Megan G. Leitch, and Corrine Saunders. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell and D.S. Brewer, 2018. “[T]here are many general accounts of romance as a genre that describe it as a cultural product of a deeply reassuring kind, fundamentally patterned and predictable, ideologically conservative, morally normative and unashamedly aimed at the provision of certain kinds of wish-fulfilment fantasy. Perhaps the classic version of this view is the one offered by
Northrop Frye, in his influential Anatomy of Criticism. His description of literary romance begins with the assertion that ‘The romance is the nearest of all literary forms to the wishfulfilment dream.’ Frye goes on to argue that romance is fundamentally ‘dialectical,’ by which he means that as an imaginative mode it typically divides the world into poles of good and evil. . . .” Cartlidge notes that Bruno Bettelheim’s account of fairy tales is quite close to Frye’s description of romance. Cartwright, Keith. “Notes toward a Voodoo Hermeneutics: Soul Rhythms, Marvelous Transitions, and Passages to the Creole Saints in Praisesong for the Widow.” Southern Quarterly 41, no. 4 (Summer 2003): 127–34. “The structures of freedom and authority circulating in these sacred clearings [jazz rituals and voodoo mysteries] offer an escapist vision similar to Northrop Frye’s evocation of the unfallen Edenic garden. Frye writes that our strongest “‘escape’ literature” sets up ‘a kind of enclosed garden in which we can wander in a state of completely satisfied receptivity.’ What we arrive at is ‘an informing principle of existence,’ a ‘model world’ rising out of tensions between myths of concern (grounded in religion) and myths of freedom (individual desire for unimpeded movement) from which we get ‘glimpses of a third order of experience,’ ‘a world not to see but to see by, an informing power.’ By entering the circle of the creole world’s third order ‘informing power,’ we may step into a ‘voodoo hermeneutics’ through which we may see how Afro-creole music and spirituality offer structures of freedom and authority upon which New World and New World vision may be possessed.” Cartwright, Kent. “Place and Being in Shakespearean Comedy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy, ed. Heather Hirschfeld. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. “Scholars have constructed theories of place and movement in Shakespearean comedy. In perhaps the most fertile essay every written on the subject, Northrop Frye, using Two Gentlemen as a prototype, argues that ‘the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the green world, goes into a metamorphosis there in which the comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world.’” Carvalho, Bruno. “From Iberia to Recife: Mysticism and Modernity in the Earlier Poetry of Manuel Bandeira.” Luso-Brazilian Review 47, no. 2 (2010): 178–96. “Applying mystical terminology in the context of Bandeira’s earlier poetry constitutes a perilous scholarly endeavor. After all, if as Northrop Frye points out, ‘[Mysticism] implies a religious technique of spiritual communion with God that is, by its very nature,
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incommunicable,’ then it is ‘difficult to reconcile [mysticism] with anyone’s poetry’—let alone an atheist’s. Frye, according to Jeffrey Kripal, argues that ‘to the artist qua artist, this [direct, mystical] apprehension is not an end in itself but a means to another end, the end of producing the poem. The mystical experience for him is poetic material, not poetic form, and must be subordinated to the demands of that form.’” Carvalho, Oliva de. “As narrativas de Northrop Frye” [Northrop Frye’s Narratives]. História Essencial da Filosofia. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2002. In Portuguese. Casas, Elías Sevilla. “Metaphor, Interpenetration and Ethnography: A Review Essay with Reflections on Northrop Frye’s Ideas.” Cidse 58 (February 2002): 1–39. Cali, Columbia: Universidad de Valle, Centro de Investigación y Documentación Socioeconómica. Pdf file available at http://econpapers.repec.org/ paper/col000149/004108.htm. Follows Frye’s ideas on interpenetration as a verbal formula for dealing in anthropology with the dynamic and dialectic complexity of sociocultural differentiation and integration, and metaphor as a concrete linguistic unity of the strange and the different. Draws extensively on Denham’s “Interpenetration.” Cascardi, Anthony J. “Calderón’s Encyclopaedic Rhetoric.” Neophilologus 66 (1982): 56–65. “Even in an auto like El gran teatro del mundo, where Calderón, through the ‘autor,’ comes close to speaking words of God. I think it must be said that the action is engaged in an (indirect) imitation of the Divine, and not in its direct representation, which occurs only in the celebration of the Eucharist at the close of the auto. In terms of the traditional levels of meaning, the autos are outstanding at the anagogic level. As Frye notes, ‘The form of literature most deeply influenced by the anagogic phase is the scripture or apocalyptic revelation. The god, whether traditional deity, glorified hero, or apotheosized poet, is the central image that poetry uses in trying to convey the sense of unlimited power in a humanized form.’ This, quite clearly, is Calderón’s ‘autor.’ Frye goes on to underscore the relationship between anagogy and encyclopaedic form: ‘We see the relation to anagogy also in the vast encyclopaedic structure of poetry that seems to be a whole world in itself.’” Caserio, Robert L. Plot, Story, and the Novel: From Dickens and Poe to the Modern Period. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969. “Challenges the major critical positions of Northrop Frye, Roland Barthes, and Edward Said with regard to the interpretation and evaluation of narrative trends.”
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Casey, John. “A ‘Science’ of Criticism: Northrop Frye.” The Language of Criticism. London: Methuen, 1966. 140–51. Claims that the central problem of Frye’s work is his attempt to establish a science of criticism. Argues that Frye’s theory is not scientific in the sense that Karl Popper uses the term: there are no principles that permit it to be disconfirmed, and archetypal categories do not explain literature as scientific categories explain the natural world. Cash, Peter. “Twelfth Night.” English Association Shakespeare Bookmarks: The English Association 5 (2012): 1–13. “From Northrop Frye’s reference to Angelo, it can be clearly seen that the play is not ‘comic’ in the ha-ha-ha sense of the term, but in the richer and wider senses of the term that Frye and Harold Jenkins give us.” Castellano, Riccardo. “Le fiabe italiane di Calvino, Frye e la Bibbia.” A talk presented at the University of Toronto on 13 September 2018. https://www.academia. edu/37362076/Le_fiabe_italiane_di_Calvino_Frye_e_la_ Bibbia_Conference_University_of_Toronto_13-9-2018. In Italian. “On various occasions Northrop Frye has declared that the Bible is the ‘great code’ of art and its imagery and myths have deeply influenced Western narrative for centuries. This lecture will employ Frye’s notions as methodological tools to examine a selection of Italian folktales that Italo Calvino collected and published in 1956—a year in which the economic boom had begun transforming Italy into a modern society while wiping away a big part of rural culture.” Casteren van Cattenburch, Iris Hanna. “The Globe Sustained: Shakespeare’s Allegory for Sustainable Development.” Futures 87 (March 2017): 24–36. “. . . A third characteristic of allegory is that there is something ‘unlimited’ in it, as Northrop Frye remarked.” Castrén, Minna. “Northrop Fryen Anatomy of Criticism anatomiana” [Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism as an Anatomy]. Heteroglossia—Kirjallisuustieteellisä tutkielmia. Helsingin yliopiston yleisen kirjallisuustieteen, teatteritieteen ja estetiikan laitoksen monistesarja, no. 22 (1993): 16–31. In Finnish. Castro Delgado, Luisa. “Valle-Inclán, entre Aristóteles y Frye” [Valle-Inclán, between Aristotle and Frye]. Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea 33, no. 3 (2008): 11–31, 423–43. In Spanish. Frye’s poetics compared to that of Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (1866–1936). Catanese, Christopher. “Refinement and Romantic Genre.” New Literary History 48, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 123–48. “Although in his theorization of a ‘process theory’ of
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genre, he [Ralph Cohen] mounts a sophisticated rebuttal of essentialist or ‘logical’ models of genre (propounded by critics as diverse as Derrida, Northrop Frye, Foucault, Fredric Jameson, and Hans Robert Jauss), in another influential article Cohen maintains that a logical a priori distinction between innovation and variation represents a minimum condition of intelligibility for the interpretation of changing literary forms over time.” Cauchi, Francesca. “Blake and Nietzsche on Self-Slaughter and the Moral Law: A Reading of Jerusalem.” Journal of European Studies 45, no. 1 (2015): 3–20. “The intellectual kinship between Blake and Nietzsche is familiar to scholars of both thinkers on account of Kaufmann’s passing reference to it in his groundbreaking work on Nietzsche, and Northrop Frye’s more detailed comparative account in a chapter entitled ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ in his equally ground-breaking work on Blake.” Caughey, Anna. “The Hero’s Journey.” In A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. 404–17. “Using the theories of Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye as a framework, this chapter considers the extent to which Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings can be read as a traditional medieval questnarrative. It argues that rather than presenting a single quest, Tolkien draws upon the medieval technique of entrelacement to create multiple interlocking questnarratives, and that this lends the work much of its depth and popular appeal.” Cave, Terence. “Northrop Frye: Recognition at the Center.” In Recognitions: A Study in Poetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. 190–9. A study of Frye’s use of the idea of anagnorisis, especially in the Anatomy. Frye’s “method is one which displays the enormous range of possibilities opened up by a conjunction of poetics and modern mythography, of plot with figure. If those possibilities multiply by semantic slippage rather than by controlled conceptual analysis, the freedom is none the less refreshing. The shifting of elements in Frye’s kaleidoscope gives the lover of recognition scenes better value for money than almost anything else in the history of poetics.” For Frye on “displacement,” see Recognitions, pp. 236–7. Cavell, Richard A. “Canadian Cinema and the Intellectual Milieu.” In The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Cinema, ed. Janine Marchessault and Will Straw. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 21–34. Notes the several places in Anatomy of Criticism where Frye mentions film. “Two intellectual behemoths continue to hold sway over Canada’s understanding of itself: Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. . . . Frye spent his career
building up a mythos of Nature as the compelling feature of Canadian cultural production, and McLuhan spent his career ripping that mythos apart with the argument that media constituted a second nature.” – “Canadian Literature in Italy.” Canadian Literature 87 (Winter 1980): 153–6. Comments on the great respect Frye has in Italy and refers to his 1979 lecture tour there. – “‘Et in “Acadia” Ego’: An Integrative Approach to Canadian Literature.” Spicilegio modemo 17–18 (1982): 12–18. Argues that Frye’s views on Canadian literature are closely connected to the literary theory of Anatomy of Criticism. As a comparatist, Frye suggests that “integration of Canadian literature into the European literary tradition must be the initial premise of a study of what is uniquely Canadian about our literature.” – “Garrisons and Galaxies.” In McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 204–22. Explores the McLuhan-Frye relationship and its relation to the art and academic communities in Canada. Argues that Frye respected McLuhan, even though he was often critical of his work. – McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Considers the critical positions of McLuhan and Frye as providing one of the contexts of McLuhan’s thought. – “Material Querelle: The Case of Frye and McLuhan.” Essays on Canadian Writing 68 (Summer 1999): 242–65. Places current debates about the materiality of discourse into a Canadian context, tracing the querelle over materiality in which Frye and McLuhan engaged during a twenty-year span: Frye espoused the dematerialization of the social in favour of the (re)materialization of the literary as the social achievement of the ideal culture towards which literature gestures; McLuhan sought to formulate a theory of cultural production that emphasized the role of the (apparently) nonmaterial in the creation of social effects. – “Mediatic Shakespeare: McLuhan and the Bard.” In Shakespeare and Canada: Remembrance of Ourselves, ed. Irena R. Makaryk and Kathryn Prince. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press, 2017. “Much of the book [McLuhan and Watson’s From Cliché to Archetype] targets Northrop Frye. McLuhan’s contextual approach to Shakespeare, let alone his mediatic interests, distinguished him from his University of Toronto confrère, with whom he maintained a polemical relationship throughout his career. McLuhan’s approach to Shakespeare was decolonizing; McLuhan argued throughout his career that literary innovation originated on the cultural margins, and this would apply both to
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Shakespeare himself—the dramatist without a university degree—and to the readings of Shakespeare that McLuhan produced in his media studies. His was not a Shakespeare representative of an essential ‘Englishness,’ nor a Shakespeare who represented some unattainable imperial standard for Canadian literature. McLuhan would never have sought, as Frye did, to ‘explain the absence of a Shakespeare in Canada’ because he rejected the nationalist model of literary production and the imperial model of literary criticism that informs Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. In contrast, not only did Frye spend a considerable part of his career seeking to articulate the Canadianness of Canadian literature (while arguing its perpetual deferral to European literary archetypes), but he also approached Shakespeare as a paradigm of literary form. He states his position at the beginning of a collection of essays on the Bard: ‘there is never anything outside his plays.’” – “Where Is Frye? Or, Theorizing Postcolonical Space.” Essays on Canadian Writing 56 (Fall 1995): 110–35. Uses Frye’s ideas of architecture and structure in his “Conclusion” to the first edition of the Literary History of Canada to describe a Canadian culture wider than just the literary one. Cavell, Stanley. “Pursuits of Happiness: A Reading of The Lady Eve.” New Literary History 10 (Spring 1979): 581– 601. Argues that Preston Sturges’s film, The Lady Eve, “is an inheritor of the preoccupations and discoveries of Shakespearean romantic comedy, especially as that work has been studied by, first among others, Northrop Frye.” – “Dostupnost Wittgensteinove kasne filozofije” [The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy]. Književna Republika, časopis za književnost 12 (2016): 69–90. In Croatian. Writing of all kinds (not just “literature”) has features of structure, intonation, and printed form. The forms or genres of writing are best described by Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism. Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Relies on Frye’s theory of genres as a jumping-off place for the investigation of certain underlying patterns in works of popular culture, such as the detective story and the western. Finds that Frye’s “complex catalogue of archetypes” works best when applied to all of literature. Cayley, David. “Inside Mythology: Northrop Frye Talks with David Cayley.” Idler 32 (April 1991): 23–34. A portion of Cayley’s longer interview with Frye found in Northrop Frye in Conversation.
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– “Northrop Frye.” In David Cayley.com (12 June 2016). http://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/2016/6/11/ northrop-frye. On interviewing Frye. Ceia, Carlos. “Anatomia.” E–Dictionário de termos literários. http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/edtl/verbetes/A/ anatomia.htm. On the anatomy as a prose form as defined by Frye and on Anatomy of Criticism itself. Cecchetti, Valentino. “Un’ipotesi sulla presenza e la funzione degli archetipi in poesis: Giacomo Noventa e Northrop Frye” [A Hypothesis on the Presence and Function of the Archetypes in Poesis: Giacomo Noventa and Northrop Frye]. Giacomo Noventa: L’errore della cultura italiana dal fascismo a Adriano Olivetti. Chieti: Solfanelli, 2012. In Italian. A proposal on the presence and function of the archetypes in literature, with reference to the publishing company Giacomo Noventa and to Northrop Frye. Cefalu, Gianni. “What’s So Funny about ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder?” PMLA 124, no. 1 (January 2009): 44–58. Examines representations in comedy of obsessive-compulsive disorder. “Comedy, by virtue of its form, drives the more manageable, caricatured version of obsessive-compulsive disorder that we find in the popular media. Consider that, as Northrop Frye and others have demonstrated, comedy typically involves the conversion rather than repudiation of an otherwise irreconcilable blocking character, a conversion that allows for a happy ending and the restoration of an inclusive rather than exclusive society.” Celati, Gianni. “Anatomie e sistematiche letterarie.” Libri Nuovi (August 1969). – “Archetipologia sistematica: Per una iniziazione all’opera di Northrop Frye” [Systematic Archetypology: An Initiation into the Work of Northrop Frye]. Lingua e Stile [Bologna] 4 (1969): 23–41. In Italian. Maintains that Frye attempts a Coleridgian reconciliation of imitation and inspiration, the two principal methods of studying occidental literature. Gives a summary account of Frye’s use of the Aristotelian terminology. Reviews the five phases of symbolism Frye develops in the Second Essay of Anatomy of Criticism and the structure of archetypal imagery and myths of the Third Essay. Claims that Frye’s most important contribution derives from his method of synthesis, a method that goes beyond considering the literary symbol simply for its psychological or existential content. The critical model elaborated by Frye . . . presents perhaps several partial difficulties, rendered less evident by an unusual stylistic force. But its great advantage is that it does not close its door to other critical methods, equally based on
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systematic demands or—what is more important—on an effective and extensive field work.” Čeňková, Jana. “Romány Wolfganga Herrndorfa v českém kontextu a jejich kritický ohlas” [Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Novels and Their Reception in the Czech Context]. O dieťati, jazyku, literatúre 1 (2017): 42–50. Deriving his principles from literature itself, Frye develops his famous taxonomy of the forms of criticism: historical, ethical, archetypal, and rhetorical. Cerdá, Juan F. “Shakespeare in García Lorca’s Early Poems / Shakespeare en los Primeros Poemas de García Lorca.” Atlantis 33, no. 1 (2011): 33–52. Contrasts the green world of Shakesperian comedy, as described by Frye, with Lorca’s darker comic version of the forest, the Negra verdura. Čermák, Ivo, and Vladimír Chrz. “What Is Life Story Genre?” In Narrative, Memory and Everyday Life, ed. N. Kelly et al. Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield, 2005. Authors draw on Frye’s mythoi in their analysis of life stories. Cerqueira, Rodrigo. “Extravagância estudantil: A forma simbólica possível dos primeiros romances e peças de Joaquim Manuel de Macedo” [Student Extravagance: The Attainable Symbolic Form of Joaquim Manuel de Macedo’s First Novels and Plays]. Novos Estudos 104 (March 2016): 177–92. In Portuguese. “Studies the way Joaquim Manuel de Macedo’s first novels and plays use a concrete symbolic form, the extravagance of his young protagonists, to defuse the disruptive potential that a new form of life causes to the patriarchal ideology.” The Two Loves and Vicentina, for example, are dominated by Frye’s sense of the comic, which requires a reintegration of the orphans back into society. Cervigni, Sino S. “From Beginning to End: Dante’s Judeo-Christian Fourfold Mytho-Poiesis.” Annali d’Itanialistica 18 (2000): 143–74. A reading of Dante based on Frye’s theories of myth and archetype. Ceserani, Remo. “Anatomia della critica.” Il Mondo (1 September 1959). – “‘Northrop Frye utopico pianificatore della città letteraria” [Northrop Frye: Utopian Planner of the Literary City]. Strumenti Critici 1, no. 4 (October 1967): 431–6. In Italian. Introduces Frye to Italian readers. Calls attention to Frye’s detractors (mentioning John Fraser) as well as those who exalt him, and reviews the several essays in the English Institute volume devoted to Frye. Contrasts Frye’s elaborate rhetorical world, with its labyrinths and recurring designs, to the “more sober and rigorous construction” of Auerbach. Summarizes
Frye’s remarks on Cymbeline in A Natural Perspective, concluding that although Frye does not take us into the particularities of the play he does invite us to discover its musical structure as well as its links with tradition; and herein lies Frye’s importance as a critic. – “Primo approccio all teoria critica de Frye: Riflessioni attorno al concetto di mondo” [First Approach to the Critical Theory of Frye: Reflections on the Concept of the World]. In Lombardo, Ritratto, 17–38. In Italian. On the problematic nature of Frye’s concept of mode. Chamberlain, Adrian. “Acting ‘Normal’—Theatre Classes Aim to Help Kids on Autism Spectrum.” Times Colonist (23 September 2017). “Victoria’s Nancy Curry knows first-hand the benefits of theatre classes for young people on the autism spectrum. As a youngster, her daughter Kim loved participating in theatre. . . . Starting Monday, Curry—an educator, vocal coach and pianist— will teach a new course at Kaleidoscope Theatre. Titled The Story Wheel, it’s for young people on the autism spectrum. . . . One unusual thing about The Story Wheel is that it’s based on Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye’s theory of archetypes. Class participants will play heroes, villains, sidekicks and mentors from folk tales, classic literature and pop culture. . . . According to Frye’s 1957 book Anatomy of Criticism, which has influenced Curry’s approach, all stories can be divided into archetypes. These include comedy, tragedy, romance and irony/satire. Such archetypes can be further divided into sub-categories, such as different varieties of heroes, for example.” Chamberlain, J. Edward. “Mathematics and Modernism.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 230–40. Focuses on the analogies Frye draws between mathematics and literature, which reveal the central concern of modernism. – “Chanting Down Babylon: Innocence and Experience in the Contemporary Humanities.” In Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, ed. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. 206–26. “Provides a synoptic study of the ways in which the songs of the working classes—ballads, folk songs, cowboy songs, and songs of the Depression—use the imagination as a defense against reality. . . . For Chamberlain, songs are essentially expressions of community; they are linked to ceremonies of belief that seek to create a ground across culture. This is an insight that would have registered deeply with Frye, and to another man committed to using song as a vehicle of imagination, Woody
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Guthrie—who was born the same year and the same day as Frye.” (editors’ abstract) Chambers, Aidan. “Letter from England: Cracking the Great Code.” Horn Book 60 (April 1984): 242–7. Recommends The Great Code to teachers who are concerned that their students have little knowledge of Bible stories. Praises Frye’s “elegant arrangement of the subject matter, the clarity of his thinking, and the evidence it gives of a fine critical intelligence at work.” “[J]ust as Frye has learned from the best literature how to express himself (this is one of the least jargon-ridden works of criticism I’ve read in years), so he has learned that the most effective communication happens through stories. His book is a story; the book he is talking about is a library of stories; and like all the best criticism his makes you want to go back to the original text and read it again for yourself.” Chambers, Erve. “Thalia’s Revenge: Ethnography and Theory of Comedy.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 91, no. 3 (September, 1989): 589–98. Frye’s grammar of literary types in Anatomy of Criticism offers a point of comparison with ethnographic categories. Pays special attention to the anatomy as a form of prose fiction. “In considering the relationship between theories of comedy and modern ethnography, I argue that the genres have in common the regular use of literary modes of exaggeration, exceptionality, reversal, and practice. These shared modes suggest similar critical intent. Recognizing a relationship between theories of comedy and modern ethnography adds to our appreciation of the plurality of the ethnographic endeavor.” (from author’s abstract) Chambers, Jennifer. “Who’s In and Who’s Out: Recovering Minor Authors and the Pesky Question of Critical Evaluation.” In Home Ground and Foreign Territory: Essays on Early Canadian Literature, ed. Janice Fiamengo. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2014. “When Northrop Frye declares that Canadian literary scholars in general and the authors of that work [Literary History of Canada] in particular have ‘outgrown the view that evaluation is the end of criticism,’ and that the essays therein are ‘cultural history,’ he set the course of how studies in early Canadian literature would progress.” Champion, Larry S. The Essential Shakespeare: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Modern Studies. Boston: Hall, 1986. 176–7, 275, 406, 432. Provides annotations for the following articles and books by Frye: “The Argument of Comedy,” “Recognition in The Winter’s Tale,” The Myth of Deliverance, Fools of Time, and A Natural Perspective.
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Chance, Jane. Review of Desiring Bodies: Ovidian Romance and the Cult of Form, by Gregory Heyworth. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 111, no. 2 (April 2012): 238–41. “What W.P. Ker initiated in Epic and Romance (1896) and Northrop Frye continued in The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (1976) (following his much more famous but similarly structuralist Anatomy of Criticism [1957]) has been updated, very recently, by Kevin S. Whetter, in Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance (2008), and now, in relation to genre and form, by Heyworth, following Frye on romance as a likely structural nexus for all fiction.” Chandler, Daniel. “An Introduction to Genre Theory.” https://faculty.washington.edu/farkas/HCDE510Fall2012/Chandler_genre_theoryDFAnn.pdf. “In Anatomy of Criticism the formalist literary theorist Northrop Frye (1957) presented certain universal genres and modes as the key to organizing the entire literary corpus. Contemporary media genres tend to relate more to specific forms than to the universals of tragedy and comedy.” – and Rod Munday. “Comedy.” In A Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016. The definition of “comedy” relies heavily on Frye. Chandler, James. “The Question of Sensibility.” New Literary History 49, no. 4 (Autumn 2018): 467–92. “We might recall in closing that Abrams’s famous essay ‘Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric’ appeared in a large and influential collection from the mid-1960s entitled From Sensibility to Romanticism, itself almost certainly premised on the argument of Frye’s earlier intervention in ‘Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility.’ Though Frye had made clear that his ‘definition’ was purely heuristic, that big collection has tended to reinforce the idea that Romanticism had left sensibility behind—and, as we have seen, sensibility is a major blind spot in Abrams’s essay.” Chang, Vanessa. “melos, opsis, lexis.” University of Chicago Media Theory. https://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/ melosopsislexis.htm. “Critics like Northrop Frye have articulated a collapse of these mediums into each other in the arts. In frameworks such as his, the salient features of a particular medium may appear in another medium. For example, Melos appears in Lexis as the melodic or rhythmic element in poetry. And yet, though Frye’s analysis embodies what is, for some, a needless blurring of the three categories, it still belies the view that each medium has its own essential character.”
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Changku, Bu. “Kaenada hŭ’gok esŏ ŭi chŏngch’e song ui ch’uga” [Toward a Canadian Identity in English Canadian Drama]. In Canadian Literature: Its Emerging Faces: Proceedings, the 1993 Canadian Studies Conference. Seoul: Canadian Studies Center, Sookmyung Women’s University, 1994. 45–66. In Korean. Provides an alternative view to Frye’s principle of the “garrison mentality” in Canadian drama. Charney, Maurice. Comedy High and Low: An Introduction to the Experience of Comedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. 181. Notes the strong influence on Frye of Francis M. Cornford’s ritual theory of comedy. Charrier, Philip. “Fuchikami Hakuyō and the ‘Manchukuo Pastoral’ in 1930s Japanese Art Photography.” Japanese Studies 34, no. 2 (July 2014): 169–92. Chaudhuri, Supriya. “Transnational Theory.” JUSAS Online ~ The Web Log of the Jadavpur University Society for American Studies (29 July 2013). https://jusasonline. wordpress.com/2013/07/29/transnational-theory/. The purpose of the well-known 1966 conference at Johns Hopkins University “was to introduce structuralism to the US academy, which was experiencing something of a critical vacuum after the assault upon New Criticism indirectly mounted by Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957). To some extent this effort was successful, since structuralism gained adherents, and the early 1970s saw the publication of books like Fredric Jameson’s The Prison-House of Language (1972) and Robert Scholes’s Structuralism in Literature (1974), followed by Jonathan Culler’s Structuralist Poetics (1975), though each of these critics came to structuralism through different routes.” Chawla, Nishi Bir. “Northrop Frye and the Mythos of Comedy.” In Aithal, The Importance of Northrop Frye, 19–39. On Frye’s understanding of the structure of comedy. Chellappan, K. “Northrop Frye as a Canadian Structuralist.” In Literary Theory: (Re)Reading Culture and Aesthetics, ed. Jameela Begum and B. Hariharan. Delhi: Pencraft International, 1997. 130–44. On Frye’s contribution to the study of Canadian literature. Chen Di Wen, Xu Xu. “Implications of Paradox in Frye’s Archetypal Theory.” World Literature Review 1 (2012). In Chinese. Chen, Houcheng, and Ning Wang, eds. Contemporary Western Critical Theories in China. Tianjin: Chen, Hundred-Flower Literary and Art Press, 2000. In Chinese.
Chen, Jincheng. Archetypal Criticism and Reinterpretation. Beijing: Dongfang Press, 1998. In Chinese. Chen, John Z. Ming. “Out of the Ivory Tower: Sociopolitical Solution and Criticism?” In Marxism and 20th-Century English-Canadian Novels: A New Approach to Social Realism. Berlin: Springer, 2015. “It is with a palpable sense of completion and resignation that Northrop Frye wrote the comments . . . about Canadian literature in his ‘Conclusion’ (1966) to the very first edition of Literary History of Canada, immediately after measuring Canadian artistic qualities up to the 1970s against literary giants of world reputation. On the one hand, Frye insists on treating the wholeness or integrity of whatever is produced culturally on the Canadian soil, not missing much of value at least by Canadian standards. On the other hand, Frye’s predominantly formalistic and archetypal criticism, typified most notably by his Anatomy of Criticism, where he refers to no more than one Canadian writer and advocates not only strict and autonomous literary criticism by ‘universal’ norms and rules but also a divorce of literature from politics, philosophy and other disciplines, may have severely blinded him to the necessarily combined achievements of artistic and aesthetic merits and political, critical and ideological acumen in social realist works.” (author’s abstract) – “Reinterpreting History from a (Neo-)Marxist Perspective: Social, Intellectual and Literary Background.” In Marxism and 20th-Century EnglishCanadian Novels: A New Approach to Social Realism. Berlin: Springer, 2015. 35–68. “Northrop Frye, in the ‘Conclusion’ to the first edition of Literary History of Canada (1965), notices with remarkable perception the composition and approaches of the contributors: they come from divergent disciplines; they all attempt to interpret, theorize and summarize the significance of one part of the Canadian imagination—be it fiction, poetry, drama, history or political science. Manifested are his warm endorsement and appreciation of Carl Klinck’s valiant efforts to pull scholars from so many diverging fields. Such a comprehensive or near total perspective on literature as part of the Canadian culture or imagination certainly goes against the grain of Frye’s own more formalist approach to literary studies so vigorously championed in the Anatomy of Criticism (1957). And yet, Frye’s relatively recent gesture should come as a welcome sign, as contemporary criticism moves in a direction away from the purely literary: a sure sign of this would be Linda Hutcheon’s openminded embrace of ‘theory’ having made its rapid entry into literary studies and curriculum.” (from the author’s abstract)
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Chen, John Z. Ming, and Ji Yuhua. “Harmony, Beautiful Balance, and ‘Fearful Symmetry’: Aspects of Fred Cogswell’s Yin/Yang Aesthetics.” In Canadian-Daoist Poetics, Ethics, and Aesthetics: An Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Study. Berlin: Springer, 2016. 105–23. Frye’s criticism is referenced throughout this and other chapters of the book. – Marxism and 20th-Century English-Canadian Novels: A New Approach to Social Realism. Berlin: SpringerVerlag, 2015. Frye’s critical views are used throughout as a fulcrum on which to balance the authors’ neo-Marxist principles. Chen, Ping. “Northrop Frye’s “Critical Path.” Foreign Literature 3 (2001). In Chinese. Chen, Qiang. “The Archetypal Exploration of the Myth of Macbeth and the Bible.” Foreign Language Education and Teaching 11 (2011). In Chinese. Cheng, Xiuping. “On Archetypal Criticism and Its Application to Research on Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature.” Journal of the Northeast Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences) 5 (2006). In Chinese. Cherepanova, Rozalia. “A Commentator or a Character in a Story? The Problem of the Narrator in Oral History.” In Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe, ed. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen and Gelinada Grinchenko. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. 122–46. Notes the ways that Frye’s four narrative patterns have influenced the study of narratives in other fields, such as history (Hayden White) and psychology (Kevin Murray). Cherpak, Clifton. “Positivism, Piety, and the Study of Voltaire’s Philosophical Tales.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 24 (Winter 1983): 23–37 [25–6]. Looks at the way that Frye, among others, categorizes the conventional form of Voltaire’s tales by placing them in the rich tradition of Menippean satire. Finds, however, that some of the tales do not fit Frye’s descriptions because Voltaire “had a habit of combining elements derived from different literary forms within a single tale.”
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Conclusions.” Communication Quarterly 51, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 367–418. See preceding entry. Chesebro, James W., Davis A. Foulger, Jay E. Naghman, and Andrew Yannelli. “Popular Music as a Mode of Communication, 1955–1982.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 2, no. 2 (June 1985): 115–35. Employing a dramatistic system based upon the critical frameworks of Kenneth Burke and Frye, presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the fifteen most popular recorded single records each year between 1955 and 1982. Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature 161–2 (Summer–Autumn 1999): 44–61. Part of a special issue on Thomas King. King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water pays homage to the distinctive voice of the Okanagan storyteller Harry Robinson, who comes from an oral tradition that is both a mode of artistic expression and part of a broader social context. Also offers a thoroughgoing critique of the literary theories of Frye. Cheyney, Ryan. “The One Who Burns Herself for Peace.” Hypatia 9, no. 2 (1994): 21–39. Glances at Frye and Simone Weil on the mystical body of Christ. Chiari, Sophie. “‘We see / The seasons alter’: Climate Change in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In Shakespeare’s Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment: The Early Modern “Fated Sky.” Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. A “fairly gloomy vision of the forest in Shakespeare’s play anticipates our contemporary vision of a world marked by ecopessimism and disillusion about climate and partly belies Northrop Frye’s optimistic analysis which, in 1957, presented the forest comedies as places of harmony and restoration.”
Chesebro, James W. “Communication, Values, and Popular Television—A SeventeenYear Assessment.” Communication Quarterly 39, no. 3 (1991): 197–225. Uses a dramatistic system based on the critical frameworks of Frye and Kenneth Burke to analyse more than 900 primetime television programs.
Chiciudean, Gabriela. “L’imaginaire de l’espace antiutopique chez Swift et Ion Eremia” [Dystopian Space Imagination from Swift to Ion Eremia]. Caietele Echinox 25 (2013): 277–92. In French. “Starting from the two reference points for specialists, namely Plato and Thomas More, we are talking about two matters: the utopia as having the characteristics of exposure and dialogue, the second, the description of the elements of internal conflict. Northrop Frye puts utopias into two main categories, those which approach theory as social and political (according to the models of Plato and More), and those with technical themes, as in science fiction (according to Bacon’s model).
– “Communication, Values, and Popular Television Series- A Twenty-Five-Year Assessment and Final
Chidley, Joe. “Mythos and Anagogy: Macpherson’s The Boatman and Anatomy of Criticism.” Essay for Professor
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Namjoshi’s “Modern Poetry” (30 January 1985). Manuscript is in the library, Scarborough College, University of Toronto. Chifane, Cristina. “The Symbolism of Nature.” University of Bucharest Review: Literary and Cultural Studies Series 1 (2012): 57–64. “The four cycles of the natural world have been associated by Frye with four narrative patterns (spring/comedy, summer/romance, autumn/ tragedy and winter/irony; satire) out of which the mythos of autumn and the mythos of winter seem to better define Hardy’s novels. Many Hardyan characters become an embodiment of the tragic hero who has the potential of being superior and dreams of happiness, but will never achieve his goals due to the puzzling complexities of life entrapping him in a predeterminism inscribed in the natural surroundings.” Chifor, Agata. “Alegorii sacre în arta barocă orădeană” [Sacred Allegory in the Baroque Art of the Oradea]. Sargetia: Acta Musei Devensis 2 (2011): 231–45. In Romanian. Calls on Frye’s definition of allegory. Chikichi, Matsushita. Review of Romanticism Reconsidered, ed. Northrop Frye. The Albion 10 (1964): 129–34. Chirila, Alexander. “Archetypal Criticism: Northrop Frye and the New Science of Archetypes.” In The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory. Hoboken. NJ: Wiley, 2011. Credo Reference. Online. 18 February 2015. Chlebek, Diana. “Canada.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 48, no. 4 (2013): 471–94. – “Canada.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49, no. 4 (2014): 475–99. – “Canada.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 50, no. 4 (2015): 441–67. Cho, Lily. “Canadian Literature at 60: Inhabiting Discomfort.” Canadian Literature, no. 239 (2019): 25–183. “One question then: how do we separate out the problematic? I understand the question more precisely, and along the lines that Carrie Dawson so presciently identified ten years ago, by tracing an unlikely line between Northrop Frye, Sara Ahmed, and Dionne Brand, as the affective register of Canadian literary criticism, the depth of the feelings that we have for our critical work, as what hurts.” Choi, Jung-buck. “Northrop Frye’s Principle of Criticism as Science: Its Validity and Its Problems.” Kyungsung University Bulletin 5, no. 1 (1984): 133–53. In Korean.
Choi, Min-Sung. “The Structure of Myth and the Storytelling Model.” Publications of the International Literary Society 42 (April 2008): 493–521. In Korean. – “Study of an Integrated Scenario for a Creation Model.” Korean Language and Culture 38 (2009): 367–91. In Korean. “We can accept the hero mythology as a powerful archetype syntagm that can be a basic model for storytelling. . . . Surely, it would be some help to understand the structure of syntagm in creating a story. But a more accurate storytelling model can be obtained if there is a standard on how to choose elements of the paradigm. To that end, this paper used Northrop Frye’s theory of myth analysis, which offers a good standard on how to select necessary syntagmatic elements. By combining theories proposed by Campbell and Northrop Frye, this paper presents a comprehensive storytelling model based on the myth structure, while at the same time discussing detailed methodologies.” (author’s abstract) Choi, Mjung-Ho. “Images of Latin America and Mexico through the Video Game.” Asian Journal of Latin American Studies 29, no. 1 (2016): 133–59. “From an aesthetic point of view the video game could be considered a new method to express beauty; from an artistic perspective it is a new genre of composite art, and from the narratological perspective in the theory of Northrop Frye it is a refined digital romance, and finally from the perspective of cultural assimilation it is a new method to be investigated, and also the method to spread Latin American and Mexican cultures.” Cholette, Katie. “Playing the Art World: The Rise and Fall of Greg Curnoe” [Jouer le jeu du monde artistique: Montée et chute de Greg Curnoe]. British Journal of Canadian Studies 29, no. 1 (2016): 47–82. “Frye claimed that ‘the question of identity is primarily a cultural and imaginative question.’ He reasoned that ‘the question of Canadian identity, so far as it affects the creative imagination, is not a Canadian question at all, but a regional question.’ He distinguished between identity, which he claimed was ‘local and regional, rooted in the imagination and in works of culture,’ and unity, which he said was ‘national in reference, international in perspective, and rooted in a political feeling.’ Imagination was a very important concept for Frye; he believed that ‘the real function of the imagination in every community, and of the poets who articulate that imagination,’ was to synthesise disorder to create unity.” Chomiuk, Aleksandra. “Antybaśń w nowelistycznej ramie: O Naszyjniku Guy de Maupassanta” [Anti-Fairy Tale in a Novelistic Frame: On The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant]. Czytanie Literatury: Łódzkie Studia
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Literaturoznawcze 6 (2017): 195–205. In Polish. Notes Frye’s remark in “Myth, Fiction, and Displacement,” that the Cinderella fairy tale has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times in middle-class fiction. Chong, Derrick. “The Relevance of Management to Society: Peter Drucker’s Oeuvre from the 1940s and 1950s.” Journal of Management History 19, no. 1 (2013): 55–72. On the similarities between Drucker’s humanistic philosophy of management and Frye’s championing an educated imagination. Frye ended The Educated Imagination—“using language and adopting a perspective that could have come from Drucker— by reminding us that individual choices have moral ramifications as they help to shape the society we inhabit.” Chorpenning, Joseph F. The Divine Romance: Teresa of Avila’s Narrative Theology. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1992. Applies the theories of Frye to Teresa’s Life, Way of Perfection, Interior Castle, and Foundations in order to show that these works rely on a common narrative framework—the universal journey of descent and eventual ascent to God. – “Loss of Innocence, Descent into Hell, and Cannibalism: Romance Archetypes and Narrative Unity in Carcel de Amor.” Modern Language Review 87, no. 2 (April 1992): 342–51. Uses Frye’s narrative archetypes to analyse Diego de San Pedro’s Carcel de Amor: the narrative moves from innocence to a demonic world and then on to an ascent and a series of trials leading to a return to goodness. – “Santa Teresa’s Libro de la vida as Romance: Narrative Movements and Heroic Quest.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 14, no. 1 (1989): 51–64. Reads Saint Teresa’s Vida in terms of the grammar of romance narrative found in Frye’s The Secular Scripture. Chriss, James J. “Gouldner’s Tragic Vision.” Sociological Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2002): 81–96. Frye is cited as one of several writers, including Whitehead, who have noted the proximity between the appearance of tragic theatre and scientific revolutions: fifth-century Greece and early seventeenth-century Europe. Christensen, Lars ThØger, and Joep Cornelissen. “Organizational Transparency as Myth and Metaphor.” European Journal of Social Theory 18, no. 2 (2015): 132–49. Both Frye and Frank Kermode “link myths to metaphors, as the direct embodiment of those myths in ways of speaking and thinking in the present. Frye argues that myth and metaphor are interrelated in time and space. Where a metaphor establishes a condition of equivalence in the here-and-now that allows us to
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consider an abstract concept or a practice as if it were a different thing existing elsewhere, myth suggests a condition of equivalence which held in the past and will continue to hold in the future. This also suggests that when metaphors take on mythical proportions, and when they come to embody myths in a direct manner (so that the ‘as if’ hypothetical and figurative nature of a metaphor becomes a literal ‘as’ representation of the way things are), these metaphors themselves take on a condition of equivalence.” Christensen, Peter G. “Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis: Prison Letter as Myth.” In Donaldson and Mendelson, Frye and the Word, 265–79. Drawing on Frye’s definition of myth, examines Wilde’s De Profundis as a work in which the author creates himself as a figure of mythic proportions. Christiansen, Johanne Louise. “A Woman’s ‘SelfWronging’: A Gender Subtheme in the Qur’anic Encounter between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.” Literature & Theology 32, no. 4 (December 2018): 397– 422. “Literary studies into the Qur’anic text have seen a significant growth in the last three decades. This strand of research within the field of Qur’anic studies is in particular inspired by similar academic efforts in Biblical Studies, exemplified by scholars such as Northrop Frye (d. 1991) and Robert Alter.” Christie, William. “‘The burden of the mystery’: William Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey.” The Two Romanticisms and Other Essays: Mystery and Interpretation in Romantic Literature. Sydney, Australia: University of Sydney Press, 2016. “Using Northrop Frye’s functional distinction between the ‘episodic’ thematic mode as discontinuous and the ‘encyclopedic’ thematic mode as more extended and continuous, we can say that ‘Tintern Abbey’ is a record of episodic discontinuities and doubts in search of the continuous and encyclopedic features in human experience.” – “The Edinburgh Review” in the Literary Culture of Romantic Britain: Mammoth and Megalonyx. London: Routledge, 2009. “In the Victorian period and after, the ambivalence towards Wordsworth that had marked the attitudes of many of his contemporaries largely disappeared, allowing an authorized or Tory version of literary history to develop through critical theories otherwise nominally anti-Romantic—through the high culturalism of Matthew Arnold, for example, the Anglo-Catholicism of T.S. Eliot, and the asceticism of F.R. Leavis and the New Criticism—as well as, later, through theories both sympathetic to Romanticism and themselves Romantic, like the archetypal anatomizing
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of Northrop Frye, the Freudian agon of Bloom, and the Hegelian or apocalyptic historicism of M.H. Abrams.” Christman, John. “Narrative Unity as a Condition of Personhood.” Metaphilosophy 35, no. 5 (October 2004): 695–713. Examines the claim made by several writers in philosophy and the social sciences that for an individual to count as a person, a single personality, or the subject of a life, the experiences of the subject in question must take a narrative form. Argues that narrativity is a misleading and, in some ways of understanding it, implausible condition of what it is that adds unity to personhood and personality. Pursues this critique by considering canonical accounts of narrativity in philosophy and literary studies, including Frye’s theory of narrative. Christopher, Joe R. “Alice’s [successful] Adventures in Wonderland: An Appreciation of Its One Hundred Fifty Years.” Mythlore 34, no. 1 (2015): 142–52. Claims that Frye’s analysis of the four forms of prose fiction is useful in deciding what kind of fiction Alice in Wonderland is: an anatomy. – Review of Detecting Wimsey: Papers on Dorothy L. Sayers’s Detective Fiction, by Nancy-Lou Paterson. Mythlore 36, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 2018): 154–7. “[T]his reviewer is not convinced by Northrop Frye’s definition of farce in his treatment of genres in Anatomy of Criticism,” which is Paterson’s touchstone in her discussion. Chrz, Vladimir, and Ivo Čermak. “Žánry příběhů, které žijeme” [Genres of Stories We Live By]. Československá psychologie: Časopis pro psychologickou teorii a praxi [Prague] 49, no. 6 (2005): 481–95. In Czech. Examines the psychological meaning of Frye’s mythoi. Chukwumah, Ignatius. “The African Literary Artist and the Question of Function.” Ufahamu: Journal of the African Activist Association (Online) 38, no. 2 (Winter 2015): 129–52. Notes Frye’s view of how a poet (Yeats in particular) accepts symbols from a mythology. Cites Frye throughout. – “Frye’s Thought and Its Implications for the Interpretation of Nigerian Narratives.” Comparative Literature and Culture 15, no. 1 (March 2013). 1–9. “Applies Northrop Frye’s theoretical work on archetypes, mythoi, and modes for the analysis of Nigerian literature. Chukwumah’s application in the interpretation of Nigerian literature results in the understanding that the hero as conceived by Frye is not exactly the same as Africa’s or Nigeria’s and requires that scholars and critics of African texts fill up the ellipses generated by Frye with an autochthonous,
resistant, rewarding, African-related symbolic templates in order to make the sense of the hero in both traditional and postcolonial African/Nigerian literatures in a manner that is somewhat substitutive, but mainly complementary.” (publisher’s abstract) – “Lazarus, Noah, and the Enunciation of the Resurrection Mythos in Soyinka’s The Interpreters.” Matatu: Journal for African Culture & Society 42, no. 1 (2013): 247–54. Applies “Frye’s concept of mythos—the structure of imagery significantly allied with the central character(s) of this work—offers a textual interpretation of the mythos of resurrection as anchored mainly in Lazarus and Noah, along with other minor characters who bear some slight relation to this mythos. It also shows how said mythos, concealed but later unearthed, ultimately announces the possibility and practicability of pure textual analysis that has been skipped with respect to The Interpreters and, by extension, the entire Nigerian literary tradition.” – “Mythic Displacement in Nigerian Narratives.” Ilha do Desterro 65 (2013): 73–105. “Five decades of resorting to humanistic critical procedures have bequeathed to the Nigerian critical practice the legacy of examining and discovering in Nigerian and African narratives the historical and social concepts of the time and times they are presumed to posit. These concepts include colonialism, corruption, war, political instability, and culture conflict. These procedures are undertaken without due regard to seeing the whole of the literary tradition as a stream out of which narratives emerge. This article, therefore, by way of introduction, seeks to retrieve Nigerian narratives from ‘every author’ and humanistic critical approach by placing them in a realm where a holistic method such as Frye’s could be applied. Here, the traverses of the structure of mythical imagery such as the mythos of crime and punishment as embodied in these narratives and how this structure was displaced/shrouded from Frye’s first mimetic mode to the last, via the concept of mythic displacement, will be analysed.” (author’s abstract) Chul-Gyun, Lyou. “An Analysis of the Narrative Strategy in the Epilogue System of Korean Nature Documentaries.” Journal of the Korea Content Association 14, no. 4 (2014): 67–77. Analyses the distinctive narrative features of the epilogues of TV documentaries based on Frye’s four narrative patterns. The study focuses on the TV series Tears of the Antarctic. Ciglar-Žaniæ, Vidan, and Ivo Janja. “Northrop Frye u razgovoru” [Northrop Frye in Conversation]. Republika 11 (1990): 48–56. In Croatian. An interview
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
with Frye, held in his hotel on the occasion of his visit to Zagreb to receive an honorary degree from the University of Zagreb in 1990. The interview focuses on Frye’s theoretical assumptions in relation to those of structuralism, deconstruction, and neomarxism. The interviewers also solicit responses from Frye about genre theory, especially as it relates to romance, and about his long-term interest in Blake, Milton, and Shakespeare. Čiočytė, Dalia. “Archetipinė gyvenimo—sapno metafora ir jos literatūrinės interpretacijos” [The Archetypical Metaphor of Life as Dream and Its Literary Interpretations]. Literatura 50, no. 1 (2008): 49–58. In Lithuanian. Maintains that in the context of Western culture, the archetypal metaphor of life as a dream (or living in a dream) is first seen in the Bible as in what Frye calls “the grammar of literary archetypes.” Compares the function of the metaphor in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Calderón’s La vida es sueño, and Strindberg’s A Dream Play, as well as in Lithuanian works by Zbignievas Morštynas, Vydūnas, and Šatrijos Ragana. – Biblija Vakarų pasaulio literatūroje (BUS): Teorinės modulio dalies paskaitų konspektas [The Bible in Western World Literature (BUS): A Summary of the Theoretical Module for Lectures]. Vilnius: Vilnius universitetas, 2016. In Lithuanian. – “Literatūra ir žmogaus pasaulis” [Literature and the Human World]. Literatūra 1 (2015): 110–12. In Lithuanian. – “Romantizmas ir krikščioniškoji vakarų kultūros” [Romanticism and Christian Western Culture]. Literatūra 47, no. 1 (2005). In Lithuanian. Seeks to understand the current cultural situation in Lithuania in terms of Frye’s principle that the study of past culture always throws light on the present one. – “Tautiškosios religinės tapatybės svarstymai literatūros teologijos aspektu” [National Religious Identity from the Perspective of Theology of Literature]. Literatūra 5 (2006): 105–17. In Lithuanian. Ciornea, Carmen. “Anthropological Structures of the Religious Imaginary in Sandu Tudor’s Norm–Poem.” Research and Science Today (April 2015): 34–47. Frye is seen as one of the critics who has opened up the dialogue between religion and literature. Cixous, Hélène. “Une science de la littérature.” Le Monde. Supplement to no. 7086 (25 October 1967): iv. In French. A summary of Frye’s “science of literature” as developed in Anatomy of Criticism. Outlines the theoretical bases of Frye’s system, including his theories
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of genre, archetype, and myth. “Frye demonstrates that the revolutions in the history of literature are always revolutions of literary form, ‘modulations’ of literary convention. He recommends, then, for those who want to understand the changes in sensibility (romanticism, for example), to begin by studying the history of imagery: it is in the image of the world projected by men that is the ‘imaginary dwelling’ into which they enter when they begin to read—the image of another world which is ours.” Clark, Elizabeth A. “The Celibate Bridegroom and His Virginal Brides: Metaphor and the Marriage of Jesus in Early Christian Ascetic Exegesis.” Church History 77, no. 1 (March 2008): 1–25. Notes in passing Frye’s view that metaphor lies at the heart of Christian language. Clark, J. Wilson. “The Line of National Subjugation in Canadian Literature.” Literature & Ideology 7 (1970): 81–8. Says Frye is one of the dominant critical figures who writes from a willing posture of Canadian subjugation to US economics, politics, and culture. Cites Frye’s “Conclusion” to Literary History of Canada as an example of this posture. – “Two Lines in Canadian Literary History.” Literature & Ideology 15 (1973): 27–36. Maintains that literary historians such as Frye, who insist that the physical environment has been the primary force shaping the Canadian imagination, explain Quebec’s separatism in terms of isolation—the garrison mentality induced by a vast countryside. Compares this view with Margaret Atwood’s. Clark, Richard C. “Bibliographical Spectrum and Review Article: Is There a Canadian Literature?” Review of National Literatures: Canada 7 (1967): 133–64 [154–6]. On Frye’s “Conclusion” to Literary History of Canada. Clark, Roy Peter. Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser. New York: Little, Brown, 2020. “A collection of over a hundred writing tips gleaned from fifty popular writing books. Chapters are devoted to each key strategy. Author expands and contextualizes original authors’ suggestions and shares how each tip helped other authors improve their skills.” Frye’s tip: Write for sequence, then for theme. “I would love to listen in on a conversation between Frye and Lajos Egri. Egri turns a theme—in the form of a brief and pointed premise—into an engine that summarizes and generates the action of a play.” Clark, Sandra. William Shakespeare: “The Tempest.” Penguin Critical Studies. London: Penguin, 1988. 73. In her final chapter, “Criticism of The Tempest,” Clark
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discusses briefly Frye’s interpretation of the play as a romance. Clark, Stephen R.L. “Late Pagan Alternatives: Plotinus and the Christian Gospel.” Religious Studies 52, no. 4 (December 2016): 545–60. Remarks on Frye’s view of the hell-world. Clark, Steve. “‘Something’s Lost but Something’s Gained’: Joni Mitchell and Postcolonial Lyric.” In Canadian Music and American Culture: Get Away from Me, ed. Tristanne Connolly and Tomoyuki Iino. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 27–46. Argues that Joni Mitchell “represents a post-colonial identity involving an ‘urge for going’ that means both departure and return. With reference to Northrop Frye, Clark explicates the symbolism of history, geography, and climate that resonates within the lyricism of her songs, while tracing allusions to poetic tradition including Shakespeare, Milton, and Yeats.” (from publisher’s abstract) – “‘There Is No Competition’: Eliot on Blake, Blake in Eliot.” Blake, Modernity and Popular Culture. London: Palgrave, 2007. 78–99. “Probably the majority of contemporary Blake critics would wholeheartedly endorse these sentiments about a writer who has become something of a hate figure in recent years: even the usually courteous and urbane Northrop Frye is moved to describe Eliot’s ideas as ‘fantastic and repellent.’ This is partly owing to the continuing impact of specific negative judgements, partly to commitment to an Anglo-Catholic royalist politics that has gone terminally out of fashion (though when was it ever in?), and partly to the promotion, in both poetry and criticism, of an ideal of elite culture which is now widely regarded as oppressive.” (author’s abstract) Clark, Timothy. “Ecological Grief and Anthropocene Horror.” American Imago 77, no. 1 (2020: 61–80. “In a seminal anthology Neil Everden endorsed the supposedly ecological ethics implicit in something Northrop Frye wrote about art, ‘that the goal of art is to recapture, in full consciousness, that original lost sense of identity with our surroundings, where there is nothing outside the mind of man, or something identical with the mind of man.’” Clark, Walter H., Jr. Review of René Wellek, Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 30 (1972): 389–91 [390–1]. Takes issue with Wellek’s attack on Frye’s criticism as an elaborate and fanciful fiction that totally disregards the literary text. Maintains that the significant thing about Frye’s system “is not so much the term
‘mythology’ but rather the fact that he is proposing a means of identifying, sorting and relating works of literature according to type. . . . It is as genre, or taxonomy, that Frye’s system is of greatest theoretical interest.” Clark, William. Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Borrows from and adapts the ideas of Frye and others to establish the framework for his discussion. – “Narratology and the History of Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26 (1995): 1–72. Categorizes some recent works in the philosophy of science according to Frye’s narrative typology of the four mythoi. Clarke, G.J. “Ends as Means: Christian Eschatology as a Critical Tool for Approaching Postmodernism.” In The Strategic Smorgasbord of Postmodernity: Literature and the Christian Critic, ed. Deborah Bowen. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 49–70. “Structuralist critic Northrop Frye has done the most of any critic to establish the significance of the Bible’s structure and typology for understanding literature. The Bible is the model for the apocalyptic structure of narrative. . . . Frye provides the evidence that the Bible is also the source for myth, archetype, symbol, and metaphor.” Clarke, George Elliott. “AAR Centennial Roundtable.” Review of Canticles: Hymns of the African Baptists of Nova Scotia. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82, no. 3 (2014): 591–605. – “Collecting His Wits.” Canadian Literature 208 (Spring 2011): 153–5. Review of Collected Works of George Grant, ed. Arthur Davis and Henry Roper. “The Collected Works prove Grant was one of our chief intellectuals, ranking easily with Northrop Frye, Marshall McLuhan (both of whom he lambastes), Harold Innis (whom he admires), and Linda Hutcheon.” Clarke, Michael Tavel. Review of Rethinking the Romance Genre: Global Intimacies in Contemporary Literary and Visual Culture, by Emily Davis. Ariel 47, nos. 1 and 2 (January–April 2016): 405–7. “While some of Davis’s history [of the romance genre] is familiar and consistent with definitions of romance offered by literary historians like Northrop Frye, it has the effect of admitting just about any text into the romance tradition.” Clarke, Richard L.W. “Northrop Frye, ‘The Archetypes of Literature’” (1951). http://www.rlwclarke.net/Courses/ LITS2307/2004–2005/04BFryeArchetypesofLiterature. pdf.
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Clarkson, Adrienne. “Speech on the Occasion of the Opening of the Northrop Frye International Literary Festival,” Moncton, NB, 24 April 2003. http:// www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=1098. French text at http://www.gg.ca/media/doc. asp?DocID=1098&lang=f. On Frye as a teacher, from one of his former students. Clary-Lemon, Jennifer. “Shifting Tradition: Writing Research in Canada.” American Review of Canadian Studies 39, no. 2 (2009): 94–111. Reviews Frye’s ideas on the function of studying English in higher education. Clausson, Nils. “Dickens’s Genera Mixta: What Kind of a Novel Is Hard Times?” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 52, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 157–80. Draws on Frye’s “Dickens and the Comedy of Humours” in identifying New Comedy features of Hard Times as well as its links to the Menippean satire. – “Interpretation, Genre, Revaluation: The Conventions of Romance and the Romance of Religion in Benjamin Disraeli’s Lothair.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 43 (2012): 187–208. Draws on Frye’s influential account of romance in The Secular Scripture. – “Pastoral Elegy into Romantic Lyric: Generic Transformation in Matthew Arnold’s Thyrsis.” Victorian Poetry 48, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 173–94. “In his brilliant essay on ‘Lycidas,’ Northrop Frye makes a remark that is particularly pertinent to understanding ‘Thyrsis.’ In pastoral elegies, says Frye, the poet whose death is mourned is often ‘a kind of double or shadow’ of the elegist, so that in writing about the deceased poet the elegist is also writing about himself.” Clayton, Tom. “Two Textual Cruxes in The Tempest.” Notes and Queries 63, no. 3 (2016): 436–41. Cleary, Thomas R. “Fielding: Style for an Age of Sensibility.” Transactions of the Samuel Johnson Society of the Northwest, vol. 6 (Calgary: Samuel Johnson Society of the Northwest, 1973): 91–6. Examines Frye’s description of Fielding as a “product” novelist of the eighteenth century, opposed to such “process” novelists as Sterne. Concludes that Frye’s distinction, which appears in “Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility,” may be false. Clements, Robert J. “Report of the Sixth Triennial Congress of the Associazione Internazionale per gli Studi di Lingua e Letteratura Italiane.” Italica 45, no. 1 (March 1968): 122. Although Frye did not attend the conference, he contributed one of the papers (“II Romanticismo: Teoria e Sviluppo”); it was ideologically attacked by scholars from Eastern Europe.
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Clinton, Dan. “Genre.” Part of a syllabus for “Theories of Media” (Department of English, University of Chicago). https://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/genre.htm/. Relies substantially on Frye’s theory of genre. Clissold, Bradley D. “Don DeLillo’s Anagogic Postcards: Thematic Inscriptions Writ Small.” Canadian Review of American Studies 45, no. 3 (2015): 375–99. “The present article explores, using a representative sampling, how DeLillo’s specific descriptions of various postcard practices function as anagogic metaphors that serve simultaneously to highlight and reinforce the central postmodern thematics at work in his fiction. This nuancing of anagogic metaphorics away from Northrop Frye’s valenced use of the word to designate a spiritual mode of textual interpretation that reads for mythopoeic allusions to the eternal. Cloud, Doug. “The Rise of the Gay Warrior: Rhetorical Archetypes and the Transformation of Identity Categories.” Discourse & Communication (February 2019): 26–47. Cloud distinguishes his use of the word “archetype” from Frye’s. Cluett, Robert. Canadian Literary Prose: A Preliminary Stylistic Analysis. Toronto: ECW Press, 1990. Frye’s Fables of Identity is included as part of the database in two chapters of this study. Although Frye’s style is not discussed, charts following chapters 4 and 5 illustrate how features of his prose compare with features in the prose of Morley Callaghan and Robertson Davies. Clune, Michael W. “Judgment and Equality.” Critical Inquiry 45 (Summer 2019): 910–34. Begins his study of value judgments with a close examination of Frye’s wellknown position on value judgments in the Polemical Introduction to Anatomy of Criticism. – “The Humanities’ Fear of Judgment: Scholars Must Reclaim the Right to Say What’s Good, and What’s Not.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 66, no. 11 (2019): B17. Cockerell, David. “The Solemnization of Matrimony.” Theology 102, no. 806 (March–April 1999): 104–12. Shows that this text from The Book of Common Prayer embodies and expresses all of Frye’s four mythoi: romance through the marriage itself, comedy in the Cana story, antiromance in the congregation’s ironic commentary, and tragedy in the references to the Fall and the darker sides of human nature. Suggests that the comedic aspect introduces an important element of realized eschatology as the marriage service looks beyond itself for its transformation–completion.
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Cocozzella, Peter. “Salvador Espriu’s Prophetic Mode: The Voice of a Historicist Persona.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 14, no. 2 (1990): 209–34. “Eminently representative of the generation of the Civil War (1936–1939), the Catalan author Salvador Espriu (1913–1985) is distinguished by the extraordinary breadth of his vision, which Josep M. Castellet, following the Northrop Frye theory, calls ‘Encyclopedic.’ The syncretism and synchronism, essential features of this encyclopedic vision, find their complete realization in the consciousness of Salom de Sinera, a character that throughout the production of Espriu plays a central unifying factor and especially as an artistic alter ego of the author.” Code, David J. “Don Juan in Nadsat: Kubrick’s Music for A Clockwork Orange.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 139, no. 2 (July 2014): 339–86. “The important question, as always, is whether the link of A Clockwork Orange via Purcell to Shadwell’s The Libertine adds anything to critical understanding. A preliminary answer can best be framed by quoting Northrop Frye, the most eloquent proponent of ‘archetype’ or ‘myth’ criticism: ‘It is relatively easy to see the place of a myth in a mythology, and one of the main uses of myth criticism is to enable us to understand the corresponding place that a work of literature has in the context of literature as a whole. Putting works of literature in such a context gives them an immense reverberating dimension of significance.’ For Frye, this ‘reverberating significance’ means that every literary work ‘catches the echoes of all the other works of its type.’ In this light, the prominent and extensive use of the Purcell in A Clockwork Orange cries out for an investigation of its possible ‘echoes’ of ‘other works’ of the Don Juan ‘type.’” Code, Murray. “Vital Concerns and Vital Illusions.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2012): 18–46. “A consumer society that has embraced global capitalism while striving to preserve all the comforts and conveniences provided by technoscience is arguably fatally ill. Much support for this gloomy diagnosis is provided by, among others, Hannah Arendt, Northrop Frye, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Their reflections on the health of a human culture point up the urgency of the need to rethink the idea of good reasoning that predominates in the West.” (from author’s abstract) Code, R. Fraser. “Bible Seminar for the 21st Century: Northrop Frye.” http://www.frasercode.ca/bibleseminar-transcripts. About a course Code taught at Erindale United Church in Mississauga, ON, based
on Frye’s own legendary course. Contains links to the transcripts of each of the eight monthly seminars, held in 2015 and 2016. Cohen, John. “Myth, Criticism, Literature and Children.” Orana: Journal of School and Children’s Librarianship 26, no. 1 (1990): 3–7. The archetypal vision of literature based on Frye’s theory is applied here to three Australian children’s books. Cohen, Ralph. Genre Theory and Historical Change: Theoretical Essays of Ralph Cohen. Ed. John Rowlett. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017. Offers a critique of Frye’s genre theory based on such principles as the opposition between product vs. process and the radical of presentation. Cohen, Ralph, and John Rowlett. “On the Presuppositions of Literary Periods.” New Literary History 50, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 113–27. “Within the Augustan period (1660–1770) critics have introduced a number of divisions. What I have presented as one period, nineteenth-century critics divided into three: the Age of Dryden, the Age of Pope, and the Age of Johnson. In our time the hundred years have been divided into two by Josephine Miles—the classical mode and the sublime mode—and by Northrop Frye—the neoclassical period and the age of sensibility.” Cohen, Sol. “The Linguistic Turn: The Absent Text of Educational Historiography.” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 3, no. 2 (1991): 237–48. Uses Frye’s and Hayden White’s theory of emplotment to examine several recent histories of American public education. Cohn, Robert G. “Symbolism.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33, no. 2 (Winter 1974): 181–92. Focuses on Frye’s view of symbolism, set down in Anatomy of Criticism and elsewhere. Colaiacomo, Paola. “La letteratura come potere” [Literature as Power]. In Lombardo, Ritratto, 169–79. In Italian. Applies De Quincey’s distinction between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power to Frye’s work and finds that the function of criticism for Frye is to reproduce the power of literature. Colbeck, Matthew. “‘Is She Alive? Is She Dead?’ Representations of Chronic Disorders of Consciousness in Douglas Coupland’s Girlfriend in a Coma.” Medical Humanities 42, no. 3 (September 2016): 160–5. “Providing a close reading of Douglas Coupland’s Girlfriend in a Coma (1998) against the context of medical literature and diagnoses, this article examines how the coma patient is represented, often depicting
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the realities of a prolonged vegetative state, in contrast with other popular representations of coma. It explores how the author develops a work of ‘fantastic’ fiction (a genre defined by the structuralist critic Tzvetan Todorov), using the condition of coma as a metaphor for a postmodern existential crisis, while simultaneously employing mimetic techniques that raise important medical, ethical and philosophical questions surrounding the ontological status of the comatose patient.” “The descent into and return from coma can be likened to mythological tales of the katabatic hero who descends into the underworld on the quest for, as Northrop Frye explicates in his analysis of mythological archetypes, forbidden esoteric knowledge and often, ‘knowledge of the future.’” (from author’s abstract) Coleman, Dorothy. “Rabelais and The War Babies.” Modern Language Review 66 (July 1971): 511–21. Maintains that Rabelais and Kingsley wrote what Frye calls the Menippean satire or anatomy. Coleman, William E., Jr. Review of Consciousness and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s Thought, by Bruce E. Gronbeck, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Souku. ETC: A Review of General Semantics 50, no. 4 (Winter 1993–4): 511. “A copious writer—Orality and Literacy (1982) may be his best known work—Ong’s ideas have had impact on such prominent writers as Northrop Frye, Richard Leo Enos, and Joshua Meyrowitz.” Coles, Don. “The Brilliance of Northrop Frye: Why We Should Toast Our Oracle.” Toronto Star (23 July 2012): A18. “Martin Knelman’s piece on Northrop Frye offers the finest brief-format comment on that unique thinker and teacher I’ve ever read. It’s important that we now have it. There have been so many inadequate/partial/ journalistic pieces (one exception: Robert Fulford’s knowledgeable column a number of years ago) and one ill-written biography that missed just about every salient point concerning Frye that I’ve despaired of coming upon anything I could read and think, OK, this is finally close to rendering sufficient justice to this man.” Collett, Anne, and Dorothy Jones. “Gendered TreeScapes in the Art of Emily Carr and Judith Wright.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 42, no. 3 (September 2009): 75–9. “Explores the impact of gender, colonial inheritance, and European modernism upon the representation of landscape in general, and trees in particular, in the work of two female artists who achieved iconic national status in the twentieth century: Canadian painter Emily Carr and Australian poet Judith Wright.” About the same time as Wright was publishing her poems, Frye was developing his theory of the Canadian writer being overcome with terror in the face
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of a violent and threatening nature. Both Wright and Carr had to work out their own response to a sometimes threatening nature. Collin, Robbie. “Words Are Powerful. Choose Them Well. But How Is the Choice to Be Made?” The Telegraph (29 August 2017). “In his column for The Telegraph in 1991, Stephen Fry pondered the kind of ‘worthless and embittered offal’ who would voluntarily pursue a career in criticism. Hello, Stephen! That would be me. I blame Fry’s near-namesake Northrop Frye, whose Anatomy of Criticism I unearthed, aged 18, in a mildewy corner of the Castle House Library at St Andrews University when I should have been reading something else. Every other line of it hit me like a rap on the forehead from a teaspoon. Frye wrote about art and criticism as if they were locks and keys. A critic’s job was to do the rummaging and test each idea’s fit, until the book, film, play or painting in front of them came unlatched.” Collins, Catherine Ann. “Cultural Stories in the Rhetoric of U.S. Involvement in Vietnam.” In Studies in Communication: Communication and Culture: Language Performance, Technology, and Media, ed. Sari Thomas. Communication and Information Science 4. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1990. 25–33. Collins, Harold R. “The Ironic Imagery of Armah’s The Beautiful Ones Are Not Born Yet: The Putrescent Vision.” World Literature Written in English 20 (November 1971): 37–50. Argues that an analysis of Armah’s work in Frye’s terms reveals it to be a fiction in the ironic mode. Collins, Marsha S. “Echoing Romance: James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ as Ecoromance.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 47, no. 2 (June 2014): 103–19. “Avatar displays the characteristic plot of romance, based on a polarized universe that pits good against evil (Frye, The Secular Scripture). As Northrop Frye has observed, ‘the whole human action depicted in the plot is ritualized action. The ritualizing of action is what makes possible the technique of summarized narrative that we find in the “and then” stories of romance, which can move much more quickly than realism can from one episode to another.’ This structure allows for the readily intelligible, but also at times breakneck pace of romance.” – “Romance.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, ed. Barry Stocker and Michael Mack. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 263–91. Frye’s The Secular Scripture is seen as developing an anatomy of the enduring, persistent conventions of romance.
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Collins, Nicholas E. “Discarnate Śivas: Marshall McLuhan, Pratyabhijñā Philosophy and the Evolution of Religion.” https://www.academia.edu/37456839/ Discarnate_%C5%9Aivas_Marshall_McLuhan_ Pratyabhij%C3%B1%C4%81_Philosophy_and_the_ Evolution_of_Religion. [B.W.] “Powe’s study of McLuhan and Frye [Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy] as members of a Canadian tradition of visionary humanism emphasizes the way each thinker’s work illuminated that of the other. For instance, McLuhan’s sounding the alarm about the effects of electronic and popular culture in drastically reshaping the immediate environment and sensus communis of the global population calls forth Frye’s insight into what he called ‘the Great Code’— ‘when we find ourselves in the Magnetic City being shell-shocked or shellacked by the deluge of raw images and the glosses of text messaging.’ In Frye’s view, all books form a single book, into which a fundamental pattern is inscribed which is unique to the individual and which connects their story with the story of the cosmos in toto. This is a retrieval of the medieval idea of the Book of Nature, made into a literary metaphor, but originally referring to the study of the world as a means of divine revelation.” Collins, Peter. “Pictorial Criticism.” Canadian Architect 17, no. 7 (1 July 1972): 36–7. In a critique of journalistic architectural criticism, notes that the “critical writings of scholars like Northrop Frye or Kenneth Clark are not essentially ‘journalistic’ criticisms, even though they may be published in learned journals or popular magazines.” Colombo, John Robert. Canadian Literary Landmarks. Willowdale, ON: Hounslow Press, 1984. “A guide book to sites in Canada with literary associations. . . . All the leading authors are discussed: Earle Birney and E.J. Pratt among the poets; Hugh MacLennan and Robertson Davies among the novelists; Northrop Frye and George Woodcock among the literary figures.” – “The Love of Four Kernels: A Frye Fantasy.” Hamilton Arts and Letters Magazine 7, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 2014–15). http://samizdatpress.typepad.com/ halmagazine-issue-seven-2/the-love-of-four-kernels-afrye-fantasy-by-john-robert-colombo-3.html. – The Notebooks of John Robert Colombo. 5 vols. Eugenia, ON: The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2018. A section in volume 4 is devoted to Frye. Colwell, C. Carter. A Student’s Guide to Literature. New York: Washington Square Press, 1968. 7–8, 14, 46–7. An introductory manual on the elements and forms
of literature, which includes brief summaries of Frye’s theories of plot, character, and comic form. Diagrams Frye’s four plots, comments on his two pairs of contrasting character types, and seeks to reconcile his theory of comedy with Susanne Langer’s. Colwell, Richard. An Interesting Half Century.” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 197 (Summer 2013): 7–37. Brief comments on using Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism as a guide for applying ideas from literature to music education. Combe, Dominique. Les genres littéraires. Paris: Hachette, 1992. A section of chapter 5 is entitled “Northrop Frye et l’Anatomie de la critique.” Combe, Kirk. “Bourgeois Rakes in Wedding Crashers: Feudal to Neo-Liberal Articulations in Modern Comedic Discourse.” Journal of Popular Culture 46, no. 2 (April 2013): 338–57. The categories Frye uses to develop his theory of comedy, such as the rake, describe features that are more fluid than Frye’s categories. Comerón, David Cotarelo. “K. en Baltimore: Afinidades narrativas entre The Wire y El Castillo” [K. in Baltimore: Narrative Affinities between The Wire and The Castle”]. Revista de Comunicación 16, no. 1 (2017): 55–75. A study of the narrative similarities between the novel The Castle by Franz Kafka and the TV series The Wire, created by David Simon for HBO. Uses Frye’s categories of the hero in his theory of modes in order to analyse the main characters in each work. Compton, Anne. “Romancing the Landscape: Jane Urquhart’s Fiction.” In Jane Urquhart: Essays on Her Works, ed. Laura Ferri. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2005. 115–43. Draws on Frye’s definition of the romantic in examining the Canadian landscape as the source of chaotic and visionary power in Urquhart’s work. Conlan, J.P. “The Fey Beauty of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Shakespearean Comedy in Its Courtly Context.” Shakespeare Studies 32 (2004): 118–72. On the approach of Frye, among numerous others, to Shakespeare’s court comedy. Conchubhair, Brian Ó. “Irish Cultural Humor: Cultural Comprehension and Discourse Processing: Ninth Annual Barra Ó Donnabháin Lecture, 2014.” American Journal of Irish Studies 13 (2016): 237–59. Regarding Cré na Cille (1949) by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, considered one of the greatest novels written in the Irish language: “Northrop Frye’s notions of repetition and recitation appear particularly prescient when applied to Cré na Cille and shed light on the novel’s humorous working,
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
especially with regard to repetition and circular speech: these phrases, insults, accusations and recurring references are repeated over and over in the various episodes and interludes that comprise the novel.” Conkan, Marius. “From Fantasy Fiction to Film: The Chronicles of Narnia as Religious Spaces.” Caietele Echinox 29 (2015): 252–62. “In his analysis of the five fictional modes discussed by Northrop Frye (myths, romance, the high mimetic mode, the low mimetic mode and the ironic mode), Thomas Pavel states that ‘even in our reputedly ironic century, romance can be recognized in fantastic literature, or in religious fictions’ as ‘we tend to exaggerate our period’s involvement with low and ironic modes, and its alleged withdrawal from the sacred and from myth.’” Connolly, Tristanne J. William Blake and the Body. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Calls on Frye’s interpretation of Blake throughout. See index. Connor, John T. “Jack Lindsay, Socialist Humanism and the Communist Historical Novel.” Review of English Studies 66, no. 274 (2015): 342–63. Conrado, Regina Fátima de Almeida. “Tradição e Desvio: A Rota do Talento” [Tradition and Deviance: The Route of Talent] Revista de Letras 32 (1992): 31–9. Conville, Richard L. “Northrop Frye and Speech Criticism: An Introduction.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (December 1970): 417–25. An interpretation of Frye’s writings as a contribution to speech criticism. Argues that Frye’s four mythoi—romance, comedy, tragedy, and irony—are structural principles not only of literary texts but of speech texts as well. Concludes that Frye’s theory of myth has two important implications for speech criticism: it treats speech events as specific communication behaviour to be studied in its own right and as general communication activity with its own rules for producing rhetorical artefacts. – “Service-Learning and the Educated Imagination.” Southern Communication Journal 66, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 183–7. “The educated imagination is a simple but powerful concept. Frye’s thesis, literary man that he was, was that the route to an educated imagination ran through the then widely accepted canon of Western literature. My more modest thesis is that service learning is a powerful tool for educating the imaginations of our students. Frye argues that, with an educated imagination, one is equipped to make choices. Without an educated imagination one is doomed to accept and live out the prevailing social mythology, the standards and values presented to us by the popular culture as givens that we are obliged to adjust to. That
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is why educating the imagination is important. . . . Having an educated imagination is fundamental to that choice: between ‘the society we have to live in’ (the one promulgated by the prevailing social mythology) and ‘the society we want to live in.’” Coogan, Michael D. “Contemporary Methods in Biblical Study: Literary Approaches.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, 3rd ed. New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press, 1997. 497–9. Frye is said to be among the most prominent literary critics who have turned their attention to biblical texts. Cook, Albert. “‘Fiction’ and History in Samuel and Kings.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36 (October 1986): 27–48 [37–9]. Maintains that in his reading of the Bible Frye gives “too great an attention to the fictional and typological aspects of the narrative, at the cost of neglecting its main historical thrust.” Cook, David. “‘Double Vision’: The Political Philosophy of Northrop Frye.” Ultimate Reality and Meaning 15 (September 1992): 185–94. Argues that Frye’s social and religious concerns, and his belief in the “transcendental tradition of inspiration or spirit” set him against the central trends of post-Nietzschean philosophy. Cook, Eleanor. “Against Monism: The Canadian Anatomy of Northrop Frye.” In Lombardo, Ritratto, 283–97. On the dialectical, rather than the monistic, nature of Frye’s work, and on his relation to recent Canadian criticism, especially that of Eli Mandel. Concludes with the suggestion that in Frye’s Anatomy there is the strong undercurrent of the confession, out of which emerges the dual image of Frye as both the master interpreter and the gracious servant. – “Anatomies and Confessions: Northrop Frye and Contemporary Theory.” Recherches sémiotics/Semiotic Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1993): 13–22. Sees Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism as both an anatomy and a confession: the two genres inform each other. – “Frye, Herman Northrop.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 22 (1991–2000). http://www.biographi. ca/en/bio/frye_herman_northrop_22E.html. An excellent overview of Frye’s life and works. – “The Function of Riddles at the Present Time.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 326–34. Sees the masterplot of Frye’s criticism as a Pauline riddle that ends in recognition and revelation—as opposed to the Freudian masterplot that leads to darkness and obscurity. Cook, Ramsay. “The Uses of Literature in Cultural History.” English Quarterly 4, no. 3 (Fall 1971): 25–30. “My argument could not be more effectively summed
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up than in the words of Northrop Frye: It is obvious that Canadian literature, whatever its inherent merits, is an indispensable aid to the knowledge of Canada. It records what the Canadian imagination has reacted to, and it tells us things about this environment that nothing else will tell us.” Cook, Richard M. “The Public Critic and Poetry: A Case of Avoidance.” In Modern American Cultural Criticism, ed. Mark Johnson. Warrensburg: Central Missouri State University, 1983. 46–57. Cook, Trevor. “The Covering Cherub: Harold Bloom and Northrop Frye, 1959–69.” Modern Language Studies 42, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 10–33. A careful study of the relationship between Frye and Bloom, based in large part on the correspondence between the two. Reads Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence against his letters to Frye, the result of which shows similarities to Bloom’s Oedipal idolization of Frye and Anatomy of Criticism. – “The Scourge of Plagiary: Perversions of Imitation in the English Renaissance.” University of Toronto Quarterly 83, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 39–63. Maintains that John Weever’s The Whipping of the Satyre (1601) is a good example of Frye’s view that satire is militant irony. Cooper, Andrew M. “Small Room for Judgment: Geometry and Prolepsis in Blake’s “Infant Sorrow.” European Romantic Review 31, no. 2 (March 2020): 129–55. Cooper, Barbara T. “Master Plots: An Alternate Typology for French Historical Dramas of the Early Nineteenth Century.” Theatre Journal 35 (March 1983): 23–31. In order to develop a synchronic view of early nineteenthcentury French drama, draws on Frye’s theory of modes and Hayden White’s adaptation of Frye’s model. Cooper, L.J. William Blake’s Aesthetic Reclamation: Newton, Newtonianism, and Absolute Space in The Book of Urizen and Milton. New York: Routledge, 2018. Notes that Blake, according to Frye, often associates the Book of Daniel with the Christian apocalypse. Cope, Kevin L. “Prologue.” Criteria of Certainty: Truth and Judgment in the English Enlightenment. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2015. “Literary critics often tell the truth, but they seldom take truth as their subject. Who would want to do a job that Lord Bacon (and his unlikely witness Pilate) turned down? Who would dare to define the world’s most perplexing noun? The idea of a “literary” criticism, after all, seems to distinguish literature from ordinary experience and to protect it from crude attempts at verification. Bacon’s successor in the art of taxonomy, Northrop Frye,
has set the tempo for our age by insisting, however paradoxically, that the science of criticism must restrict itself to the purportedly literary attributes of texts.” Corbeil, Carol. “Assessment of Orwell Leads to Clash of the Titans.” Globe and Mail (26 January 1984): E1. A critique of Frye’s address, “The Authority of Learning,” which Corbeil sees as a somewhat reactionary defence of humanism. Believes McLuhan is more enlightening than Frye about the reasons for the erosion of interest in language and literature. Cording, Robert. “The ‘Something More’ in the Bible: A Response to Robert Alter, David Gay, and Michael Dolzani.” In Kee, Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word, 155–69. Argues that Robert Alter’s “Northrop Frye: Between Archetype and Typology” misrepresents Frye’s view of metaphor and language. Praises David Gay’s “The Humanized God: Biblical Paradigms of Recognition in Frye’s Final Three Books” and Michael Dolzani’s “Ashes of the Stars: Northrop Frye and the Trickster God” for the depth and breadth of their understanding of the late Frye. Çörekçioğlu, Hakan. “Critical Utopia and The Sound of Fishsteps.” Neohelicon 44, no. 2 (December 2017): 601– 17. “Typically, utopian texts begin with a foreigner’s visit to the utopic country—often an isolated island. During this visit, the foreigner is accompanied by a native utopian who introduces his country to the visitor. The visitor later returns to his home country admiring the overall organizational, economic and sociopolitical structure of the utopian country. As claimed by Northrop Frye, such formal characteristics inevitably determine the content. Therefore, we read that in utopias the identities are fixed, the institutions are excellent, and the laws are absolute and unchangeable (Frye).” Coronado, Alexa. “Northrop Frye’s Theory of Archetypes” (13 October 2017). https://prezi.com/agwenlkukxfk/ northrop-fryes-theory-of-archetypes/. Cornea, Paul. “The Modern Century: An East-European Reading.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 241–9. Maintains that The Modern Century is relevant to understanding the changes that Eastern Europe underwent in the late twentieth century. Coşgel, Metin M. “Metaphors, Stories, and the Entrepreneur in Economics.” History of Political Economy 28, no. 1 (1996): 57–76. Uses Frye’s five modes to classify the different visions of the entrepreneur in economic “stories.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Cosma, Iulia. “Marcovaldo ovvero le stagioni in città e il fantastic” [Marcovaldo: Or the Seasons in the City and the Fantastic]. Analele Universităţii de Vest din Timişoara: Seria ştiinţe filologice 54 (2002): 115–25. In Italian. Notes Remo Ceserani’s use of Frye’s concept of mode. Costantini, Mariaconcetta. “Transcending Historical Violence: Uses of Myth and Fable in Ben Okri’s Starbook. Callaloo 38, no. 5 (Fall 2015): 1118–34. Uses Frye’s conception of romance to interpret Okri’s Starbook.
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to its critics, is a neo-conservative Americanization of Canada.” Cottino-Jones, Marga. “The Corbaccio: Notes for a Mythical Perspective of Moral Alternatives.” Forum Italicum 4 (1970): 490–509. Draws heavily on Frye’s model of narrative structure in examining Boccaccio’s Corbaccio. Considers the hero’s moral crisis, his enslavement to carnal love, and his spiritual enlightenment, within the mythic cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
Costanzo, William V. World Cinema through Global Genres. Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, 2014. “Frye regard archetypes as complex variables with multiple meanings, linking them to myth and ritual. For Frye myth in literature is analogous to abstract art, like painting stories with archetypal symbols, in contrast to literary realism, which aspires to copy nature much as does representational art.”
– “La critica mitica di Northrop Frye” [The Critical Myth of Northrop Frye]. Problemi 11–12 (September– December 1969): 517–21. In Italian.
Cotrupi, Nella. “Process and Possibility: Northrop Frye’s Spiritual Vision.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 9, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 3–11; also appears as “Process and Possibility” in Ellipse: Texts littéraires canadiens en traduction/Canadian Writing in Translation 69 (Spring 2003): 54–7, and as “Process and Possibility: The Spiritual Vision of Northrop Frye” in Verticals of Frye/Les Verticales des Frye, ed. Ed Lemond. Moncton, NB: Elbow Press, 2005. 16–22. Seeks to answer the questions, How did Frye come to engage the power of the sublime, what did he make of its processes and possibilities, and just how does it connect with his faith and spiritual vision?
Coulter, James A. The Literary Microcosm: Theories of Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists. Leiden: Brill, 1976. 5–6. Draws upon Frye’s distinction between “Iliad critics” and “Odyssey critics.” Argues that these two opposing critical modes “were already present in ancient literary theory.”
– “Verum Factum: Viconian Markers along Frye’s Path.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 286–95. On the FryeVico connection and the former’s indebtedness to the latter. – “Vico, Burke, and Frye’s Flirtation with the Sublime.” In Giambattista Vico and Anglo-American Science: Philosophy and Writing (Approaches to Semiotics 119), ed. Marcel Danesi. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. 35–49. Examines the thought of Vico and Burke as a means to arrive at some clearer insight into the conceptual place occupied by the sublime in Frye’s understanding of the operation of human imagination as manifested by literary artifacts.” Cotter, Anne-Marie Mooney. Gender Injustice: An International Comparative Analysis of Equality in Employment. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. “Northrop Frye pointed out long ago, ‘Why go to the trouble of annexing a country that is so easy to exploit without taking any responsibility for it.’ Economic penetration has proven simpler than military force. The North American Free Trade Agreement, according
– Metodi di critica letteraria americana. Palermo: Palumbo Editore, 1973. 52–9. In Italian. – “Realtà e mito in Griselda.” Problemi 11–12 (November–December 1968): 522–3. In Italian.
Coupe, Laurence. “Myth without Mystery: The Project of Robert Segal.” Religious Studies Review 29, no. 1 (January 2003): 3–14. – “Northrop Frye on Myth.” Review of Northrop Frye on Myth: An Introduction, by Ford Russell. Journal of Religion 82 (2002): 164–6. “When the name of Northrop Frye is mentioned in departments of English these days, it is usually by way of a warning about the perils of trying to emulate George Eliot’s Mr. Casaubon, compiling a ‘Key to All Mythologies.’ This seems rather odd to me, given that it was Frye more than most who was responsible for the consolidation of contemporary literary theory. Perhaps he is the father whom younger academics have to overcome, outdo and then studiously ignore. Certainly, it is noticeable how little his central work, Anatomy of Criticism, is referred to in any detail these days, and how often his general contribution is dismissed in the knowing parentheses of a conference paper. For those trying to teach the relation between mythology and literature, and between the Bible and literature, however, the debt is incalculable; and the Anatomy, read in conjunction with his later work, The Great Code, is indispensable.” Courville, Mathieu E. “‘The Essay as Form’ of Resistance: On the Essayistic Spirit in Said and Adorno.” In Edward Said’s Rhetoric of the Secular. London: Continuum,
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2010. “I am aware that this topic [the essay] has traditionally been dealt with by students of literary forms, not typically dealt with by students of religion and secularism. In reading Northrop Frye’s work, I am struck by how a propos these lines from the beginning of his The Great Code are; Frye writes: ‘A scholar in an area not his own feels like a knight errant who finds himself in the middle of a tournament and has unaccountably left his lance at home.’ Frye was describing himself, a student of literature, dealing with material normally, or at least largely, the preserve of biblical scholars and students of religion. What I have quoted from Frye holds true in my own case, although the disciplinary contexts are the converse: student of comparative religions, beginning, with trepidation, elaborations of a topic—the essay—which as subject-matter has typically been conceived of as primarily a literary affair. In this respect, Frye goes on to add: ‘In such a situation,’ one ‘needs encouragement and help.’” Cousineau-Levine, Penny. Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. In studying Frye, John Ralston Saul, and Linda Hutcheon, the author finds that the themes they identified in Canadian literature and political life—of disconnection, of looking out to another world—are also present in the work of many Canadian artists working with the camera. Cousland, J.R.C. “Tobit: A Comedy in Error?” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 65, nos. 4 (October 2003): 535–53. Notes that the Book of Tobit is a comedy insofar as it follows the U-shaped pattern of the narrative Frye finds throughout the Bible. Coutts, Jon. “Hail, Caesar! A Jesus Film in Search of a Christ Figure.” Journal of Religion and Film 24, no. 1 (2020): 1–33. Susan Lochrie Graham has suggested that “re-tellings of Jesus stories reveal a lot by how they fall in to Northrop Frye’s literary categories of romantic, tragic, comic, and ironic/satiric. She says Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and John Dominic Crossan exemplify how a comic subversion of the ‘heroic Jesus’ might liberate Christian interpretation from ideaabstracted ‘androcentrism’ for an inclusive-action of the ‘story of the community gathered around Jesus.’” Covelo, Roxanne. “The Art of Murder and Ars Rhetorica: De Quincey’s Essay as Mock-Encomium (Thomas De Quincey).” Studies in Romanticism 58, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 309–33. “Even more problematic is the question of how such a satire would or could have been received. Northrop Frye has said of the satirical mode that it comprises two elements, ‘one is wit . . . the other is an object of attack,’ adding as a corollary that in order
to attack anything, satirist and audience must agree on its undesirability. In the case of ‘On Murder’ we are therefore prompted to ask: would De Quincey’s intended audience really have agreed with him on the undesirability of Kant’s aesthetics? Or, more to the point: would such an attack have been at all intelligible to them, assuming it were present?” Cox, John D. “Religion and Suffering in Macbeth.” Christianity and Literature 62, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 225– 40. “Frye is most helpful in seeing broad patterns and how Shakespeare’s plays fit into them; he is less helpful in understanding Shakespeare in a particular time and place, how he wrote in light of it, and how his writing changed over the course of his career.” – Review of The Biblical Presence in Shakespeare, Milton and Blake, by Harold Fisch. Philosophy and Literature 24, no. 1 (April 2000): 236–9. “Fisch has done his postmodern homework. Derrida is acknowledged here, and deconstruction is not only mentioned but practiced knowingly, though unfortunately neither Derrida nor deconstruction is indexed. Different readers will assess the absence of feminist or materialist criticism differently, but Bakhtin, Foucault, Gadamer, all receive their due in passing but knowledgable comments. If Fisch engages Harold Bloom and Northrop Frye at greater length than he engages postmodern critics, it is not because he is stuck in the past but because his chosen method requires that he distinguish what he is doing from these particular critics of Blake and the Bible more than from others.” Coyle, Martin, ed. Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism. London: Routledge, 1990. References to Frye are omnipresent in the articles in this encyclopedia. See, for example, the entries “Romanticism,” “Poetry,” “Lyric,” “Romantic Poetry,” “Drama,” “Comedy,” “American Romance,” “Romantic Critical Tradition,” “Criticism,” “Literature and Music,” “Contexts,” “Literature and the Bible,” and “Canadian Literature.” Crăciun, Alexandra. “Câteva principii mediologice” [Several Mediological Principles]. Studii de Biblioteconomie şi Ştiinţa Informării 15 (2011): 77–87. In Romanian. Comments on Frye’s view of language and of metaphor. Craig, Cairns. Associationism and the Literary Imagination: From the Phantasmal Chaos. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Traces the influence of empirical philosophy and associationist psychology on theories of literary creativity and on the experience of reading literature. Frye is included among the twentieth-century theorists.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Craig, Cairns, and Robert DeMaria. “A Companion to British Literature.” In The Modern Scottish Novel. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2014. 404–23. “Three works by European and North American critics— George Lukács’ The Historical Novel, André Gide’s introduction to James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and Northrop Frye’s Secular Scripture—provided ways of reading the past of the Scottish novel which also explain its major modern developments. The structure of the historical novel as presented by Lukács both underpins the centrality of working-class experience in the modern Scottish novel and reveals the failure of its historical aspirations; Gide’s version of Hogg reveals an alternative counter-historical dimension, one which was to dominate much nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury novel-writing in Scotland; and Frye’s emphasis on the archetypal underlines the extent to which the Scottish novel, from Scott to Muriel Spark, seeks to deconstruct the realistic emphasis of the major tradition of the novel in order to reveal the ‘deep structures’ that underlie all narration. These three perspectives help explain major features of the modern Scottish novel—its experiments with vernacular speech, its counterpointing of different generic styles within a single text, and its use of fantasy to disrupt novelistic realism and its implicit acceptance of the nature of modern society.” (author’s abstract) Craige, Betty Jean. Lorca’s Poet in New York: The Fall into Consciousness. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. “Archetypical of the animal world of the tragic vision, as Frye points out, are ‘beasts and birds of prey, wolves, vultures, serpents, dragons and the like.’ And ‘Ode to the King of Harlem’ opens with a violent image of crocodiles and monkeys.” ‘Ritual,’ says Northrop Frye, ‘seems to be something of a voluntary effort . . . to recapture a lost rapport with the natural cycle.’ And it is ritual that has somehow been eliminated from the New York world Lorca sees which no longer even puts forth the ‘effort . . . to recapture a lost rapport with the natural cycle,’ to imitate the natural rhythms of the universe.” (author’s abstract) Cramer, Carter M. “The World of Nathanael West: A Critical Interpretation.” Emporia State Research Studies 19 (June 1971): 5–71. Argues that critics might have interpreted West’s works more correctly if they had been guided by Frye’s classification of fiction. Crane, R.S. The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953. 137–8 and passim. An analysis of Frye’s place in contemporary criticism. Groups Frye with other critics (such as Bodkin, Burke, Trilling, and Chase) whose
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chief interest is in establishing analogies between poetic meanings and other kinds of discourse. Since Frye thinks of poetry as symbolic language, his approach can be called “semantic.” Craven, Peter. “The Art of War.” The Weekend Australian (4 February 4): 22. On the Iliad. “Canadian critic Northrop Frye says in Anatomy of Criticism that the Iliad’s honouring the death of an enemy is a pivotal moment in aesthetic history (and in the face of every temptation towards the savage enactment of its opposite).” – “Makers of Poetry and Masters of Prose: Tradition and Innovation in Translating the Iliad.” Quadrant Magazine 62, nos. 1–2 (January–February (2018): 94–101. – “Second Look: Anatomy of Criticism.” Sunday Age [Melbourne] (30 May 2005): 25. Revisits Anatomy of Criticism, which he first read in his student days. In spite of Frye’s romanticising the structural element of literature, “the undeniable value of . . . Anatomy of Criticism comes from the brilliance and concision with which he sums up a whole theatre of perspectives on every kind of literary work.” – “Yule Always Be a Part.” The Australian (24 December 2019): 8. “You can talk about [Frank Capra’s] It’s a Wonderful Life as mush, as nothing but sentimentality, but it is in fact, to use a formulation of the great Canadian critic Northrop Frye, an example of that deep evocation of the goodness of the world of which sentimentality is a parody. It has, with great tinkling sleighbells, that quality you get in Shakespeare’s romances, which is not the quality of everyday common-garden fantasy but the quality evoked in The Winter’s Tale when Paulina, the shrewd old magic maker, says: ‘It is required you do awake your faith.”’ Creech, Anna. Christian Century 129, no. 18 (6 September 2003): 3. Treats Frye’s views on the invisible world. Manifestations of the invisible world and arguments advanced by Frye about the invisible world and the creation accounts in Genesis. Cresti, Roberto. “Critical Theory and Literary Experience in Frye.” In Lombardo, Ritratto, 47–63. On the idea of criticism as science in Frye and the relation of this idea to both experience and understanding. Crews, Frederick. “Anaesthetic Criticism.” New York Review of Books 14 (26 February 1970): 31–5, and 14 (12 March 1970). Rpt. with slight changes in Psychoanalysis and Literary Process, ed. Frederick Crews. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop, 1970. 1–24. A polemic directed against
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the prevalent tendency to renounce “methods that would plainly reveal literary determinants.” Sees Frye as one of the chief promulgators of the doctrine that critics should not stray outside literature in developing their fundamental principles. Says this notion is “intellectually indefensible.” Establishes his own Freudian critical framework in opposition to Frye’s. Crișan, Marius-Mircea. “Bloodthirsty and Remorseless Fangs: Representation of East-Central Europe in Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic Short Stories.” In Dracula: An International Perspective, ed. Marius-Mircea Crișan. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Notes that according to Frye fire is a symbol associated with heaven. Crişan, Sorin. “Theatre: Metaphor and the Sublime of Betrayal.” Symbolon 17 (2009): 41–51. “By imposing an effort of seeing and hearing through metaphor, the spectator learns again the way to himself; this implies the addition of a referential function of metaphor, in spite its opposition with the non-referentiality theory of the fictional discourses (like the radical one, of Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism).” Crisman, William. “Songs Named ‘Song’ and the Bind of Self-Conscious Lyricism in Blake.” ELH 61, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 619–33. On Frye’s understanding of the oracular and rhapsodic in Blake’s poetry. Croft, Janet Brennan. “The Name of the Ring: Or, There and Back Again.” Mythlore 35, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 2017): 81–94. “This paper will use terms describing phases of language from Northrop Frye’s The Great Code—metaphoric, metonymic, demotic, and ricorso— to examine the path of the Ring/evil/power/naming complex through its extended diminution as the Ring moves from mythic-level metaphor, through magic, to degradation and destruction—from Morgoth’s Ring of all Arda, through Sauron’s Ruling Ring, to Saruman’s pale imitation of Sauron, and finally to Gollum’s sad struggle for mere subsistence.” Cross, Michael S. Review of The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History, by R. Douglas Francis. University of Toronto Quarterly 82, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 651–2. “The literature review does not deal with some of the more familiar analysts of technology’s impact such as C. Wright Mills, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. Canadian thinkers since George Grant and Northrop Frye get short shrift in a final chapter that seems hastily tacked on.” Cross, Michael S., ed. “The Frontier and Literary Imagination: Northrop Frye.” The Frontier Thesis and the Canadas: The Debate on the Impact of the Canadian
Environment. Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970. “The American frontier thesis holds that the new vast land influenced the minds and characters of its settlers. Selections for this book were made on the basis of the variety of questions the authors posed to evaluate this thesis as it applies to Canada. Cross, Samantha N.N., Robert L. Harrison, and Mary C. Gilly. “The Role of Marketing in Ritual Evolution.” Journal of Macromarketing 37, no. 4 (2017): 460–78. Crowell, Kenneth. “Modern Love and the Sonetto Caudato: Comedic Intervention through the Satiric Sonnet Form.” Victorian Poetry 48, no. 4 (2010): 539–57. “As Northrop Frye, as well as Byron for that matter, have convincingly claimed, the successful satiric comedy in the low mimetic mode first offers a complaint, and then resolves this complaint as the hero is reintegrated into a society that has been altered by the narrative circumstances of the comedy. In the case of [George Meredith’s] Modern Love, the complaint focuses on the regressive traits of the Victorian social system, but the change allowing reintegration by our narrator is less a change of these traits than it is the ability of Meredith to reframe the debate presented by the series in terms of social and aesthetic evolution.” Crowley, Adam. “The Wealth of Virtual Nations: Videogame Currencies.” In Literary Theory for Gamers. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing; Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 21–37. Presents “a rationale for investigating videogames as literature. Attending to Thomas Piketty’s arguments on the roles of wealth in literature, Crowley draws attention to an intersection of Piketty’s claims with literary critic Northrop Frye’s commentary on fairy tales and sentimental romance. As well as addressing a rationale for valuing videogames as literature, Crowley posits that the videogame form itself has special meaning for what Frye identifies as fundamental themes in sentimental romance: the themes of ascent and descent.” (publisher’s abstract) – “The Wealth of Virtual Nations: Videogame Currencies.” In The Symbolic Order of Action and Possibility Bearing on Time. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 39–62. Addresses the prime roles of represented wealth in videogames from the twentieth century. Providing a rationale for the application of Northrop Frye’s and Gérard Genette’s literary theories to non-prose subjects, Crowley explores the significance of capital exchange as a theme in titles. Crunelle-Vanrigh, Anny. “‘Seeking (The) Mean(s)’: Aristotle’s Ethics and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.” Cahiers
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Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies 86, no. 1 (2014): 23–44. Cs. Gyímesi, Éva. “Ősképek, egyetemes szimbólumok” [Ancient Images, Universal Symbols]. Nyelv-es Irodalomtudomanyi Kozlemenyek 27, no. 1 (1983): 3–14. In Hungarian. Notes that Hungarian literary criticism might well pay attention to the archetypal theories of Carl Jung, Gilbert Durand, and Frye. Csányi, Erzsébet. “Bibliai metanyelv” [Bibles in Metalanguage]. Világirodalmi kontúr. http://www. zetna.org/zek/konyvek/100/csanyi39.html. On the metalinguistic nature of the Bible, with reference to Northrop Frye: A Biblia Igézetében: Esszé, prédikáció, interjú. Budapest: Hermeneutikai Kutatóközpon, 1995. In Hungarian. Csilla, Utasi. “Elementi Jahvističkog mita o genezi u ciklusu pripovedaka o Sindbadu Đule Krudija i u romanu Ota Tolnaija ‘Morska školjka’” [Elements of the Yahweh Myth of Genesis in the Cycle of Sinbad Narratives by Giulia Krudi and in Otto Tolnai’s Novel The Sea Shell]. Tanulmányok, no. 1 (2012): 61–9. In Croatian. On Krúdy’s short stories from the Sinbad cycle, using the criteria set forth in Frye’s myth criticism. Csillag, Ron. “Eminent Joyce Expert Kept Interest in Author ‘Alive in Canada.’” Globe and Mail (23 April 2019): B20. “In the fifties and sixties, probably the bestknown writings about Joyce in Canada were by Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, both of whom became much better known for their work in other areas. . . . Even the most prominent Canadian-born Joyce critic, Hugh Kenner, left for the United States in the early 1950s.” Csizmadia, Gabriella Petres. “(Ne)možnosti autobiografie v diele karla Čapka Obyčejný život”[The (In) Possibilities of Autobiography in the Work of Karel Čapek’s Ordinary Life]. World Literature Studies 2, no. 3 (2011): 61–9. In Czech. Theorists have begun to approach autobiography not only as a genre, but as a speech act (Lejeune), as a discourse (Gasché), as a rhetorical figure of text comprehension (de Man), or as a subgenre of the novel (Frye), etc. Csordas, Thomas J. “Genre, Motive, and Metaphor: Conditions for Creativity in Ritual Language.” Cultural Anthropology 2, no. 4 (1987): 445–69. “The concept of genre in oral hermeneutics is a modification of the concept as used in literary criticism. In particular, Frye makes analysis of the rhetorical functions of language contingent on a theory of genres that in turn has strong implications for the study of performance.”
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Cucu, M.C., and O.E. Lenta. “Pablo Picasso’s Painting from the Perspective of C.G. Jung’s Psychoanalysis.” Postmodern Openings 9, no. 1 (March 2018): 45–62. Draws on Frye’s The Great Code to examine the language of enlightenment. Cuddy-Keane, Melba, et al. Modernism: Key Words. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Authors call on Frye’s The Modern Century in developing the entries for “Advertising” and “Propaganda.” Cull, John T. “Irony, Romance Conventions, and Misogyny in Grisel y Mirabella by Juan de Flores.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 22, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 415–30. Uses Frye’s theory of romance in The Secular Scripture to argue for Juan de Flores’s familiarity with romance conventions and their parodies in Grisel y Mirabella. Culler, Jonathan. “Beyond Interpretation.” Comparative Literature 28 (Summer 1976): 244–56 [247–9]. Rpt. in The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981. 3–17 [7–9]. Argues that Frye’s “failure to question interpretation as a goal [of criticism] creates a fundamental ambiguity about the status of his categories and schemas.” “Though it began as a plea for a systematic poetics, Frye’s work has done less to promote work in poetics than to stimulate a mode of interpretation which has come to be known as ‘mythcriticism’ or archetypal criticism.” – “A Critic against the Christians.” TLS (23 November 1984): 1327–8. In an essay on Empson, attacks Frye for promoting a dogmatic religious ideology and for making literature a substitute for religion. – “L’Hyperbole et l’Apostrophe: Baudelaire and the Theory of the Lyric.” Yale French Studies 125–6 (2014): 85–101. Says Baudelaire’s claim that the apostrophe is a necessary element of the lyric in general might find its confirmation in Frye’s idea of the radical of presentation of the lyric: poets speak with their backs to their audience, who overhear. – “Imagining the Coherence of the English Major.” ADE Bulletin 133 (Winter 2003): 6–10; rpt. in Profession 2003 1 (December 2003): 85–93. Claims that literary study has lost sight of the principle of coherence and turns to Frye as a source of a common ideal, recommending that we can recover coherence by turning again to purely formalist concerns such as genre, mode, and archetype. – “Literary Words, Not Worlds.” Journal of Literary Theory 11, no. 1 (2017): 32–9. Notes Frye’s definition of the lyric, derived from John Stuart Mill, that the
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audience overhears the poets, who have their back to the audience. – “Lyric, History, Genre.” New Literary History 40, no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 879–99. “Traditionally, theorists say there are two sorts of theories of genres, empirical and theoretical; the latter is based on some claim about elementary possibilities of thought, representation, or discourse. Aristotle distinguishes literary types according to the possible modes and objects of representation. Northrop Frye bases genre categories on ‘radicals [root forms] of presentation’: ‘words may be acted in front of a spectator, they may be spoken in front of a listener, they may be sung or chanted, and they may be written for a reader’—fundamental possibilities, which for him yield drama, epic, lyric, and narrative fiction. . . . Frye’s model of lyric as address overheard (following John Stuart Mill’s initial formulation) makes apostrophic address one possibility, but it also allows for others, such as poems explicitly addressed to no one or nothing, which are generally taken as meditative, as if we were overhearing the poet speaking to himself or herself, and poems addressed to persons, living or dead, real or imaginary, which modern criticism has tended to treat as miniature dramas that we overhear.” – “Més enllà de la interpretació” [Beyond Interpretation]. Trans. Enric Sullà. Els Marges 22–3 (May–September 1981): 115–22. In Catalan. About interpretation in the various critical schools, including the Frygean one. Focuses on questioning the assumption that interpretation is the sole objective of literary criticism. – Structuralist Poetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975. 119–22, 136, 222, 235–7. Finds the status of Frye’s categories “curiously indeterminate” and their relationship to literary experience and poetics obscure, but argues that the structuralists could benefit from the kind of study of plot and character Frye has developed. Culley, Robert C. “Introduction.” Semeia 62: Textual Determinacy, Part 1. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1993. vii–xii. On the relevance of Frye’s literary criticism to biblical scholarship. Culpeper, Jonathan. Language and Characterization: People in Plays and Other Texts. Essex, UK: Pearson Education, 2001. “Surveys several literary theories devoted to understanding characters that set the context for his larger arguments, including discussions of Roland Barthes’ semibinaries, the actant roles first developed by Vladimir Propp and later extended by Grimas, an extended discussion of Northrop Frye’s functional categories and E.M. Forster’s distinction between “flat and round” characters (two types) and
its reappearance in various guises and complexities in more recent writings by W.J. Harvey (four types; 1965), Baruch Hochman (up to 64 types; 1993), and David Fishlov (four parameters; 1993).” (John V. Knapp’s abstract) Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Plot of John’s Story of Jesus.” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 49, no. 4 (October 1995): 347. Martin W. Stibbe “demonstrates that John draws upon ‘the archetypes of storytelling’ and uses all four of Northrop Frye’s plot types: it reverberates with ‘some of the deepest, archetypal patterns in romance, tragedy, satire and comedy.’” Cummings, P.M. “Northrop Frye and the Necessary Hybrid: Criticism as Aesthetic Humanism.” The Quest for Imagination: Essays in Twentieth-Century Aesthetic Criticism, ed. O.B. Hardison, Jr. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1971. 255–76. Partially rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 24, ed. Sharon R. Gunton. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. 225–6. An analysis of two apparently opposing tendencies in Frye’s work, one deriving from the disinterested philosophy of aesthetic literary criticism and the other from the socially conscious philosophy of humanistic criticism. Argues that Frye is able to synthesize the aesthetic and humanistic claim not by imposing them on literature from without but by discovering them within the imaginative dimension of literature itself. In the course of the argument, presents an account of Frye’s chief assumptions, his critical language, and his method. Cunningham, E. James. “A Common Ground: How McDowell’s Recourse to Hegelianism Indicates the Potential for a Rapprochement between Philosophies of Mind and Education.” Philosophy of Education Yearbook 1999. http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/1999/ cunningham.asp. The last half of this paper argues that Adorno and Frye are “the two theorists who best capture the capacity of the arts to act as a critique of the capitalist reduction of its version of empirical reality to a given, and of the kind of education required to apprehend this critique in conditions of mass culture.” – “A Conservative Defense of Liberal Education.” In Liberal Education and the Idea of the University: Arguments and Reflections on Theory and Practice, ed. Karim Dharamsi and James Zimmer. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2019. 89–101. Draws on Frye’s view of what makes the practice of the arts and sciences “progressive and liberal.” – “Its Terrible Cost: Northrop Frye on the Importance of Romance in Literature, the Arts, and Society.
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Ultimate Reality and Meaning 35, nos. 3–4 (September– December 2012): 204–18. – “Northrop Frye, SØren Kierkegaard and Kerygma: On the Relationshp between Biblical Metaphors, Literal Readings of the Bible and Living in the Spirit.” Ultimate Reality and Meaning 31, no. 4 (2008): 284–98. “I want to talk about what it means to read the Bible as revelation and, in so doing, to show how the Bible is a document capable of motivating us to become spiritual beings. To do so, I’m going to draw on the help of some late twentieth-century critical theory, mainly that of Canadian literary icon and Biblical critic, Northrop Frye. I’m going to proceed by arguing, as does Frye, that the Bible is read as revelation when it is read as primarily an imaginative expression of metaphor and myth. In the face of those who would call this view heresy, I am also going to argue that even the famed arch-literalist SØren Kierkegaard is shown by Frye to mean, if unintentionally, that the literal reading is the metaphoric one.” – “Northrop Frye’s Mass Man Is Martin Heidegger’s Standing Reserve: Reflections on Mass Culture.” International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society 5, no. 5 (2009): 61–76. Argues that Frye shows mass culture to be the sort of analgesic modern capitalism designs to maintain contemporary individuals in their roles as what Martin Heidegger calls “standing reserves.” Cunningham, Lawrence S. “Religion Booknotes.” Commonweal 126, no. 7 (9 April 1999): 43–6. “The fourfold levels of scriptural interpretation were a commonplace in early exegesis. . . . The perennial value of this approach is reflected in the ways, for example, the present-day liturgy utilizes Scripture, with the lectionary juxtaposition of passages from the Old with those of the New Testament. It is also evident in how Scripture gets cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and in the general public prayer of the church. The late Northrop Frye summed up this holistic reading of Scripture nicely. In a phrase in his wonderful book The Great Code, he argued that the Bible is ‘endlessly selfreferential,’ which is to say, that the Bible must be read as a coherent whole.” Cureton, Richard D. “Rhythm and Poetic Form: Poetry as Rhythmic ‘Telling.’” Style 53, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 236–57. “The temporal paradigm is especially productive as a detailed key to formal correspondences among the diverse linguistic materials of the poem—grammatical, rhetorical, semantic, thematic, generic, and so on. As Northrop Frye suggested long ago, there are really four major literary genres (song/epos, lyric, prose fiction,
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and drama), and these might be best characterized in rhythmic terms. As Hayden White has suggested, these generic textures also correlate closely with the four master tropes (metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, and irony) and the four major modes of emplotment (romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire). Linguists with a strong analogical bent, such as Kenneth Pike, have argued that grammatical form falls into homologously quadratic paradigms. And many, including Frye, have noticed the quadratic organization of major complexes of archetypal images in poetry—the four seasons of the year, the four major directions of the compass, the four elements, and so forth.” – “Toward a Temporal Theory of Language.” Journal of English Linguistics 25, no. 4 (December 1997): 287–303. Points to Frye’s quadratic theory of literary genres and other literary conventions to bolster the claim for the importance of quadratic categories, which he calls the poetic paradigm, in numerous other fields. Curran, Ian. “Theology, Evolution, and the Figural Imagination: Teilhard de Chardin and His Theological Critics.” Irish Theological Quarterly 84, no. 3 (August 2019): 287–304. “In The Great Code, Northrop Frye identifies seven phases of revelation that are linked sequentially as type and antitype: creation, exodus, law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse. The Old Testament thus moves typologically from creation to prophecy, and the entire Old Testament, in light of New Testament revelation, becomes a prophetic anticipation of Christ.” Curran, Thomas Heinrich. Doctrine and Speculation in Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994. Calls attention to the different definitions of parataxis in Frye’s review of Paul de Man’s Rhetoric of Romanticism and in the definition provided in The Harper Handbook to Literature, which Frye coauthored. (Frye, however, did not write this Handbook entry.) Currell, David. “The Better Part of Stolen Valour: Counterfeits, Comedy and the Supreme Court.” Critical Survey 30, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 98–114. Glances at the part played by the archetypal miles gloriosis, or pedant, in comedy. Curtis, Paul M. “‘Yo man so what’s your story’: The Double Bind and Addiction in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 49, no. 4 (December 2016): 37–52. Looks at the spiritual symbolism of water in the Book of Genesis, according to Frye. Cvetkoski, Vladimir. “одисеевото слегување во подземјето во некои преводи на езра паунд, михаил д.
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Петрушевски и богомил ѓузел” [Odyssean katabasis in Translations by Ezra Pound, Mihail D. Petrushevski, and Bgomil Gjuzel]. Спектар 65 (2015): 124–45. In Macedonian. Czarnecki, Mark. “The Gospel According to Frye.” Maclean’s (5 April 1982): 40–4. Rpt. in an abridged form as “The Vision of Northrop Frye” in Reader’s Digest [Montreal] 121 (October 1982): 55–8; adapted by Daniel Perusse and rpt. as “Le Testament d’un génie ou l’homme biblionique” in L’Actualité 10 (February 1985): 8, 11. Cover story, occasioned by the publication of The Great Code, about Frye’s reputation as a critic. Comments on the influence of Blake on Frye, gives a number of biographical anecdotes, traces his academic career, glances at his major books, and observes that “although his works have secured him an exalted niche in the pantheon of contemporary thinkers, the memory of Frye as a teacher is what Frye the man hopes will linger on.” Czarniawska, Barbara. “Distant Readings: Anthropology of Organizations through Novels.” Journal of Organizational Change Management 22, no. 4 (2009): 357–72. “The purpose of this paper is to call for the development of anthropologies of organization through ‘distant reading’ of novels. The paper uses insights from literary theory, but “lest some reader might suspect me of cultivating a wish for a stable taxonomy proposed for literature by Northrop Frye and a desire for a consolidated organization theory by Jeffrey Pfeffer, I would like to remind the reader that even blurring genres amounts to redrawing a genre’s borders, and that this is an activity that never ceases in a lively, active field.” – “Management She Wrote: Organization Studies and Detective Stories.” Culture and Organization 5, no. 1 (1999): 13–41. “Genre analysis is often used as a classificatory device (for the most famous example, see Northrop Frye). Although a system of categories as such is relatively easy to construct and has a strong heuristic power, its application to concrete works is more problematic.” D Dabu, Bianca. “An Introduction to Sociocultural Aspects of Product Advertisements.” Limba și Literatura— Repere Identitare în Context European 19 (2016): 260–6. Notes Frye’s typological reading of the Bible. Dài, Yún Hóng. “The History of Chinese Literature from the Perspective of the Myth and Ritual School.” Journal of Jishou University (Social Sciences) 1 (2012). In Chinese.
Daiches, David. Critical Approaches to Literature. 2nd ed. London: Longman, 1981. Examines Frye’s work in the context of archetypal criticism by summarizing the method in the first three essays of Anatomy of Criticism. Sees this method as reductive, even though it “can help to show what literature is and how it works.” Dale, Gareth. Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Notes that Frye was among the nonsocialists whom Karl Polanyi tried to recruit in the early 1960s as a contributor to his new journal, Co-Existence: A Journal for the Comparative Study of Economics, Sociology and Politics in a Changing World. Frye did not contribute but offered “moral and intellectual support.” Dalgleish, Melissa. “Frye Unschooled: Mythopoeic Modernism in Canada.” English Studies in Canada 37, no. 2 (June 2011): 43–66. On the socalled Frye School of mythopoeic poetry. Damabupuk (blogger). “Up in the Sky: Moses, Jesus, and Superman.” Giant Box of Comics (26 June 2009). http://giantboxofcomics.blogspot.com/. Following Frye’s principles for a typological reading of the Bible, compares Superman to both Moses and Christ, concluding that he is an antitype of the Biblical saviour. D’Amico, Masolino. “Frye ‘Dall’ironia al mito.” La Stampa (28 May 1987). On Frye’s theory of modes. Damrosch, David. “Northrop Frye.” Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. – “Preface.” Princeton Classics edition of Anatomy of Criticism, by Northrop Frye. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. Danesi, Marcel. Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Comments on Frye’s observation about the omnipresence of metaphors derived from the Bible. D’Angelo, F.J. “Tropics of Invention.” Rhetoric Review 36, no. 3 (2017): 200–13. “Seems to reiterate Miller’s contention that ‘what is constructive in any verbal discourse seems to be invariably some kind of metaphor or hypothetical identification’ and some kind of narrative element.” Daniel, Janice B. “A New Kind of Hero: Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents.” Southern Quarterly 35, no. 3 (1997): 7–12. Interprets the character of Linda Brent in Harriet Ann Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself (1861) as a female version of the hero of
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the romance mode. Jacobs’s narrative employs the elements of romance as outlined in Frye’s The Secular Scripture—ascent, descent, double identity, allies, enemies, alienation, and trials—even though critics today recognize it as nonfiction. Danson, Lawrence. Shakespeare’s Dramatic Genres. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. In the chapter on Shakespeare’s tragedies, the author follows Frye’s distinction between tragedy and comedy, and the epilogue acknowledges his general debt to Frye’s theory of genres. – “Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Criticism: The Comedies.” In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 231–39. Reviews the role that Frye’s criticism has had on the study of Shakespeare’s comedies. Says that in the “rediscovery” of the genre of comedy, Frye’s work has “provided the single most important impetus.” D’Arcy, Chantal Cornut-Gentille. “Classic Comedy as a Barometer for Present Times or the Debunking of Categorical Delineations of Nationality in ‘Passport to Pimlico’ (Henry Cornelius, 1949)/La Comedia Clásica como Barómetro de la Época Actual o el Desmantelamiento de Delineaciones Categóricas de Nacionalidad en ‘Passport to Pimlico’ (Henry Cornelius, 1949).” Atlantis 34, no. 1 (2012): 11–26. “In his essay ‘The Argument of Comedy’ (1949), the by now classic critic and theorist Northrop Frye suggested that in ancient Greece there were two periods of comedy, ‘old comedy’ and a later ‘new comedy.’ The first, he said, accepted that society was unchangeable and that vice and folly could only be ridiculed in such a way as to enable a brief ‘carnivalesque’ holiday before a return to conformity. The second suggested an alienating social order could be reshaped; it often involved an escape to nature before a return to a regenerated society.” Dario, Ruben, and Orozco Montoya. “Nuestra mas humana inquietud: Una lectura de Northrop Frye” [Our Most Human Concern: A Reading by Northrop Frye]. Escritos: Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Medellin) 13, no. 30 (2005): 318–30. In Spanish. “Literary criticism always starts from a particular world view. The good sense or the lack of good sense of criticism is at all times linked to its conception of men and the universe. In Spiritus Mundi Northrop Frye shows us the origin of his own conception of literature and art, their bond with the world of ethics, their importance to the construction of a sense of life.” (author’s abstract)
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Das, B. “Myth Criticism and Its Value.” Twentieth-Century American Criticism: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Raj Nath. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1977. 242–55. Points out the significance of myth criticism as practised by Frye and others (Wheelwright, Chase, and Fergusson). Says their approach “enables us to see that myth is an expression of man’s deepest concern about himself and his place in the scheme of the universe, his relationship with man, nature and God.” Dault, Gary Michael. “The Last Hours of Northrop Frye.” Hamilton Arts & Letters 7 no. 2 (2014–15). A short story. Frye was the author’s PhD supervisor. Dauster, Frank. “Frye y Fergusson: Hacia una teoría del teatro” [Frye and Fergusson: Towards a Theory of Theatre]. Texto Crítico 15 (October–December 1979): 128–32. In Spanish. Examines the similarities and differences between Frye’s theory of comedy and tragedy and that of Francis Fergusson. Concludes that for all of their differences, they both, through their intuitions about drama, provide insights into the fundamental nature of the human mind. Davey, Frank. “Constructing ‘Canadian Literature’: A Retrospective.” Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, ed. Cynthia Sugars. Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press, 2015. “Once troubled mainly by Northrop Frye’s question of how its texts could be both Canadian and literary, the field now grapples with questions of how it can itself be at once transnational, multicultural, decolonizing, institutionally self-aware, global, still literary, and still Canadian.” – “Itself a ‘Strange Loop’: A Comment on Eli Mandel’s ‘Northrop Frye and Cultural Freudianism.’” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale 6, nos. 1–2 (Winter–Spring 1982): 195–7. “‘Strange Loops’ is a provocative paper, which raises numerous issues about the nature of writing, the nature of criticism, the cultural divisions (if any) in Canada, the role of geography (if any) in literary theory or cultural division, and, fifthly, the strange leap that occurs between Frye’s universal theory of literature and the limited perspective of literary nationalism. . . . what I find most surprising about Mandel’s paper: the central role it assigns to Frye.” – “Northrop Frye.” From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature since 1960. Erin, ON: Press Porcepic, 1974. 106–12. A summary of Frye’s intellectual career. Gives special attention to Frye as a critic of Canadian literature and seeks to correct three misconceptions about him—that he is an apologist for the symbolist and gnostic traditions, that he is a
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Platonist, and that his theories of literature require the contemporary writer consciously to incorporate mythology into his writing. – “Surviving the Paraphrase.” Canadian Literature 70 (Autumn 1976): 5–13 [1, 6–9, 12]. On Frye’s place in the tradition of thematic criticism, which is said to have dominated Canadian letters. David, Jack. “Northrop Frye . . . A Hatchet Job.” Waves 2 (Spring 1974): 26–30. Claims that modern science refutes Frye’s assumption about the total coherence of criticism, that Frye’s own practice denies his belief about the separation of literature and criticism, and that contemporary sensibility refutes his rejection of evaluation. Dávidházi, Péter. “József, Illyés, Jób (I) (Párhuzamos verselemzés bibliai fénytörésben)” [Joseph, Ulysses, Job: Parallel Verse Analysis in Biblical Refraction)]. Holmi 5 (2008): 609–21. In Hungarian. Muses on the several meanings that attach themselves to the word “code” in Blake’s statement that “The Bible is the Great Code of Art,” which Frye selected as the title for his first book on the Bible and literature. – “‘Jövevények és zsellérek’: Egy bibliai fogalompár nyomában” [Strangers and Foreigners: After a Biblical Concept]. Holmi 8 (2006): 1033–50. An essay on biblical interpretation, which cites Frye’s “The Archetypes of Literature.” – “A Tribute to ‘The Great Code’: Voltaire’s Lisbon Poem, Mike’s Letter CXCVIII and the Book of Job.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE– L’Harmattan, 2014. 109–39. Demonstrates how a present-day scholar may benefit from applying Frye’s insights and methods to a comparative analysis of two literary works with a common, if latent, biblical subtext. Both Voltaire’s “Poëme sur le désastre de Lisbonne ou examen de cet axiome: Tout est bien” and Kelemen Mikes’s letter CXCVIII in his Letters from Turkey were prompted by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, both responded to the problems of theodicy, and both alluded to the Book of Job. Davie, Donald. Articulate Energy: An Inquiry into the Syntax of English Poetry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955. 130–41, 161–5. A brief look at some of Frye’s early views, later incorporated into Anatomy of Criticism, on poetic syntax and rhetoric. Remarks that Frye’s statement about the relationship among rhetoric, grammar, and logic is “exceptionally subtle and intelligent,” but takes issue with Frye’s claim that logic and grammar move into the area of rhetoric,
and philosophy and history into the area of poetry only when they shed their distinctive syntax. Argues, in opposition to Frye, that poetic meaning comes not simply from a self-contained configuration of poetic imagery but also from the relation of syntax to things outside the realm of language. Davies, Alan. “George Bradford Caird: A Tribute and Memoir.” Touchstone 31, no. 2 (June 2013): 55–61. “In his appreciation of myth, Caird would have found an ally in another man of genius, literary scholar Northrop Frye, and it is instructive to compare The Language and Imagery of the Bible with Frye’s two books, The Great Code and Words with Power. I do not know if they ever met, but both thought that poetry arose before prose and that poetic visions are not to be dismissed as untrue because they do not accord with empirical science.” Davies, Ioan. “Theorizing Toronto.” http://www.yorku.ca/ comcult/frames/about/ioan/teaching/articles/toronto2. htm. On the images of Toronto in the work of Frye and others—in the context of Frye’s wider views on Canadian nature and culture. Davies, Philip R. “The Bible: Utopian, Dystopian, or Neither? Or: Northrop Frye Meets Monty Python.” Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 2, no. 1 (2012): 91–107. “In The Great Code (1982), Northrop Frye rewrites the mediaeval and early modern myth of human existence as progression from Fall to Judgment from a humanistic and Romantic perspective, recoding the Bible as a series of utopian visions which together constitute a single grand utopian vision. This article in turn rewrites Frye’s Code from a modern Western perspective which eschews both naïve optimism and tragic vision for a dark comic or Pythonesque view of life, recognizing the absurdity of human ambition and pointlessness of human existence, while laughing in the face of it.” – “Biblical Studies: Fifty Years of a Multi-Discipline.” Currents in Biblical Research 13, no. 1 (2014): 34–66. “We should not ignore Northrop Frye’s (1982) monumental Blakean effort to re-encode the Christian Bible.” Davis, Alex. “Between Courtesy and Constancy: The Faerie Queene, Books 6 and 7.” ELH 83, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 655–79. “Arguments against the idea of a projected ‘Legend of Constancy’ tend to invoke aesthetic criteria that are fully implicated in the action of the poem itself, and in book 6 and The Mutabilitie Cantos in particular. Boundedness, shapeliness, a desire for fixity and completion: Frye’s terms are precisely those put into
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question in Spenser’s narrative. Arguments against The Mutabilitie Cantos as the ‘parcel’ of a seventh book of the poem on the grounds that (for example) no previous allegorical episode is so sustained treat The Faerie Queene as a mere template, possessed of a machinic regularity. They banish from the poem precisely that possibility for alteration and change that The Mutabilitie Cantos aims to explore.” – “Learning to Be Brutal: Synge, Decadence, and the Modern Movement.” New Hibernia Review/Iris Éireannach Nua 14, no. 3 (Autumn 2010): 33–51. “The ‘vitality’ of this verse [Synges’s Queens] owes much to its metrical simplicity: the trochaic quatrameters making good use of the four-stress line Northrop Frye identifies as ‘the common rhythm of popular poetry in all periods, of ballads and of most nursery rhymes.’” Davis, Clark. It Starts with Trouble: William Goyen and the Life of Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. “Goyen was a writer of startling originality and deep artistic commitment whose work attracted an international audience and the praise of such luminaries as Northrop Frye, Truman Capote, Gaston Bachelard, and Joyce Carol Oates. His subject was the land and language of his native East Texas; his desire, to preserve the narrative music through which he came to know his world.” Frye found Goyen’s House of Breath “remarkable” and “outstandingly clever.” Davis, Darrell William. Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Seeks to apply Frye’s theory of modes to Japanese film. Davis, Kenneth W. “Demystifying Literature: Northrop Frye in the Classroom.” English Education 3 (Spring 1972): 203–9. A study of Frye’s efforts to demystify literature and of his contributions to the methods of teaching it. Davis, Laura K. Review of The Shifting Politics of Time in Canadian Literary Culture, by Paul Huebener. British Journal of Canadian Studies 30, no. 2 (2017): 270–1. Huebener begins, says Davis, “by reframing Northrop Frye’s famous question about Canada, ‘Where is here?’ to ask ‘when is now?’ He discusses how time has recently been foregrounded in Canadian culture, in the Slow Food Movement, for example, and he critiques the culture of speed and acceleration epitomised by late capitalism.” Davis, Rick. “Season Reflections from Dean Davis, May 10, 2018.” https://cvpa.gmu.edu/news/512521. “The idea of the ‘season’ has been brought over intact from
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the natural world to organize the rhythms of our performance calendar and academic life. In fact, if you’ll indulge a little academic digression, seasons may shape the actual boundaries of literature and art, according to the late (and great) Canadian critic Northrop Frye in his masterwork Anatomy of Criticism. Frye identifies the four seasons with literary genres—Spring is Comedy, Summer = Romance (surprise!), Autumn (aka Fall) is associated with Tragedy, and Winter with Irony. I have always been attracted to Frye’s scheme because I think human beings tend to want to create, and consume, works of art that match the energy and feeling of the world outside, and seasonal rhythms also guarantee variety of experience, make us ask different questions, and require us to remain flexible in the face of an everchanging world.” Davis, Robert Con. “Depth Psychology and ‘The Scene of Writing’: Jung and Freud.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism: Modernism through Post-Structuralism, ed. Robert Con Davis. New York: Longmans, 1986. 218–19. Looks briefly at Frye’s version of archetypal criticism in the context of New Critical assumptions about literature and history. – “John Barth and Imitation: The Case for a PostStructuralist Mimesis.” Fabula 3 (March 1984): 21–47 [21, 27–28, 47]. Sees Barth’s self-referential fiction, which is said to be similar to the poststructuralists’ idea of the self-referentiality of language, as set over against the conception of mimesis found in Frye, among others. Frye, like Aristotle, Auerbach, Booth, and Watt, holds to a realist view of imitation that lies between the substantialism of (say) Plato and the poststructuralism of Derrida, Barthes, and Genette. Davis, Todd F. “The Evolution of Formalism: The Case of Northrop Frye” and “Charlotte Brontë and Frye’s Secular Scripture: The Structure of Romance in Jane Eyre.” In Formalist Criticism and Reader Response Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 33–36, 107–12. Davis, Walter A. Idea and Act in Elizabethan Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015; orig. pub. 1969. Draws on Frye’s account of the four forms of prose fiction. Dawson, Carrie. “How Does Our Garden Grow?” Canadian Literature 204 (Spring 2010): 110–13. In a review of Dione Brand’s Inventory, applies Frye’s “observation that new conditions lend old conditions new significance to what she describes as Canada’s ‘garrison mentality.’ In light of recent policy changes that point toward a state ideology that
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is more concerned contracting cheap labor than the development of citizens, she suggests, today’s scholars need to adopt a practice of critically examining these new articulations of Canada’s lingering garrison mentality.” (author’s abstract) Dawson, Graham. “The Imaginative Geography of Masculine Adventure.” Renaissance and Modern Studies 39 (1996): 27–45. Dawson, Lesel. “Revenge and the Family Romance in Tarantino’s Kill Bill.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 47, no. 2 (June 2014): 121–34. “Although romance’s long history and textual diversity make it a difficult genre to pin down, Kill Bill’s happy ending, its simplified morality, its episodic, anti-representational nature, and its depiction of a family reunited and a lost child found, can all be associated with the romance mode, which, as Northrop Frye suggests, ‘avoids the ambiguities of ordinary life,’ offering instead ‘a polarized world of good and evil.’” Dawson, Terence. “Here I Stand: Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as Confessional Writing.” Jung Journal 6, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 43–67. “The history of critical response to The Marriage is a tale of heady excitement periodically checked by scholarship. The work has been approached from almost every conceivable critical perspective. . . . Northrop Frye argued that it was about an impending apocalypse and a consequent ‘transformation of the body into spiritual Substance.’ David Erdman’s Prophet against Empire marked a watershed: he argues that the Marriage is a social satire that ‘mocks those who can accept a spiritual apocalypse but are terrified at a resurrection of the body of society itself.’ His perspective changed the way scholars responded to Blake. Today they are impatient with claims about the possible ‘spiritual’ meaning of his works; they prefer to situate these firmly in their historical context. In Robert Essick’s succinct formulation, ‘the School of Erdman has triumphed over the School of Frye.’” Day, Douglas. “Catch-22: A Manifesto for Anarchists.” Carolina Quarterly 15 (Summer 1963): 86–92. Maintains that Catch-22 is not “a novel at all. It is, rather, what scholars like Northrop Frye would define as an anatomy, or satire. . . . The reader who tries to judge it by a novelcentered conception of fiction will indeed find little to please.” Day, Robert Adams. “Richard Bentley and John Dunton.” In Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, vol 18, ed. O.M. Brack, Jr. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1986. Dependent on Frye’s essay “Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility.” Dean, James M. “Domestic and Material Culture in the Middle English Adam Books.” Studies in Philology 107, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 25–47. “The Adam book authors make explicit what Northrop Frye observes of Adam’s story: ‘The archetype of the inevitably ironic is Adam, human nature under sentence of death.’ The Adam books offer a picture of tragic melancholy and unrelieved gloom—until Seth’s return to paradise. Adam and Eve are alone on a darkling plain, so to speak, and their dialogue confirms this sense of a land of darkness.’” Also in the manner of their narration the Adam books tend toward what Frye calls the ‘secular scripture,’ so they embody elements of the romance as well. Dean, John. Restless Wanderers: Shakespeare and the Pattern of Romance. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1979. 106–8. Outlines Frye’s concept of romance as myth. Deaza, Juan Camilo Ospina. “Entre el mito y el rito, un análisis estructural de Star Wars” [Between the Myth and the Rite: A Structural Analysis of Star Wars]. Boletín de Antropología 30, no. 50 (2015): 208–41. In Spanish. Includes brief account of Frye’s status as a myth critic. de Armas, F.A. “Villamediana’s La gloria de Niquea: An Alchemical Masque.” Journal of Hispanic Philology 8 (1984): 209–31. In a commentary on Villamediana’s masque, isolates, expands, and modifies four of Frye’s principles in Spiritus Mundi: mirror, magic, polarity, and cosmology. Decker, Christof. “Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887.” In Handbook of the American Novel of the Nineteenth Century. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. On Bellamy’s novel as modelled on a time-travel adventure, which in “Varieties of Literary Utopias” Frye saw as characteristic of modern utopian fiction. Decker, Michelle. “Entangled Poetics: Apartheid South African Poetry between Politics and Form.” Research in African Literatures 47, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 71–90. By way of Frye and Paul de Man, seeks ways of uniting black and white poetics. De Clairac, Ramón Salas Lamamié. “La interpretación de la sostenibilidad y la sostenibilidad de la interpretación” [The Interpretation of Sustainability and the Sustainability of Interpretation]. Arte y Políticas de Identidad 10 (July 2014): 93–111. In Spanish. Paraphrases Frye. DeCook, Travis. “Northrop Frye and the Book as Metaphor and Material Artifact.” University of Toronto
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Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 37–49. “Few strains of literary study seem further from Frye’s critical project than the history of the book. In light of this distance, this essay is inspired by two primary objectives. The first is to cast light on Frye’s treatment of the book as a material artefact, a theme that has received relatively little attention. The second is to draw attention to the important role of the material book as metaphor in Frye’s writings, and consider its implications for the practice of book history. Working against prevailing stereotypes of both Frye’s visionary humanism and book history, this essay attempts to bridge the two by considering how books as physical artefacts participate in the work of the imagination. I argue that Frye’s attentiveness to the socially symbolic power of the book, and his various explorations of the metaphorical possibilities of this artefact, provide powerful instances of how cultural meanings of media of inscription signify alongside their verbal contents.” (author’s abstract) DeGloma, Thomas. “Awakenings: Autobiography, Memory, and the Social Logic of Personal Discovery.” Sociological Forum 25, no. 3 (September 2010): 519–40. Differentiates the author’s approach to the form and function of autobiography from Frye’s. DeJong, Timothy A. “Between the Is and the Is Not: Northrop Frye, Adaptation, and the Romantic Imagination.” English Studies in Canada 37, no. 2 (June 2011): 67–86. Explores the means and ends of the romantic imagination by examining the film Adaptation, which engages the Frygean question of the social function of literature. Delany, Sheila. “A, A and B: Coding Same-Sex Union in Amis and Amiloun.” In Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance. Manchester, UK: Manchester Scholarship Online: July 2012. Observes that the fictional legend might be considered a subcategory of romance, what Frye called “the mastergenre.” Notes that hagiography also fits Frye’s definition of romance. Del Greco, Remigio. “Shylock, tragedia nella commedia. . . . Shylock: Da Shakespeare a Wesker” [Shylock, Tragedy in Comedy. . . . Shylock: From Shakespeare to Wesker]. Tesi online. https://www.tesionline.it/consult/brano. jsp?id=12205. In Italian. On Frye’s interpretation of The Merchant of Venice, the dynamics and plot of which faithfully respect the classic scheme of comedy. Delespinasse, Doris Stringham. “The Significance of Dual Point of View in Bleak House.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 23, no. 3 (1968): 253–64. Sees Esther’s narration as a mixture of what Frye calls novel and romance,
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and notes that the omniscient narrator’s view is almost entirely an anatomy. Deleyto, Celestino. “La comedia y la risa en el cine: Historias de amor y sexo en I Was a Male War Bride” [Comedy and Laughter in the Cinema: Love and Sex Stories in I Was a Male War Bride]. Archivos de la Filmoteca 37 (February 2001): 164–81, 183. In Spanish. Relies on the two kinds of comedies Frye discusses in his theory of genres, the Aristotelian and the satirical. Delgado, Ana Beatriz. “Paradigms of Canadian Literary Biography.” Prose Studies 27, no. 3 (December 2005): 330–43. Rpt. in Transculturing Auto/Biography: Forms of Life Writing, ed. Rosalia Baena. London: Routledge/ Taylor and Francis, 2007. Applies Frye’s idea of myth to Charlotte Gray’s Sisters in the Wilderness. Della Terza, Dante. “Tendenze attuali della critica americana” [Current Trends in American Criticism]. Strumenti critici 3 (June 1969): 81–97 [92–5]. In Italian. Frye’s myth criticism is one of the current trends in American criticism. de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, 26; 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. 26, 107. In discussing Frye’s idea of intention, argues that Frye reifies literature into a natural object. Frye gives “license to order and classify the whole of literature into one single thing which, even though circular, would nevertheless be a gigantic cadaver.” DeMaria, Robert, Jr. “The Ideal Reader: A Critical Fiction.” PMLA 93 (May 1978): 463–74 [468–70]. On Frye’s conception of the reader in literature. “Frye’s ideal reader enters literature . . . [He] is a hero embarked on a quest . . . Literature, as Frye’s reader encounters it in the first stage of his quest, is a ‘structure of experience,’ and criticism, which is what the reader undertakes in the second phase, is a ‘structure of knowledge.’ The end of criticism, however and the goal of the reader’s quest, is again a kind of experience . . . both literary and living, not only personal but also social and universal.” Dembo, L.S. “Introduction and Perspective.” Contemporary Literature 9 (Summer 1968): 277–89 [277, 279–81]. Rpt. in Criticism: Speculative and Analytical Essays, ed. L.S. Dembo. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968. An introduction to some of the issues raised in Frye’s essay, “On Value Judgments,” which appeared in the 1968 Summer issue of Contemporary Literature. Contrasts Frye’s assumptions about the separation of knowledge and value from those
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of Murray Krieger, whose essay “Literary Analysis and Evaluation” appears in the same issue of the journal. de Meneses, Adélia Bezerra. “Dãolalalão de Guimarães Rosa ou o ‘Cântico dos cânticos’ do sertão: Um sino e seu badaladal” [Danalalalão de Guimarães Rosa or the “Song of Songs” of the Backlands: A Bell and Its Chime]. Estudos Avançados 22, no. 64 (December 2008). In Portuguese. “Guimarães Rosa’s novel Dãolalalão, shows the presence of what Northrop Frye has called the ‘Great Code’ of the western civilization’s literature, the Bible, cross-cultured in the Brazilian backlands and the contradictions produced by such a situation.” Demers, Patricia. “Early Modern Women’s Words with Power: Absence and Presence.” In Kee, Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word, 89–102. In response to Frye’s lament that we do not have a critical language for the female symbols in the Bible, explores a sample of early modern women writers ignored by Frye. Deming, Richard. Art of the Ordinary: The Everyday Domain of Art, Film, Philosophy, and Poetry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. “Stanley Cavell has shown the possibilities for thinking about ethics and skepticism that a movie can make available. Yet his focus on the structure of remarriage comedies also depends to a large extent on Northrop Frye’s thinking about the conventions of Shakespearean romantic comedy. Drawing on Frye, Cavell characterizes this dramatic mode as being built on the model of a ‘young pair overcoming individual and social obstacles to their happiness.’” Demson, Michael. “Encountering the Polyonymous Transnational: Euripides, Northrop Frye, and the Circulation of Myth in World Literature.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth, University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013. Deng, Wensheng, and Yan Wu. “The New Exploration of The Merchant of Venice.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 3, no. 9 (September 2013): 1624–9. Jane Ellen Harrison “comes to a conclusion: The ancient art and ritual are born from the same impulse of human instinct and are supplement and complement respectively, so they are both subjective expressions of emotion by imitating actions. And Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary critic, holds that the factors occurred repeatedly in literary works are not created by writers’ personal talent but traditions in literary development. And the factors are something called ‘archetypes.’” Denham, Robert D. “Anagogy and Kerygma.” The Educated Imagination: A Website Dedicated to Northrop
Frye. https://macblog.mcmaster.ca/fryeblog/2009/10/29/ anagogy-2/. – “An Anatomy of Frye’s Influence.” In Lombardo, Ritratto, 359–68. An account of the response Frye’s criticism has received, especially the translations of his books and the secondary literature it has occasioned, as an index of his continuing influence. – “An Anatomy of Frye’s Influence.” American Review of Canadian Studies 14 (Spring 1984): 1–19. Assesses the place of Frye in the contemporary critical scene: his relation to the structuralists and poststructuralists, his influence on Blake and Shakespearean studies, and the assimilation of his ideas into disciplines other than criticism. Speculates on the reasons for Frye’s continuing influence. – “Annotations in Frye’s Books.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 9, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 20–35. On what we can learn from the notes Frye made in books from his own library. – “Anti-anaesthetics: or, The Turn of the Freudian Crews.” Centrum: Papers of the Minnesota Center for Advanced Studies in Language, Style, and Literary Theory 1, no. 2 (1973): 105–22 [112–17]. Takes issue, in part 2 of the essay, with Frederick Crews’s attack on Frye as one of the chief promulgators of the doctrine that critics should not stray outside literature in developing their fundamental principles. Argues that Crews misrepresents Frye’s position. – “Auguries of Influence.” In Denham and Willard, Visionary Poetics, 77–99. On the various indexes by which to judge Frye’s influence. – “Common Cause: Notes on Frye’s View of Education.” CEA Critic 42 (November 1979): 23–8. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 267–74. Discusses the close alignment between the critical and pedagogical aspects of Frye’s work. Examines especially Frye’s myths of freedom and concern as the context for his view of the educational contract. – “Editing Frye.” Northrop Frye Weblog, McMaster University, posted 22 January 2011. https://macblog. mcmaster.ca/fryeblog/2011/01/23/editing-frye/. An account of a fifteen-year odyssey devoted to bringing into print some thirteen volumes of Frye’s previously unpublished writing. – “Frye and Colin Still.” Northrop Frye and Others: Twelve Writers Who Helped Shape His Thinking. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2015. 213–21. On the influence of Still on Frye’s view of The Tempest. Seeks to counter the perspective of those who think Still’s
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Shakespearean criticism is a form of esoterica existing on the fringes of accepted critical norms. – “Frye and Hegel.” University of Toronto Quarterly 83, no. 4 (Fall 2014): 1780–802. Rpt. in Denham, Northrop Frye and Others. Volume. II: The Order of Words, 101–22. Traces the influence of Hegel upon Frye’s thought, beginning with the extraordinary paper he wrote on Romanticism as a twenty-year-old undergraduate and continuing through his two books on the Bible, The Great Code and Words with Power, and his posthumously published The Double Vision. Seeks to demonstrate what Frye means by saying, “If Hegel had written his Phenomenology in mythos-language instead of in logos-language a lot of my work would be done for me.” Particular attention is paid to the ways the Hegelian notion of Aufhebung plays out in Frye’s dialectic, which characteristically works to resolve the opposition between two categories. Also considers the importance of the ladder metaphor in both Hegel and Frye. – “Frye and Longinus.” English Studies in Canada 37, no. 2 (June 2011): 87–109. A slightly different version published in Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 15–36. Rpt. in Denham, Northrop Frye and Others: Twelve Writers Who Helped Shape His Thinking, 63–83. Examines the question of whether or not there are two essential thrusts to Frye’s critical vision that are more or less incommensurate with each other and that therefore are not subject to Frye’s usual tendency of bringing together oppositions, such as Aristotle versus Longinus, by way of their interpenetration or their being subjected to the Hegelian Aufhebung. The question is approached by way of Frye’s commitment to both Aristotelian and Longinian perspectives. Concludes that Frye finally privileges Longinus over Aristotle. – “Frye and the Bodley Club.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 10 (2004): 3–8. On Frye’s student paper delivered to the Bodley Club, “A Short History of the Devil,” and the minutes he kept as secretary of the Club. – “Frye and the East: Buddhist and Hindu Translations.” In O’Grady and Wang, Northrop Frye, 3–18. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 55–70. An earlier version appeared in Chinese as “Frye and the East,” trans. Shi An Bin, in Foreign Literatures 1 (1995): 12–15, and in Fulai Yanjiu: Zhongguo yu Xifand [Northrop Frye Studies: China and the West], trans. Shi An Bin. Beijing: Social Sciences Press of China, 1996. 187–200. In Chinese. On Frye’s connection to Eastern philosophical, religious, and literary traditions.
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– “Frye and the Social Context of Criticism.” South Atlantic Bulletin 39 (November 1974): 63–72. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 157–67. Seeks to correct the popular conception of Frye as an exclusively formal theorist. Examines Frye’s views on the social function of criticism, the role of literature in society, and the ethical ends of art. – “Frye hite: Beszélgetés Robert D. Denhammel” [Frye’s Faith: Conversation with Robert D. Denham]. In Northrop Frye: A Biblia Igézetében: Esszé, prédikáció, interjú. Budapest: Hermeneutikai Kutatóközpont, 1995. 100–4. In Hungarian. An interview about Frye with Tibor Fabiny and Péter Pásztor. – “The Frye Papers.” In Boyd and Salusinszky, Rereading Frye, 3–18. A survey of the unpublished papers which came to light after Frye’s death. – “The Frye Papers at Victoria University.” Recherches sémiotics/Semiotic Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1993): 101–16. An overview of the most important categories of Frye’s unpublished papers. – “Frye’s Diaries.” In Wang and O’Grady, New Directions, 1–20. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 189– 205. An overview of the kinds of material one finds in Frye’s diaries. – “Frye’s International Presence.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, xxvii–xxxii. On Frye’s international reputation as judged by the extensive writings about his work, the translations of his books, and the conferences devoted to assessing his criticism. – “Frye’s Theory of Symbols.” Canadian Literature 66 (Autumn 1975): 63–79. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 169–86. An analysis of Frye’s theory of meaning. Examines the several ways “symbol,” mythos, and dianoia are used in the Second Essay of Anatomy of Criticism, as well as the influence of Blake on Frye’s theory of symbolic phases. – “Interpenetration as a Key Concept in Frye’s Critical Vision.” In Boyd and Salusinszky, Rereading Frye, 140–63. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 33–53. On the historical, social, philosophical, literary, and religious meanings of “interpenetration” in Frye’s criticism. – ed. “Intoxicated with Words: The Colours of Rhetoric,” by Northrop Frye, ed. Robert D. Denham. University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 95–110. In a newly discovered document, Frye reflects on the metaphors of rise and decline in the philosophies of history of St. Augustine, Gibbon, Spengler, and
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Toynbee, and he raises the possibility of their being a Christian philosophy of history. – “Introduction.” In Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ed. Robert D. Denham. 2006. xvii–lxxii.Subsections: “Frye as Bricoleur,” “Frye as Structuralist,” “Frye as Anatomist,” “Frye and the New Criticism,” “Frye and the Chicago Neo-Aristotleians,” “Frye between Frazer and Freud: The Grammar of Symbolism,” “Initial Reception,” The Anatomy and Post-Structuralism,” and “The Anatomy and the Contours of Frye’s Career.” – “Introduction.” In The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939, ed. Robert D. Denham. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vols. 1–2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. xv–xxv. – “Introduction.” In The Diaries of Northrop Frye, 1942–1955, ed. Robert D. Denham. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 8. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. xix–xlviii. – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye on Culture and Literature: A Collection of Review Essays, ed. Robert D. Denham. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. 1–64. Partially rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 24, ed. Sharon R. Gunton. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. 227–9. Gives an overview of Frye’s work and attempts to show how the essays in the collection are a part of the continuous vision that characterizes his work. Also examines Frye’s views on the social context of criticism, his idea of the imagination, his theory of literary symbolism, his understanding of literary history, his practical criticism, and his views on identity as a principle of literary structure. – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982– 1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World, ed. Robert D. Denham. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vols. 5–6. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. xix–xlv. – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts, ed. Robert D. Denham. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 13. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. xxxi–lvii.
– “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings, ed. with Michael Dolzani. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 24. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. xxiii–lviii. – “Memories of the Winter of 1985.” Ellipse: Textes littéraires canadiens en traduction / Canadian Writing in Translation 87–8 (2012): 98–101. Rpt. in A Giant in Time: An Anthology of Writings in Honour of Northrop Frye’s 100th Birthday. Ed. Edward Lemond and Suzanne Cyr. An account of spending a sabbatical in Toronto, working mostly on the Frye papers at Victoria College. – “‘Moncton Did You Know?’ Northrop Frye’s Early Years.” Antigonish Review 38 (Summer 2004): 67–82. Rpt. in Ed Lemond, ed., Verticals of Frye/Les Verticales des Frye. Moncton, NB: Elbow Press, 2005. 48–58; and in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 207–22. On Frye’s early life in Moncton, NB. – “The No-Man’s Land of Competing Patterns.” Critical Inquiry 4 (Autumn 1977): 194–202 [197–201]. Takes issue with James Kincaid’s use of Frye’s theory of myths to support his argument about narrative coherence. Maintains that Kincaid misunderstands Frye’s intention. – “Northrop Frye.” In Modern American Critics since 1955. Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 67, ed. Gregory S. Jay. Detroit: Gale, 1988. 106–28. A chronological review of the major works in Frye’s critical career. – “Northrop Frye.” In Canadian Writers, 1920–1959, First Series: Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 68, ed. W.H. New. Detroit: Gale, 1988. 126–40. Traces the development of Frye’s reputation as a critic. – “Northrop Frye: 1912–1991.” Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 24 (Spring 1991): 158–9. A eulogy. – “Northrop Frye.” In Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones, vol. 5, 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 3223–6. – “Northrop Frye: A Supplementary Bibliography.” Canadian Library Journal 34 (June 1977): 181–97, and Canadian Library Journal 34 (August 1977): 301–2.
– “Introduction.” Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1984: Unpublished Papers, ed. Robert D. Denham. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 10. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. xv–xxviii.
_ “Northrop Frye and Edmund Blunden.” English Studies in Canada 41, no. 4 (December 2015): 1–24. Rpt. with changes in Denham, Northrop Frye and Others, Volume III, Interpenetrating Visions, 147–65. On the relationship in the late 1930s between Frye and his Merton College tutor, Edmund Blunden.
– “Introduction.” Northrop Frye’s Student Essays, 1932–1938, ed. Robert D. Denham. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 3. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. xi–xxix.
– “Northrop Frye and the Eastern Connection: The Mahayana Sutras, Bardo, and Yoga.” Virginia Review of Asian Studies 4 (Fall 2002): 147–50. On Frye’s reading in Eastern religious traditions.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
– “Northrop Frye and Franz Kafka.” English Studies in Canada 43–4, no. 1 (December 2017–March 2018): 49–66. – “Northrop Frye and Jane Ellen Harrison.” Journal of Ritual Studies 31, no. 1 (2017): 53–61. Rpt. with revisions in Denham, Northrop Frye and Others: Twelve Writers Who Helped Shape His Thinking, 165–78. On the influence of Harrison on Frye’s understanding of ritual. – “Northrop Frye and Johan Huizinga.” University of Toronto Quarterly 88, no. 4 (Fall 2019): 307–22. – “Northrop Frye and Medicine.” In Verticals of Frye/ Les Verticales des Frye, ed. Ed Lemond. Moncton, NB: Elbow Press, 2005. 59–64. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 241–9. This talk to a group of doctors in Moncton, NB, concludes with speculations about Frye’s belief that literature can be therapeutic. – “Northrop Frye and Niccolò Machiavelli.” Quaderni d’italianistica 35, no. 1 (2014): 41–54. Rpt. in Northrop Frye and Others, Volume II, The Order of Words, 41–50. Seeks to answer the questions, how can we explain the numerous references in Frye’s notebooks and elsewhere to the political theory in Machiavelli’s The Prince? What in Machiavelli’s thought did Frye believe deserved our attention, and why? Toward this end the essay examines the Renaissance idea of the Machiavellian villain, the concept of virtù, and the idea of hypocrisy. – “Northrop Frye and Patanjali.” Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies 2, no. 1 (July 2017): 34–48. Rpt. with revisions in Denham, Northrop Frye and Others, Volume III, Interpenetrating Visions, 15–27. An exploration of the relationship between Frye and Patanjali. Seeks to answer the question, what did Frye learn from Patinjali’s Yoga-Sutras? – “Northrop Frye and Paul Tillich.” In Szólitó szavak: The Power of Words, ed. Sára Tóth et al. Budapest: Károli Gáspar Református Egyetem / L’Harmattan Kiadó, 2015. 243–52. Rpt. with revisions in Denham, Northrop Frye and Others: Twelve Writers Who Helped Shape His Thinking, 223–35. Examines the relationship between Frye and Tillich—their conception of “concern,” their views on system and fragmentation, and their Protestantism. – “Northrop Frye and Rhetorical Criticism.” Xavier University Studies 11 (Spring 1972): 1–11. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 143–55. An analysis of Frye’s ideas about the relationship between rhetoric and literary theory. Examines the meaning and function of the chief categories in the Fourth Essay of Anatomy of Criticism—Frye’s Theory of Genres—and shows the
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relations that obtain between the principles of Frye’s poetics and his theory of rhetoric. – “Northrop Frye and R.S. Crane.” University of Toronto Quarterly 86, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 14–36. Rpt. with revisions in Northrop Frye and Others, Volume III, Interpenetrating Visions, 223–35. This essay explores the relationship between Frye and Crane, a connection resulting from their several contacts with each other in the 1950s, before the publication of Anatomy of Criticism. Frye was influenced by the Neo-Aristotelian Crane, sometimes obliquely, and Crane was aware of the theoretical power of Frye as it had begun to emerge from four essays he had published in the Kenyon Review and the University of Toronto Quarterly. The essay looks at what resulted from these two critics having rubbed up against each other. – “Northrop Frye and Wayne Booth: (New) Ideologies and (Old) Traditions.” Perspectives 20 (Spring 1990): 32–41. On Frye’s ideas about liberal education. – “Northrop Frye: Letters and Notebooks, a Selection.” Shenandoah 44, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 26–53. – “Northrop Frye, M.H. Abrams, John Keats, and the Coordinates of Art Criticism Theories.” Hamilton Arts and Letters 8, no. 1 (2015). http://samizdatpress.typepad.com/ hal_magazine_issue_eight1/hal-magazine-issue-eight1cover-index.html/. Addresses the question of whether it is possible to place Frye’s criticism in one or more of the four coordinates proposed by M.H. Abrams for “placing” literary critics. Concludes that Frye is both an affective or rhetorical critic and a formal or objective one. – “Northrop Frye’s Books.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 339–53. A list of the editions and translations of Frye’s books through the early 1990s. – “Northrop Frye’s ‘Kook Books’ and the Esoteric Tradition.” In Donaldson and Mendelson, Frye and the Word, 329–56. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 71–97. On Frye’s wide reading in the esoteric tradition as revealed especially in his notebooks. – “Northrop Frye’s Shakespearean Criticism.” In Aithal, The Importance of Northrop Frye, 1–18. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 251–67. Notes the ways Frye’s criticism of Shakespeare’s comedies and romances fits into his general poetics and looks at the influence that his criticism of these plays has had in Shakespeare studies. – “Pity the Northrop Frye Scholar? Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Fifty Years After.” In Visiones para una poetica: En el cincuentenario de “Anatomy of Criticism” de Northrop Frye. Rilce: Revista del Instituto de Lengua
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y Cultura Españolas 25, no. 1 (2009). 8–28. A slightly different version of this paper appears in Rampton, Northrop Frye, 16–35. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 223–39. On the kinds of evidence one can use to judge the frequent dismissals of Frye. – “Preface.” In Nousil Fulai Wenlun Xuanji. ed. Wu Chizhe. Beijing: China Press of Social Sciences, 1997. In Chinese. – “‘Prefatory Note’ to Frye’s ‘Reconsidering Levels of Meaning.’” Christianity and Literature 54, no. 3 (Spring 2005). 297–8. – “Reading Northrop Frye Reading François Rabelais.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 43, no. 2 (June 2016): 203–21. Rpt. in Denham, Northrop Frye and Others, Volume II: The Order of Words, 41–50. A study of the connections between Frye and Rabelais, about whom Frye says, “I’ve picked up my copies of Rabelais again, as I always do when I get to thinking about a book on the verbal universe. Rabelais is probably the writer who most clearly grasped all the dimensions of language and verbal communication.” – “The Religious Base of Northrop Frye’s Criticism.” Christianity and Literature 42 (Spring 1992): 241–54. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 17–31. Examines the movement in Frye’s criticism towards a theology of immanence, on the one hand, and a theology of transcendence on the other. These two movements come together in Frye’s understanding of identity, the theological analogy of which is the Incarnation. – “The Richard Outram/Northrop Frye Connection.” In Richard Outram: Essays on His Works, ed. Ingrid Ruthig. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2009. 37–52. On Frye’s influence on the poet Richard Outram. – “Science, Criticism, and Frye’s Metaphysical Universe.” South Carolina Review 7 (April 1975): 3–18. On the two meanings of the word “scientific” in Frye’s work. Argues that his grand critical framework is more like a metaphysical than a scientific theory. – “‘Service Is Also Praise’: Recognition in Robert Morgan’s The Truest Pleasure.” Southern Quarterly 47, no. 3 (Spring 2010): 129–41. Uses Frye’s conception of anagnorisis (recognition, discovery), drawn from Aristotle, in a commentary on Morgan’s novel. – “Thou Art That: Woollylamb Hormone, Northcote Fricassee, and Chap Named Denim.” Pembroke Magazine 37 (2005): 39–51. Satiric correspondence with William Harmon, beginning with an account of Harmon’s spoof on Anatomy of Criticism. A
good measure of high jinks on both sides of the correspondence. – “‘Vision’ as a Key Term in Frye’s Criticism.” University of Toronto Quarterly 73, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 807–46. Rpt. in Denham, Essays on Northrop Frye, 99–139. On the various meanings that attach themselves to Frye’s use of the word “vision.” – ed. Northrop Frye Newsletter 1, no. 1 (Fall 1988) through 10 (2004). Various stories, notices, bibliographic supplements, and brief articles: “Convegno Internazionale,” “Frye at the MLA Convention,” “Northrop Frye Centre,” “Superlatives,” “Making Literature out of Frye,” “Metaphorical Manna,” “Frygian Tropes from Here and There” (1, no. 1), “PhD Theses Supervised by Frye,” “Frye and the Citation Indexes,” “Frye and the Comix” (1, no. 2), “Frye Opens Embassy Lecture Series,” “Frye Collection at Victoria University,” “Frye Centre,” “Honorary Degrees,” “Making Literature Out of Frye,” “Frye and Barbecue,” “Frygiana from Here and There” (2, no. 1), “Anatomizing Frye,” “Nom de Plume,” “Indexes to Frye’s Books” (2, no. 2), “Northrop Frye Centre,” “New Books,” “Frye and the Comix: II,” “The Mondello Prize” (3, no. 1), “Requiescat in Pace,” “Frye Conference,” “Frye and Eighteenth-Century Studies” (3, no. 2), “Vic Report: Special Issue,” “Frye and Literary Theory,” “Frye Papers,” “Toronto Conference: The Legacy of Northrop Frye,” “Outram’s ‘In Memory of Northrop Frye,” “Northrop Frye Festival” (4, no. 1), “Frye Correspondence,” “Northrop Frye and English Studies,” “Daniells’ Poem,” “Charles the Thoid” (4, no. 2), “The Legacy of Northrop Frye,” “Frye Conference in Korea,” “Norrie Stories,” “Frye Medal” (5, no. 1), “Frye in Australia,” “Frye in China,” “Three Special Issues of Journals Devoted to Frye” (6, no. 1), “Conference on ‘Frye and the Word,’” “Frye among the Most Famous Canadians: Maclean’s Cover Story,” “Frye Conference in China,” “A Page from The New Defenders Comics (July 1984)” (8, no. 1), “Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word” (9, no. 2), “The Final Issue,” “Frygiana from Here and There” (10, no. 1). Denham, Robert D., and Thomas Willard, eds. Visionary Poetics: Essays on Northrop Frye’s Criticism. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Essays by Frye, Thomas Willard, David Staines, Imre Salusinszky, Robert D. Denham, Hayden White, Patricia Parker, and Paul Hernadi, arising from two sessions devoted to Frye at the 1987 convention of the Modern Language Association in San Francisco. Denniston, Constance. “The American Romance Parody: A Study of Purdy’s Malcolm and Heller’s Catch-22.” Emporia State Research Studies 14 (December 1965):
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42–59, 63–4. Sees both works as examples of romance parody in Frye’s sense. Denny, Christopher D. “Revisiting Dante’s Promised End: Eschatological Implications of Péguy’s Jeanne d’Arc Mysteries.” Christianity and Literature 62, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 533–63. Uses the phrase ‘imagined world’ in Frye’s sense. “The imagined world is for Frye a literary ending that provides structure for the plot that precedes it. In the context of the Commedia, the revelations the narrator receives in the course of his otherworldly journey provide the lens through which all historical events on earth are interpreted. In Christian tradition apocalyptic versions of paradise, from the Book of Revelation onwards, function in this way as the final significance of events in the earthly is revealed through eschatological visions.” Dent, Chris. “A Regulatory Perspective on the Interests and Motivators of Creative Individuals.” Asia Pacific Media Educator 23, no. 2 (2013): 261–76. “. . . There are concerns over the test of originality. One commentator, quoting Northrop Frye, suggests that ‘all literature is conventional,’ but in our day the conventionality of literature is ‘elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.’” Deshaye, Joel. “Canada.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 51, no. 4 (2016): 535. In his introduction to the annual survey of Canadian literary studies, notes Margery Fee’s critique of Frye’s “nationalism and the ‘dominant discourse’ it effected, one of imperialistic thinking grounded partly on Romantic notions of the sublime wilderness and partly on the actual ground of land never conceived, by settler colonists, as ownable by ‘Indians.’” – “The Medium Is the Message Is the Metaphor: Cool Reason and the Young Intellectual Public of Marshall McLuhan.” Canadian Journal of Communication 44, no. 1 (2019): 49–68. On the views of metaphor of Frye and Marshall McLuhan and on B.P. Powe’s account of the differences between Frye and McLuhan. – “Parading the Underworld of New Orleans in Ondaatje’s Coming through Slaughter.” American Review of Canadian Studies 38, no. 4 (2008): 473–94. Thinks that Frye might have explained the riddle in Ondaatje’s novel as the effect of geography on identity. Also says, “The novel’s geographic emphasis also obliquely raised Frye’s famous question ‘Where is here?’” de Sherbinin, Julie W. Chekhov and Russian Religious Culture: The Poetics of the Marian Paradigm. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997. “Northrop
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Frye quotes Blake’s definition of the Old and New Testaments as the ‘Great Code of Art,’ understanding this to mean that the Bible in Western cultures has generated a mythological universe of assumptions unconsciously embraced. ‘Practically all we can see of this body of concerns is socially conditioned and culturally inherited,’ writes Frye. Chekhov moves along those tracks in ‘My Life.’” de Souza, Vitor Chaves. “A narrativa que constitui mundos: A literatura de Mircea Eliade” [The Narrative that Constitutes Worlds: The Literature of Mircea Eliade]. Horizonte 10, no. 25 (January–March 2012): 255–67. In Romanian. Contrasts Eliade and Frye. For Frye literature refers only to the imaginary, but for Eliade literature modifies the being of the individual. His literary works demonstrated his ontological concern about the condition of the human being who seeks the transcendent. Deveau, Leo J. “This Week in Nova Scotia History, Dec. 17–23.” Chronicle–Herald [Halifax, NS] (17 December 2018): Provincial D3. “Thomas McCulloch (1776–1843) began his first series of satirical Letters of Mephibosheth Stepsure (16 published anonymously) in the Acadian Recorder (1821–22). He presented his observations of Nova Scotian life through the eyes of a self-righteous narrator. Northrop Frye saw McCulloch as “the founder of genuine Canadian humor,” based on an understanding of cultural context and on the distinction between what is past and what is permanent. McCulloch wrote: “I was neither a great man nor a great man’s son: I was Mephibosheth Stepsure, whose highest ambition was to be a plain, decent farmer.” In 1838, McCulloch became the first president of Dalhousie University. Devereux, Cecily. “The Search for a Livable Past: Frye, Crawford, and the Healing Link.” In Early Canada: Reading the Political in Literary and Cultural Production, ed. Jennifer Blair et al. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, 2005. 281–300. Quotes Frye throughout on mythopoeia, the pastoral, the identification of subject and object in poetry, etc. De Villiers, Pieter G.R. “Beauty in the Book of Revelation: On Biblical Spirituality and Aesthetics.” Spiritus 19, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 1–20. Along with theologian David Tracy, notes that religious language deals with “enigma and mystery and should not be read literally.” de Villiers, Rick. “A Defense of Wretchedness: Molloy and Humiliation.” Journal of Modern Literature 42, no. 4 (Summer 2019): 93–110. “The 1959 publication was titled Three Novels and not ‘Trilogy’—not, at least, until the Picador reprint of 1975 yoked the works together
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under the title, The Beckett Trilogy. But to lay the blame solely at Calder’s feet is to overlook that Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable are generally regarded as having more in common than just a single binding. Use of the term ‘trilogy’ is pervasive in Beckett studies. V.S. Pritchett—one of Three Novels’ earliest reviewers— referred to the book as a ‘Trilogy’ in the opening sentence of his review. Since then, critics as eminent as Hugh Kenner, Northrop Frye, and Harold Bloom have all applied it to these postwar novels.” De Waal, Marguerite. “The Poetry of Dream and the Threat of Barrenness in Three Sonnets by John Keats.” English Academy Review 33, no. 1 (January 2016): 72–86. Dharwadker, Vinay. “Some Contexts of Modern Indian Poetry.” Chicago Review 38, nos. 1–2 (1992): 218–31. “The poetic or literary rejection of the past on the way to modernity merges frequently with a violent political rejection of the presence of the past because poems do not stand merely in ‘a potential relation to reality’—as Northrop Frye claimed they did, nearly four decades ago—but, even Jorge Luis Borges conceded, actually belong to and participate in the business of the world.” Di, Naihai. “The Impact of Harold Bloom’s Theory of Misreading.” Contemporary Foreign Literature 2 (2012). In Chinese. Bloom’s idea of misreading as going beyond the theory of his critical father, Northrop Frye. Diamant, Cristina. “Stranger(s’) Voices at Home: The Many Faces of Cillian Murphy as the Misfit.” Caietele Echinox 32 (2017): 292–302. In a discussion of three plays by Cillan Murphy, calls on Frye’s theory of romance. “The role of one’s love life in constructing identity is not presented in the almost cookie-cutter manner of romantic comedies, but provides the viewer with an idiosyncratic sensibility. The ‘classic’ type of imagery associated by Northrop Frye with the mythos of romance, namely ‘spring, dawn, order, fertility, vigour and youth’ are immediately apparent in the vibrant colour scheme and visibly constructed symmetry of Disco Pigs and the flamboyancy of Breakfast on Pluto— both narratives starting with a retrospective view.” Diaz-Maldonado, R. “Dialectics and Typology: Narrative Structure in Hegel and Collingwood.” Collingwood and British Idealism Studies 22, no. 1 (January 2016): 113– 38. “The aim of this paper is to describe the similarities and differences between the historical narratives of Hegel and Collingwood. The central hypothesis is that the dialectical thinking, present in Hegel’s Philosophy of History and in Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis, produces narrative representations which
have a specifically typological character. Following Northrop Frye, typology is understood here as a mode of language usage which involves a theory of historical process. Despite the differences, this theory of historical process works as an absolute presupposition in both philosophers, and can be traced down to the core of Collingwood’s philosophical method. Consequently, after a short introduction, this paper presents the main features of Frye’s notion of typology. Next, in the two following sections, the typological configuration of both philosophies is presented, stressing the structural (narrative) similarities between them.” Dick, Alexander. “Frye, Derrida, and the University (to Come).” In Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, ed. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. 114–31. Frye’s views about “literature’s capacity to liberate were tested during the student movement of the 1960s, which led him to reflect in new ways . . . on the relationship between the university, education, and the myths of ‘concern’ and ‘freedom.’ Argues that Frye’s post-1968 thoughts on the university bear many important similarities to Jacques Derrida’s concept of the ‘university without condition.’” (editors’ abstract) Dick, Lyle. “CHR Forum: ‘A New History for a New Millennium’: Canada: A People’s History.” Canadian Historical Review 85, no. 1 (March 2004). Applies Frye’s narrative theories to the CBC series “Canada: A People’s History.” Dick, Michael. “Tales of Two Cities (in the SecondCentury BCE): Jerusalem and Nineveh.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 26, no. 1 (2016): 32–48. Agrees with J.R.C. Cousland that the Book of Tobit is comic in Frye’s sense of following a U-shaped pattern of imprisonment and release. Dickins, Robert. “William Blake and Liminography” (27 October 2019). http://zoamorphosis.com/2019/10/ william-blake-and-liminography/. Zoamorphosis | The Blake 2.0 Blog: William Blake in Art, Music, Film, and Literature. “The Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye claimed in 1951 that among the most ‘foolish’ ideas that had emerged about the visionary poet and artist William Blake, ‘The notion that he was an automatic writer is perhaps the most absurd.’ This imposition resulted, he argued, from literary students reading Blake’s words stripped from their original home, shorn of their artistic grounding. The dynamic between word and image, Frye believed, told a greater story, one closer to the intention of their creator.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Dickinson, Mark. ‘“Earth, You Almost Enough’: The Poetry and Poetics of Dennis Lee.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 25, no. 2 (1 September 2018): 363–76. Notes that as editor-in-chief of House of Anansi Press (1967–72), Lee guided to publication some of the foundational texts of Canadian environmental literature, including Frye’s The Bush Garden. Dickstein, Morris. “The Critic as Sage: Northrop Frye.” Double Agent: The Critic and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Diehl, Nicholas. “Satire, Analogy, and Moral Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71, no. 4 (2013): 311–21. “There are certain features that are at least so common in works of satire as to occupy a central place in discussions of the mode. Two things, according to Northrop Frye, are essential to satire: ‘One is wit or humor founded on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or absurd, the other is an object of attack.’ Around these two essentials literary theorists of the 1950s and 1960s developed a somewhat more involved account of satire.” Frye belongs to the old theoretical consensus that sees satire as ‘intimately connected to the real world in a way and to a degree that most fictions are not. Satires are works of fiction, but they are also veiled commentary on some aspect of the real world: satires satirize realworld targets.’” Di Giuseppe, Rita. “‘Tutto fa brodo’ [Anything Goes]: Bellow’s Herzog and Meaning In-the-Making.” Quaderni di Lingue e Letterature 13 (1988): 49–70 [56– 9]. On the elements of the anatomy form of prose fiction in Bellow’s Herzog. Di Guiseppe maintains, however, that all forms of prose fiction, as defined by Frye, are present in Herzog: it includes the novel, confession, and romance. Di Leo, Jeffrey R. Review of Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism, by Harold Bloom. Symploke 27, nos. 1–2 (2019): 321–4. “Bloom comments in his ‘Preface’ that the book ‘is not intended to be a lamentation for my own generation of critics and poets,’ but rather ‘a living tribute to their afterlife in their writings.’ The ‘friends’ include ‘John Ashbery, A.R. Ammons, Mark Strand, Alvin Feinman, Richard Rorty, Geoffrey Hartman, Angus Fletcher, and John Hollander’; the ‘mentors’ include M.H. Abrams, Frederick Pottle, Gershom Scholem, Hans Jonas, and Kenneth Burke; and the acquaintances include ‘Frank Kermode, Anthony Burgess, A.D. Nuttall, Northrop Frye.’” Dillon, David A. “Literature, Language and Learning: Purposes and Importance of Literature in Education.”
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Language Arts 57 (February–April 1980): 199–206. Interview with Frye on the purposes and importance of literary education. Dillon, George L. “Rhetoric.” In The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism, ed. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. 616–17. Summarizes Frye’s theory of rhetoric, along with the theories of I.A. Richards and Paul de Man. Dimos, George. From the Aristotelian “Mimesis” to the Contemporary One: The Transformation of the Platonic Concept of Mimesis into a Theory of Literature by Aristotle. Munich: Grin Verlag, Open Publishing GmbH, 1990. Chapter 6 is devoted to Frye’s idea of mimesis alongside the views of the members of the Chicago school of critics. Dincă, Daniel. “Dorin tudoran—pe lungul drum al întoarcerii “acasă” [Dorin Tudoran—on His “The Long Way Back Home”]. Studii și cercetări științifice: Seria filologie 42 (2019): 45–56. In Romanian. DiPietro, Cary. “Introduction: Shakespeare’s Intentions.” Style 44, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 293–310. A special issue of Style devoted to Shakespeare and intention. Edward Pechter’s essay, “Making Love to Our Employment,” begins with epigraphs from Frye and Jonathan Culler. “Frye serves as a representative of a literary kind of criticism: ‘Understanding a poem,’ argues Frye, ‘begins in a complete surrender . . . to the impact of the work as a whole, and proceeds through the effort to unite the symbols toward a simultaneous perception of the unity of the structure.’ Frye’s criticism thus proceeds from an assumption about the wholeness or unity of the work, and even though Frye avers in parentheses that this is the ‘logical sequence’ and that he has no idea or interest in ‘what the psychological sequence is, or whether there is a sequence,’ nevertheless, his understanding requires the assumption of the wholeness of intention behind the work. Clearly concerned to avoid the intentional fallacy of Wimsatt and Beardsley, Frye’s is nevertheless an author-based literary analysis.” Dirda, Michael. “Five Classics of Literary Theory.” Washington Post Book World (22 July 1990): X5. The five books, briefly described, are Frye’s Anatomy (“If God were to compose a survey of world literature, it might resemble this book—but probably wouldn’t be half as good”), Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, Sartre’s What Is Literature? Auerbach’s Mimesis, and Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence. – An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland. New York: Norton, 2003. Contains scattered references to
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Frye’s view of liberal education and his macroscopic perspective on literature. – “Understanding Criticism.” Washington Post (20 March 1994). Notes that the major twentieth-century critics were also poets, novelists, political agitators, or magazine editors, with two exceptions: Frye and F.R. Leavis. [Frye happened to be the editor of the Canadian Forum, and he was a novelist, though a failed one.] Divjak, Alenka. “Otrostvo in mladostniski podvigi kot osrednja tema v Kralju Hornu in Haveloku Danskem, romancah izgnanstva in povratka” [Childhood and Adolescent Exploits as a Central Theme in King Horn and Havelock the Dane, Romances of Exile and Return]. Primerjalna Knjizevnost 37, no. 1 (2014): 61–85. In Slovenian. On the quest theme (journey of the hero) in Middle English romances, as these stories follow the arc of romance as Frye has described it in The Secular Scripture. Djamàa, Sara. “Reading the Book versus ‘Reading’ the Film: Cinematic Adaptations of Literature as Catalyst for EFL Students’ Critical Thinking Dispositions.” Journal of Language Teaching and Research 7, no. 2 (March 2016): 252–63. “Besides the broadest anatomy of literature into prose, poetry, and drama, the discussion of literary genres was conducted following the primary universal generic taxonomy suggested by the literary critic Northrop Frye. This encompassed comedy, with sentimental comedy as one subgenre; tragedy, with melodrama as a subgenre; romance; and satire; in addition to autobiography, myths, lyric fragments, or tragicomedies that were suggested as genres by other literary critics.” Djordjevic, Igor. “‘Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)’: From Shakespearean Tragedy to Postmodern Satyr Play.” Comparative Drama 37, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 89–115. “While there are certain limitations to Frye’s schematic system in dealing with many modern and postmodern works that defy classification into any genre, it is precisely the clear delineation of subcategories and elements within the genres that promotes his theory as the most useful in a study of works that either are based upon a prescriptive view of poetics or are contemporary revisions of such works.” Looks at one such revision, Ann-Marie MacDonald’s play, from the perspective of Frye’s account of the satyr play. Djwa, Sandra. “‘Canadian Angles of Vision’: Northrop Frye, Carl Klinck, and the Literary History of Canada.” In O’Grady and Wang, Northrop Frye, 95–109, and in Wang and O’Grady, New Directions, 95–116. Also in
English Studies in Canada 19 (June 1993): 135–49. On Frye’s significant role in the Literary History of Canada project. – “The Canadian Forum: Literary Catalyst.” Studies in Canadian Literature 1 (Winter 1976): 1–25 [22–5]. Argues that Frye’s attention to Canadian poetry in the Forum, especially his review essay “Canada and Its Poetry,” provided “the critical framework for much of the present writing and study of Canadian poetry.” – “Forays in the Bush Garden: Frye and Canadian Poetry.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 130–45. Focuses on Frye’s relations with E.J. Pratt. – “‘Here I am’: Atwood, Paper Houses, and a Parodic Tradition.” Essays on Canadian Writing 71 (Fall 2000): 169–85. Notes several variants in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing on Frye’s famous question “Where is here,” along with other Frygean allusions and metaphors. – “The Where of Here: Margaret Atwood and the Canadian Tradition.” In The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism, ed. Arnold E. Davidson and Cathy N. Davidson. Toronto: Anansi, 1981. 15–34 [16–22]. Outlines Frye’s influence on Atwood’s work. Dmitriev, Victor. “φеноменγуманизациимиφа в интеллектуальнойпрозе хх века” [The Phenomenon of the Humanization of Myth in TwentiethCentury Intellectual Prose]. International Journal of Communication Research 9, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 351–3. Review of the monograph by Dr. Hab. J. Cuşnir. “The sixth chapter of the study confirms the author’s hypothesis about the effectiveness of applying the ‘central thesis’ of Northrop Frye to the literary phenomenon of the humanization of the myth in intellectual prose for its comparative analysis. (According to this thesis, mythology is inherited, transmitted, and transformed through literature, and the structures of myth continue to shape the literary structures).” Dobie, Ann B. “Northrop Frye and Mythological Criticism.” In Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism, 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle, 2012. 66–7. Dobson, Darrell. “Archetypal Criticism.” The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 June 2005. https://www. litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1569. “The main proponent of archetypal theory in the twentieth century was C.G. Jung, and the Canadian critic and scholar Northrop Frye utilized archetypal theory in literary criticism, though Frye’s approach differed substantively from Jung’s position. The advent
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of postmodern theory initially dampened the interest and influence of archetypal theory, but in recent years many writers and scholars have responded to the misconceptions and misrepresentations often found in postmodern critiques of archetypal theory. . . . Jung addresses the relevance of archetypal theory in literature and the arts most clearly in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1966).” – “Archetypal Literary Theory in the Postmodern Era.” Jung: The E-Journal of the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies 1, no. 1 (April 2005). http://www. thejungiansociety.org/Jung%20Society/e-journal/ Volume-1/Dobson-2005.html. Aims “to demonstrate that archetypal theory, as articulated by Northrop Frye and Carl Jung, remains a powerful tool in literary criticism.” Finds “much that is compelling in both postmodern and archetypal theory” and uses “archetypal literary theory to posit a solution to a postmodern critique regarding the role of ideology in literary analysis. . . . [T]he means of doing so has suggestive implications for answering critiques of archetypal theory throughout the academy.” Provides a critique of Deanne Bogdan’s feminist reading of Frye. – “Northrop Frye.” The Literary Encyclopedia (2005). http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople. php?rec=true&UID=1648. An overview of Frye’s achievement. – “Royal, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Archetypal Reflectivity and the Construction of Professional Knowledge.” Teacher Education Quarterly 36, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 149–65. “There is a similarity between Jung and [George] Lakoff and [Mark] Johnson in their shared assertion of the wide symbolic or metaphorical underpinnings of most and perhaps all thought, belief, and action. This argument is also made by Northrop Frye. However, there is a vital distinction to be drawn here between the work of Lakoff and Johnson (and Frye) and that of Jung. For Lakoff, Johnson, and Frye interaction with metaphors occurs on a fairly conscious, rational, level—by this I mean there is no deliberate acknowledgement of the role of the unconscious mind in the process. Generally, the meaning of the metaphors is understood to be fairly clear. Metaphors used in this way are more like what Jung would call signs. A related but even more significant difference is that for Jung, symbols—and archetypes are symbols—reveal meaning and purpose that guide the increasingly conscious development of personal and professional identity. They are transformative in intent. This element is missing in Lakoff and Johnson and in Frye.”
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Dobson, James E. “Can an Algorithm Be Disturbed? Machine Learning, Intrinsic Criticism, and the Digital Humanities.” College Literature 42, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 543–66. “It was well before our present concern with re-theorizing the surface of the text, prior even to the advent of ‘symptomatic reading,’ that those working within literary studies dreamed of the possibilities of a scientific criticism. Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, originally published in 1957, serves as one such early work. Frye made the polemical case for a systematic and scientific criticism derived from an inductive reading of literature that could encompass all of literature. He outlines the expansive scope of his approach by creating ‘a theory of criticism’ explicitly modeled after Aristotle ‘whose principles [would] apply to the whole of literature and account for every valid type of critical procedure.’ This approach would work, he argues, because like a scientific investigator, he assumes the existence of an order of nature, an order of meanings that lies behind the enterprise known as literature and exists as a coherent whole. Discovering the laws governing this order becomes the task of the critic. This understanding enables Frye to read widely across numerous literatures, to extract major modes and archetypes, and to produce a categorization of all these into a single organizing schema.” Dobson, Kit. “Experiments in Disaster: Recent Canadian Poetics.” Dalhousie Review 89, no. 1 (2009): 13–23. Dobson compares and contrasts his review of recent Canadian poetry with the similar, decade-long task performed by Frye for the University of Toronto Quarterly. Dobson, Michael, and Stanley Wells, eds. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001. Frye’s Shakespearean criticism is referred to a dozen or so times in this volume. See the book’s index. Docherty, Thomas. On Modern Authority: The Theory and Condition of Writing, 1500 to the Present Day. Sussex: Harvester; New York: St. Martin’s, 1987. 91–3, 122–3. In a chapter devoted to a revisionary reading of Shakespeare, finds Frye’s distinction between comic and tragic modes helpful, but he takes issue with Frye’s understanding of the way that the familial, social, and sexual relationships in Shakespeare’s comedies work themselves out. Glances also at Frye’s idea of the “green world” of comedy, which is also said to be present in Shakespeare’s tragedies. Dodd, William. Review of The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s Comedies, by Penny Gay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Faced with the
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nightmare prospect of cramming an account of modern comic theory into a couple of pages, Gay understandably confines herself to reviewing the anthropological approaches of Northrop Frye and C.L. Barber. But as she is quick to point out, reading the plays in terms of community rituals of inclusion was problematized by the feminist and new historicist criticism of the 1980s and 1990s that drew attention to elements of rupture and discontinuity in the aesthetic experience, even of the festive comedies. Dodeman, Andre. “Reassessing Genres in Hugh MacLennan’s ‘The Changed Functions of Fiction and Non-Fiction.’” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 32, no. 1 (2009): 23–33. “Takes as a case in point an influential essay by Hugh MacLennan, a contemporary of cultural thinkers Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, who also elaborated theories on national culture, so as to engage with the unstable, even porous boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, as well as the slippery nature of historical discourse caught in the interstices of positivist science and Aristotelian drama.” Doğan, Mehmet H. “Bir Yazin Dali Olarak Eleştiri” [Criticism as a Branch of Writing]. Hece: Aylik Edebiyat Dergisi 7, nos. 77–9 (May–July 2003): 456–7. In Turkish. Doherty, Mike. “How to Understand Hip-Hop Lyrics: Rap Genius Gives the Works of Drake and Jay Z the Northrop Frye Treatment.” Gale’s Global Issues. N.p., n.d. Web (8 December 2014). http://find.galegroup.com/ gic/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=Date Descend&tabID=T003&prodId=GIC&resultListType= RESULT_LIST&searchId=R1&searchType=¤t Position=1&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29% 3AFQE%3D%28KE%2CNone%2C11%29rap+lyrics+% 24&userGroupName=otta7357&inPS=true&docId= A353644698&contentSet=IAC-Documents&docId= A353644698&docType=IAC.
Argues that the trickstergod was a figure that haunted Frye from Fearful Symmetry on. What was originally a negative image is transformed in Frye’s later work to a positive image of the mysterious Other. These alternate visions become contraries in Frye’s dialectic of Word and Spirit. – “‘Blazing with Artifice’: Light from Northrop Frye’s Notebooks.” University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 17–28. A critique of those who accuse Frye of being antihistorical, seeing him only as a formalist or structuralist. Understands Frye’s work rather as a dialectic, the opposing categories of which are structure vs. history, synchronic vs. diachronic, product vs. process. Turns to Frye’s notebooks to reflect on the two poles that are a part of Frye’s vision, the structural and the historical. – “Book of Revelation: A Review-Essay on John Ayre’s Northrop Frye: A Biography.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 2, no. 1 (Winter 1989–90): 12–18. – “The Book of the Dead: A Skeleton Key to Northrop Frye’s Notebooks.” In Boyd and Salusinszky, Rereading Frye, 19–38. On the meaning of the ogdoad, an eightpart project that began when Frye was a child and gave direction to his life’s work. Deciphers the code of this expansive framework and its various permutations in Frye’s notebooks, including the “Great Doodle.”
Doherty, Paul C. “Hopkins’ ‘Spring and Fall: To a Young Child’.” Victorian Poetry 5 (Summer 1967): 140–3. Sees the poem as exemplifying Frye’s analogies of innocence and experience.
– “Controversial Aspects of The Great Code.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, 10 November 1984. 13 pp. Photoduplicated typescript. Seeks to counter the two principal criticisms of The Great Code (that it is “over-unified and under-historical”) by arguing that the book insists boldly on “the mythical, metaphorical, typological, and kerygmatic transfiguration of language and perception and the illusory nature of most ‘normal’ ego-centered experience.” Believes that most critics of The Great Code have a limited understanding of the way poetic language works and a “natural” understanding of time and history.
Dolan, Neal. “The Feeling Mind: Northrop Frye, Romanticism at Yale, and the Neurobiology of Consciousness.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth. University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013.
– “Desert Paradise: A Polemical Re-Introduction to Northrop Frye” (2011). Northrop Frye Weblog at McMaster University. https://macblog.mcmaster.ca/ fryeblog/desert-paradise-a-polemical-re-introductionto-northrop-frye/. A searching meditation by Dolzani, our pre-eminent reader of Frye, on his first principles.
Dolzani, Michael. “The Ashes of the Stars: Northrop Frye and the Trickster God.” In Donaldson and Mendelson, Frye and the Word, 312–28, and in Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word, ed. James M. Kee, 59–73.
– “On Earth as It Is in Heaven: The Problem of Wish Fulfilment in Frye’s Visionary Criticism.” In O’Grady and Wang, Northrop Frye, 54–68, and in Wang and O’Grady, New Directions, 173–97. Focuses on Frye’s
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view of the revelatory or kerygmatic aspects of literature. Argues that Frye studies in the future will come more and more to attend to Frye’s view of levels of consciousness beyond the literary. – “The Earth’s Imagined Corners: Northrop Frye and Utopia.” In Rampton, Northrop Frye, 183–202. On the persistent theme of utopia in Frye’s writings, relating the theme to various examples in a typology of utopias. – “From the Defeated: Northrop Frye and the Literary Symbol.” In Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, ed. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. 65–82. Examines the impact of Spengler on Frye, who adopts Spengler’s view of cultural decline. But for Frye we are called on to struggle against this idea of the decline of culture. The creativity of spiritual humanity is our only hope against Spengler’s vision of decline and ultimate defeat. – “Editor’s Preface” and “Introduction.” In Words with Power: Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature, ed. Michael Dolzani. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 26. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. vii– xiv, xix–lv. – “The Infernal Method: Northrop Frye and Contemporary Criticism.” In Centre and Labyrinth: Essays in Honour of Northrop Frye, ed. Eleanor Cook et al. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983. 59–68. Sees Frye’s fondness for anatomy and satire as performing a subversive or deconstructive role in his criticism, causing him to be sceptical about all intellectual systems. Argues that Frye’s work has the detachment necessary to interpenetrate with other critical perspectives. Frye’s grand vision of the constructive power of the imagination, which allows space for the social context of criticism, liberates him from both subjectivism and formalism. – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings, ed. with Robert D. Denham. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 24. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. xxiii–lviii. – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Renaissance Literature, ed. Michael Dolzani. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 20. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. xxi–liii. – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance, ed. Michael Dolzani. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 15. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. xxi–lvi.
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– “Introduction.” In The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy, ed. Michael Dolzani. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 9. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. xix–lvi. – “The Ruins of Time: Frye and the City, 1977.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 8, no. 1 (Summer 1999): 1–7. On the theme of Eros restored in Frye’s late work. – “Structure, Archetypes, and the Order of Words: A Citation Classic Commentary on Anatomy of Criticism.” Current Contents/Arts and Humanities 3 (30 January 1989): 14. The author of this commentary is given as Frye, but Michael Dolzani is actually the author. – “Wrestling with Powers: The Social Thought of Frye.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 97–102. On Frye’s conception of the order of words and its relation to his social vision. – “The View from the Northern Farm: Northrop Frye and Nature.” In Verticals of Frye/Les Verticales des Frye, ed. Ed Lemond. Moncton, NB: Elbow Press, 2005. 48–58. – et al. “The Ideas of Northrop Frye.” Northrop Frye Newsletter 3, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 5–16. Part 2 of a threepart CBC program entitled “The Ideas of Northrop Frye”; most of the transcription is devoted to David Cayley’s interview with Frye. Domenichelli, Mario. “Il mito di Frye.” In Canada: L’immaginazione letteraria, ed. Alfredo Rizzardi. Abano Terme: Piova Editore, 1981. Domestico, Anthony. Review of Realistic Radicals Utopia, Limited Romanticism and Adjustment, by Anahid Nersessian. Commonweal 142, no. 20 (18 December 2015): 28–30. “Nersessian argues that, partly because the Romantics lived through the excesses and disappointments of the French Revolution, they had a very particular and, to our minds at least, peculiar sense of utopia. They did not imagine it would arrive through the violent destruction of all that is and the creation of a new and better world. Rather, it would arrive—if it ever did arrive—through what Nersessian, borrowing from the critic Northrop Frye, calls ‘adjustment’: ‘a formal as well as an ethical operation that allows human beings to accommodate themselves to the world by minimizing the demands they place upon it.’” Domínguez, Pilar Cuder. “Romance in A.S. Byatt’s Possession.” Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 8 (1995): 79–89. Argues that on one level Byatt’s novel is a conventional romance that incorporates the mythic quest pattern and fictional archetypes described by Campbell, Propp, and Frye.
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Dommergues, Pierre. “Northrop Frye et la critique américaine.” Le Monde (Supplement to no. 7086) (25 October 1967): iv–v. Places Frye against the background of the several strands of the New Criticism (Ransom, Tate, Warren, Empson, Crane, Wimsatt, and Burke). Says that in view of the multiplicity of today’s individual approaches and critical coteries, Frye is to be especially credited with having aimed at a detached, “scientific” synthesis. Also calls attention to some of Frye’s “disciples”: Ihab Hassan, Harold Bloom, Hazard Adams, and Angus Fletcher. Donald, Merlin. “Northrop Frye and Theories of Human Nature.” University of Toronto Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 29–36. “Frye sought out the laws governing the rise and fall of cultural ideas, bringing the attitude of a system-builder to his research. As he pointed out on many occasions, psychologists and anthropologists, such as Jung and Frazer, were addressing some of the same questions, albeit with a different set of tools. However, their ultimate goal— gaining a wider view of how cultures and creative minds intermeshed— was the same as his. I was greatly moved by Frye’s grand vision, which influenced my choice of the word ‘mimesis’ as a label for the ancient cognitive adaptation that defined the underlying logic of the human mind. Mimesis established the cognitive foundation upon which the evolution of language and symbolic thought became possible. The analogue logic of mimetic representation is still the underlying currency of symbolic exchange, as it seamlessly connects gesture and ritual with everyday speech, narrative, and text.” (author’s abstract) – “Una aproximación evolutiva: Consecuencias del studio de la época axial” [An Evolutionary Approach: Consequences of the Study of the Axial Era]. In La creatividad social: Narrativas de un concepto actual, ed. Celso Sánchez Capdequí. Madrid: Centro del Investigaciones Sociológicus, 2017. 47–72. In Spanish. “One of my earliest heroes was the excellent literary theorist Northrop Frye.” What follows from this opening sentence is an argument quite similar to that of the preceding entry. Donaldson, Eileen. ‘Cosmogynesis: The Female Hero in Tanith Lee’s The Winter Players.’ Literator 38, no. 1 (2017): 1–10. “In his seminal Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye proposes a classification of various hero types that appear in romance, myth and tragedy: all are men. In his study of The Iliad, James Redfield discusses the origin of the term ‘hero,’ which applies solely to warriors who are ‘men of clarity and purity.’ For these scholars, the hero is male and champions an ethic of
noble masculinity; the female hero is either invisible or a glitch.” Donaldson, Jeffery. “An Access of Power: Job, Evolution and the Spirit of Consciousness in Northrop Frye and Daniel C. Dennett.” In Rampton, Northrop Frye, 316– 37. Compares Frye’s commentary on the Book of Job to Daniel Dennett’s view of consciousness. – “Environmental Returns: Northrop Frye’s Axis Mundi Re-oriented.” Hamilton Arts and Letters 8, no. 2 (2015–16). http://samizdatpress.typepad.com/ hal_magazine_issue_eight2/environmental-returnsnorthrop-fryes-axis-mundi-re-oriented-by-jefferydonaldson-1.html. – Missing Link: The Evolution of Metaphor and the Metaphor of Evolution. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2015. “In his theory of the Four Variations in Words with Power, Northrop Frye shows how this vertical metaphor is to a large extent culturally relative and that major shifts have occurred through our history in how we perceive the well springs of creative activity.” Notes Frye’s distinction between the spatial orientation of the pre-Romantic and the Romantic cosmologies, the latter of which turns the worldview associated with “up” and “down” on its head. Also examines the difference between what Frye calls “explicit” and “implicit” metaphor. The presence of Frye hovers over the entire book. – “Poetry.” University of Toronto Quarterly 74, no.1 (2004/2005): 200–50. Uses Frye’s four thematic variations from Words with Power—the Mountain, the Garden, the Cave, and the Furnace—to organize his reviews of Canadian poetry for the year. Donaldson, Jeffery, and Alan Mendelson, eds. Frye and the Word: Religious Contexts in the Writings of Northrop Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. A collection of twenty essays, originating from a conference at McMaster University: Frye and the Word: Religious Contexts in the Criticism of Northrop Frye, May 2000. Donoghue, Denis. “Kenneth Burke’s Dangling Novel.” Encounter 29 (October 1967): 78–84. Sees Burke’s Towards a Better Life not as a novel but as an anatomy in Frye’s sense. – “The Motive for Metaphor.” Hudson Review 65, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 543–61. Begins his lengthy account of Wallace Stevens on metaphor by juxtaposing Frye’s reading of Stevens’ poem The Motive for Metaphor with that of John Crowe Ransom. “It is not necessary to make peace between these two readers, beyond saying
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that Frye takes the X to be the objective world set over against us and Ransom takes it to be one of our own moral Universals, resolutely harsh until it finds itself agreeably fulfilled in the concrete detail of a natural or a human world. Metaphor is the prime means of the satisfaction that Frye envisages, and perhaps Ransom would find it so, too, though he does not mention it.” Doney, Lewis. “The Degraded Emperor: Theoretical Reflections on the Upstaging of a Bodhisattva King.” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 49 (May 2019): 13–66. Notes Frye’s account of the comic genre. Doran, Robert M. Theological Foundations, Volume 1. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995. Draws throughout on Frye’s distinction between archetypal and anagogic meaning. – “The Work of Hayden White I: Mimesis, Figuration and the Writing of History.” In The SAGE Handbook of Historical Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012. “It would of course be impossible to discuss historical theory without examining a thinker who, more than any other, has placed theoretical questions at the forefront of debates surrounding history and historiography over a 50-year career.” Dorfman, Ben. “Are Human Rights a Philosophy of History? The Case for the Defense.” International Social Science Review 89, no. 1 (2014): 1–35. “In Metahistory, Hayden White lays out a range of modes through which history and speculative philosophy of history play out. . . . One can explain history via classic approaches to literary emplotment. White points to Northrop Frye’s 1957 Anatomy of Criticism to outline three options. Most emplotment, White argues, boils down to romance, tragedy, comedy or satire. Romance is the emergent hero transcending evil—he or she who claims virtue over vice and wins the day. Romance is ‘the sort of drama associated with the Grail legend.’ Romantic history is humanity triumphant; Christ resurrected. The Romantic sees liberation from imprisonment. These are concepts important to human rights.” Döring, Wolfgang. “G.E. Lessings Lustspiel Der junge Gelehrte: Eine typologische Betrachtung auf dem Hintergrund der Komödientheorie Northrop Fryes” [G.E. Lessings Lustspiel Der junge Gelehrte: A Typological View in the Background of Northrop Frye’s Theory of Comedy]. New German Review 4 (1988): 27–40. In German. A study of Lessing’s play from the point of view of the theory of comedy that Frye develops in the Third Essay of the Anatomy. Dorion-Soulié, Manuel. “Le Canada et le monde vus de l’Ouest: La politique étrangère de David Bercuson
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et Barry Cooper” [Canada and the World from the West: David Bercuson and Barry Cooper’s Foreign Policy]. Canadian Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3 (September 2013): 645–64. In French. “Drawing on the literary critic Northrop Frye, our authors [David Bercuson and Barry Cooper] distinguish between identity and unity: identity would be cultural, and therefore regional or local, and unity would be political, and therefore likely to be national. Thus, politics must never try to meddle with the cultural: in Canada, the goal of the federal government can only be to promote national unity, not a Canadian identity.” Dossetto, Fiorenza. “My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding: Writing Canada for an American Theatre Audience.” British Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 2 (2013): 235–51. “After a successful season in Toronto, the Canadian musical My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding was invited to travel south of the border for a production at the 2010 New York Musical Festival. Having realised prospective US-based audiences could be unfamiliar with the many Canadian elements of the narrative, playwrights David Hein and Irene Carl Sankoff embarked on an extensive process of rewriting. This article considers the (re-)presentation of and introduction to Canada the amended script offers to a non-Canadian audience. Shifting implicitly from Frye’s ‘Where is here?’ question to a ‘What is here?’ musing, I consider the change in geographical setting, the elimination and/or alteration of topical Canadian references, and the introduction of what I term ‘reminders of Canadianness,’ as I argue that the musical offers a significant opportunity to renegotiate the relationship between Canada and the US.” Doss-Quinby, Eglal. American Classics: A Personal Essay. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. 78, 88–9, 90, 151, 152. Draws on Frye for his readings of Moby Dick and Walden. D’Ottavi, Stefania. “Frye e Blake.” In Lombardo, Ritratto, 217–24. In Italian. On the centrality of Blake for Frye’s theories of archetypes, symbols, and images and for his interest in “systems.” Doty, William G. “Northrop Frye’s Myth.” Mythography: A Study of Myths and Rituals. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1986. 179–81. Briefly summarizes Frye’s view of myth and his typology of the four pregeneric phases of literature. Believes that taxonomic frameworks, such as Frye’s, provide a good beginning point for literary criticism and a possible way “of explicating the interrelations of our literary traditions,” so long as they are not taken as exhausting the meaning of a work.
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Doughty, Howard A. Review of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven Pinker. The Innovation Journal 24, no. 1 (2019): 1–9. “Over the past century or so, however, Canada has churned out an increasingly large number of celebrity artists and intellectuals. Its most prominent ‘thinkers’ range all the way from the pioneering political economist Harold Adams Innis (1894–1952), Kennedy-era liberal icon John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006), media guru Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), literary theorist Northrop Frye (1912– 1991), novelists Robertson Davies (1913–1995) and Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) and philosophers George Grant (1918–1988) and Charles Taylor (b. 1931), and songwriterpoet Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) all the way to contemporary, successfully self-promoting, rightwing media sensation Jordan Peterson (b. 1962)—he of the passion for celebrating our ‘inner lobsters’—and Harvard University cognitive psychologist, linguist and popular science writer Steven Pinker (b. 1954).” Douglas, Christopher. “This Is The Shack That Job Built: Theodicy and Polytheism in William Paul Young’s Evangelical Best Seller.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88, no. 2 (June 2020): 505–42. Douglas, Crerar. Positive Negatives: A Motif in Christian Tradition. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Chapter 3 draws on Frye’s work in the context of the Luther/Calvin debate and opposition between the tragic and comic visions. Also glances at Frye’s The Critical Path. – “A Theological Problem in Northrop Frye’s Analysis of The Winter’s Tale.” Christianity & Literature 24 (Winter 1975): 9–35. “Careful examination of Frye’s approach to this play” reveals that whereas he depends upon Christian theology, his method does not sufficiently acknowledge his debt to Christianity. By focusing upon the cyclical model, he omits “the importance of linear time,” but more important, he dichotomizes Christian grace (superior to the natural order) and another kind of grace (the same as nature); Frye is reading a later concept, associated with Blake, into Renaissance criticism. Although he tries to fit everything into his system, he errs in excluding theology from criticism. Douglas, Wallace. “The Meanings of ‘Myth’ in Modern Criticism.” Modern Philology 50 (May 1953): 232–42 [232–3]. Rpt. in Myth and Literature: Contemporary Theory and Practice, ed. John B. Vickery. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966. 119–28 [120]. A brief look at Frye’s concept of myth as presented in an early essay. Says that Frye, like the Cambridge Hellenists, is more interested in the ritual that explains the myth than in the myth itself. Observes that Frye
discovers signs of fertility rites in literature and that he reduces literary patterns to these rites. Dow, Bonnie J. “Response: Criticism and Authority in the Artistic Mode.” Western Journal of Communication 65, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 336–48. “I argue above that texts have no ‘real’ dimensions that critics do not create. In this sense, I adhere to Northrop Frye’s definition of polysemy rather than that advanced by media critics. For Frye, polysemy is applied to critical activity, not audience activity. In Anatomy of Criticism, he explained the necessity for critics to accept that there are “manifold critical readings of a text by arguing that the alternative was to choose a critical reading and then try to prove that all the others are less legitimate. The former is the way of scholarship and leads to the advancement of learning; the latter is the way of pedantry.” Importantly, Frye rests agency in the critic, not the text or the audience. Texts are not polysemous until we argue that they are; in short, until we make them that way through the creation of multiple readings. Dowler, Kevin. Review of Canadian Communication Thought: Ten Foundational Writers, by Robert E. Babe. Canadian Journal of Communication 25, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 565. “The slippage from historical circumstances into ontological truths about the ‘nature’ of Canadians and Canadian thought posits those essences in an ahistorical manner. Rather than the ‘truth of correspondence,’ here we are in the realm of Frye’s ‘mythopoeic knowledge.’ As Babe points out, ‘mythopoeic knowledge does not progress; rather, it recurs,’ and this is indeed the character of our encounter with nature; it is mythic in proportion, a good fairy story. As we know, however, fairy stories usually have a purpose, sometimes as sinister as the story itself. Babe himself points out, apropos of Frye, that ‘myths lend support to . . . the power structure of society.’” Downey, Dara. “‘Reading Her Difficult Riddle’: Shirley Jackson and Late 1950s’ Anthropology.” In It Came from the 1950s!: Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties, ed. Darryl Jones, Elizabeth McCarthy, and Bernice M. Murphy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 176–97. The universalizing discourse that derived from anthropology in the 1950s and 1960s “provided the increasingly self-conscious discipline of literary criticism with a ready-made vocabulary and structure, and the socalled ‘Myth and Ritual’ school, including scholars such as Northrop Frye, Dorothy van Ghent, Leslie Fiedler, and Stanley Edgar Hyman (the husband of Shirley Jackson, the focus of this essay), set out to excavate such motifs from the most canonical works of Anglophone literature.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Downing, Crystal. “Theopoetics: Si(g)ns of Copulation.” Cross Currents 60, no. 1 (March 2010): 45–59, 137. “While Kant privileged reason as the engine driving the autonomous knowing self, the 19th-century Romantic poets elevated imagination as the primary power energizing the autonomous perceiver. By the 20th century, autonomy was associated with the poetic artifact itself. In the 1950s, novelist E.M. Forster asserted that a true poem ‘points to nothing but itself,’ while literary critic Northrop Frye proclaimed the importance ‘of producing a structure of words for its own sake,’ calling such a structure ‘autonomous.’” Downing, Frederick L. “Voices from the Whirlwind: Contemporary Criticism and the Biblical Book of Job.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 4 (Winter 1999): 389–404. Also available at: http://www.scribd. com/doc/29898437/Voices-From-The-WhirlwindContemporary-Criticism-and-the-Biblical-Book-of-Job. See section entitled “Northrop Frye and the World of the Text: The U-Shaped Plot and the Epitome of Biblical Narrative.” Doyle, Briohny. “The Postapocalyptic Imagination.” Thesis Eleven 131, no. 1 (2015): 99–113. “If apocalypse is, as Northrop Frye’s reading suggests, the biblical culmination of ‘a comprehensive view of the human situation,’ then postapocalypse can beframed as an incomprehensive view of the fragility and transience of anything that could be referred to as a human situation. . . .The postapocalypse does not fit Frye’s formula for reading the Bible as a literary text in which an anti-type reaffirms the truth of a type, as in the relationship of genesis to apocalypse.” Doyle, James. “Rhyming Reds and Fractious Fictions, Canada’s Heritage of Literary Radicalism.” Review of Progressive Heritage: The Evolution of a Politically Radical Literary Tradition in Canada, by Brian D. Palmer. American Review of Canadian Studies 34, nos. 1 (Spring 2004): 99–128. “A considerable irony, however, is that just as the first serious indications of an awareness of class themes within Canadian writing appeared, so too did a literary criticism that tended to place workers in the shadows of a constructed national mythology that highlighted themes rather distant from the divisions of socio-economic segmentation. ‘Limited identities,’ a phrase born of historians and a concern that is made intelligible only through efforts to historicize and contextualize meanings of marginality, appeared poised, in the mid-to-late 1960s, to be examined through literatures somewhat outside the Canadian canon of landscape, pioneering settlements of survival, northern rigors, and the imagined iconographies of
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white settler dominion. This conventionalizing aesthetic, captured most brilliantly in Northrop Frye’s interpretive essentialism of Canadian literary culture as a ‘garrison mentality,’ embattled in its guardianship of values and struggling always to extend virtue against the ravages of climate, environment, and nature, or the hostilities of formidable foes, achieved an interpretive dominance within criticism as Frye’s Conclusion to the Literary History of Canada (1965) appeared. It was popularized, and given a certain Left appeal, in Margaret Atwood’s Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature.” Dragland, Stan. “Afterword: Reaney’s Relevance.” Essays on Canadian Writing 24–5 (Winter–Spring 1982–3): 211–35. Rpt. in Approaches to the Work of James Reaney, ed. Stan Dragland. Downsview, ON: ECW Press, 1983. 211–35. Comments throughout on the ways in which Frye’s myth of coherence has influenced Reaney. Drake, Graham, et al., eds. “General Introduction.” Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997. “This U-shaped motif (called the ‘monomyth’ by such modern mythographers as Joseph Campbell) is common to most epic and romance, and especially in romance it helps focus attention on the development of the central hero. Romance follows a pattern of separation and reunion or, as Northrop Frye views it, a journey of descent followed by ascent and a corresponding resolution of the hero’s purpose and place in the world. Because the very structure of such romances is the development of the hero towards maturity, achievement, and resumption of his rightful title, they often focus on questions of identity—as initial concealment followed by gradual revelation. Havelok conceals his identity as a fisherman; Bevis becomes, at various points in the narrative, a shepherd, messenger, and pilgrim; Athelston begins as a lowly messenger but gradually grows into his identity as king.” Dreier, Stephanie. “Learning to Be a Hero: The Role of Magical Objects in Harry Potter and Reckless.” Yearbook of Eastern European Studies 7 (2017): 17–29. “Following Northrop Frye’s classification, Jacob is a Romantic hero: he lacks idealism and high ethical standards. Although he is certainly no coward, his bravery borders on folly, prompted by narcissism and over-confidence. Consequently, readers are torn between empathizing with him and resenting his attitude.” Uses Frye’s five heroic modes to classify characters in Funke and Wigram’s Reckless and in Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
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Drewniak, Dagmara. “‘It was empty and silent, except for the devilish laughter of the coyotes’— The Perception of Canada as a Peaceable Kingdom and Promised Land in Selected Immigrant Memoirs.” TransCanadiana 6 (2013): 179–91. “The attitude of the Canadian government and Canadian society to immigration has changed dramatically over the decades. It has often reflected on the state of the Canadian economy and thus reflected the opportunities Canada offered to newcomers. The concept of the ‘peaceful kingdom’ and the reflection of Northrop Frye on the Canadian social ideal—‘the pastoral myth’— is juxtaposed as well as challenged by its notion of ‘garrison mentality’ imposed on immigrants by other social groups, as well as the overwhelming Canadian nature.” Dreyer, Yolanda. “‘n Teoretiese inleiding tot narratiewe hermeneutiek in die teologie” [“A Theoretical Introduction to Narrative Hermeneutics in Theology”]. Theological Studies 59, no. 2 (June 2003): 313–32. In Afrikaans. Maintains that narrative hermeneutics as a method of research in theology departs from a dialectical relationship between hermeneutics and the method of interpretation. Aims to describe and explain narrative as a “way of knowing.” Focuses on the form, content, function, and context of myth. Myth is foundational to the life stories of people and groups. Uses Hopewell’s (see below) interpretation of Frye’s four narrative modes as an example of such hermeneutics. Drissi, Susannah Rodríguez. “The Quest for Body and Voice in Assia Djebar’s So Vast the Prison.” Comparative Literature and Culture Web 7, no. 3 (September 2005): article 5. Using Frye’s definition of the quest novel and Joseph Campbell’s writings, Susannah Rodríguez Drissi explores in her paper . . . the motif of the journey as Djebar adapts it to her female characters. Proposes that in previous studies concerning the hero—such as in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough or in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces—women are relegated to a secondary role. Recently, however, it has become evident that the study of the woman as ‘heroine’ is necessary to a better understanding of not only of women’s literature but of literature as a whole.” (from publisher’s abstract) Druff, James H., Jr. “Genre and Mode: The Formal Dynamics of Doubt.” Genre 14 (Fall 1981): 295–307 [299–302]. Believes that Frye’s distinction between genre and mode is too clear-cut and that we can understand better some of the disharmony in the forms of modern fiction if we see the two concepts as related, genre having a historical dimension and mode a rhetorical one.
Drumbolis, Nicky. An Inventory of Modern English Poetry in Canada. Toronto: Letters, 1987. Item following No. 242. This annotated catalogue of Canadiana includes a three-page account of Anatomy of Criticism, “perhaps the most enigmatic and provocative book of Canadian literature.” Du, Chanzhong. “The Canterbury Tales as an Example of Frye’s Conception of a Medieval Fictional Mode.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Fujian Foreign Languages and Literature Association (2003). – “Lun Fulai zhi xiju piping yu Shashibiya xiju” [Frye’s Criticism of Comedy Including Shakespearian Comedy]. Fuzhou daxue xuebao [Journal of Fuzhou University] 2 (2001): 81–3. In Chinese. – “Northrop Frye’s Theoretical Model and the Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Tragedies.” Foreign Literature Studies (2000). In Chinese. – “On Frye’s Cyclical View of the Phases of Language.” Journal of Tianjin Foreign Studies University 4 (1999). In Chinese. An overview of the theory of language in The Great Code. – “On the ‘Great Code’: Characteristics of Literary Criticism.” Journal of Fujian Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences) 1 (2000). In Chinese. Frye’s interdisciplinary study of the Bible opens up new understandings of the biblical text. – “On the Three Modes of Language of Northrop Frye.” Anhui University Journal (Philosophy and Social Sciences) 3 (2004). In Chinese. Having expounded the typical features of the three phases on language, Frye introduces a fourth mode, kerygma, derived from biblical language. Du, Guoying. “The Repetition of Religious Myth in Pushkin’s ‘Queen of Spades.’” Journal of Harbin Institute of Technology (Social Sciences Edition) 6 (2011). Du, Jia. “On the Principle of the Cycle in Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” Gansu Social Sciences 6 (2007). In Chinese. Du, Xiaonuo. “The Separate Horn Sounded: Northrop Frye’s View of Literary Criticism.” Journal for Young Teachers 6 (2007). In Chinese. Dubalaru, Oana Fotache. “‘Making It New’: Topoi of Literary Historiography in Frye, Guillén, and Moretti.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth. University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
DuBois, Alexander. “Ethics, Critics, Close Reading.” University of Toronto Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2007): 926–36. On Frye as a mediating figure in the aesthetics-ethics debate. Dubois, Diane. “The Absurd Imagination: Northrop Frye and Waiting for Godot.” English Studies in Canada 37, no. 2 (June 2011): 111–30. On Frye’s understanding of Beckett. – “Northrop Frye.” Oxford Bibliographies. http://www. oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0035.xml#obo9780190221911-0035-bibItem-0081. Separate sections entitled “Anatomy of Criticism,” “Biographies and Contextual Approaches,” “Canadian Literature and Culture,” “William Blake,” “Romanticism,” “The Bible, Christianity, and Religion,” “Interpenetration,” “The University and Education,” “Politics and Cultural Theory,” “Shakespeare,” “Literary Criticism,” “Reappraisals and Retrospectives,” “Eastern, Western, and Other Perspectives,” “Miscellaneous Writings,” “Archives,” “Finding Aids and Blogs”, “Bibliographies,” and “Indexes to the Primary Texts” Dubois, Jean-Marie, and Gerald Cote. “Northrop Frye (1912–1991): A World-Renowned Literary and Social Critic.” Record [Sherbrooke, QC] (3 August 2017): A7. Dudek, Louis. “Academic Sofa.” Canadian Forum 58 (June–July 1978): 26–7. Brief remarks about Frye’s essay “Haunted by Lack of Ghosts.” – “The Bible as Fugue: Theme and Variations.” University of Toronto Quarterly: A Canadian Journal of the Humanities 52, no. 2 (Winter 1982–3): 127–35. – “Frye Again (but Don’t Miss Souster).” Delta 5 (October 1958): 26–7. Claims that Frye “tries to reduce the whole spirit and meaning of art to a factor of his system of classification, a mere product of ‘type’ and ‘form,’ having nothing to do with the author’s mind, heart, or convictions.” As a result, Frye, “the Great White Whale of Canadian criticism,” devalues the poet as an individual commenting on reality. – “The Psychology of Literature.” Canadian Literature 72 (Spring 1977): 5–20 [5–11]. Rpt. in Dudek, Selected Essays and Criticism. Ottawa: Tecumseh, 1978. 362–80. Examines Frye’s view of the psychological foundation of archetypes, which is seen as an oracular, visionary, religious view, and against which Dudek places his own understanding of the psychology of literature. Dudek, Louis, and Michael Gnarowski, eds. Making of Modern Poetry in Canada: Essential Commentary on Poetry in English, 3rd ed. Montreal and Kingston:
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McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017. Remarking on the two selections from Frye’s The Educated Imagination selected for this anthology, the editors write, “The next branch of Canadian criticism, antithetical to the school of social realism, has taken its impetus from the writings of Northrop Frye. His two lectures on The Educated Imagination reproduced here emphasize the importance of myth or dream as distinct from so-called reality, and show the historical unity of mythopoeic conceptions in the Bible and in classical mythology.” Duff, David. Modern Genre Theory. Harlow: Longman, 1999. Chapter 6 anthologizes “The Mythos of Summer: Romance,” from Anatomy of Criticism, but Frye’s theory of genre is featured throughout. Duffy, Enda. “Modernism under Review: Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981).” Modernist Cultures 11, no. 2 (2016): 143–60. Dukes, Hunter Brooks. “Between Athens and Jerusalem: King Lear and the Morality of Tragedy.” FIVE: The Claremont Colleges Journal of Undergraduate Academic Writing 2, no. 2 (2013): 13–21. https://scholarship. claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www. google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1009&context=five. On Frye’s Aristotelian inheritance.” Provides a careful analysis of the similarities and differences between Aristotle and Frye. Regarding King Lear, asks “Is classical tragedy contingent upon a Greco-Roman sense of morality? Or can tragedy exist within a JudeoChristian universe as well? Literary critic Northrop Frye’s theory of high-mimetic tragedy inherits distinctions that Aristotle draws between tragedy and comedy in the Poetics. As a brief philological excursion will demonstrate, the binary distinctions upon which Aristotle builds his tragic structure are inherently entangled with notions of a noble aristocracy, what Friedrich Nietzsche would call a master morality.” Dullo, Andrei. “A Romanian Cosmogonic Myth in the Light of Northrop Frye.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE— L’Harmattan, 2014. 296–8. Applies Frye’s understanding of Christian symbols to Hungarian mythology, especially creation myths. Dumančić, Andrea, and Biljana Oklopcic. “The Power of Perspective in The Raven Cycle.” Anafora—časopis za znanost o književnosti 1 (2017): 37–57. In Croatian. Applies Frye’s three stages of the quest romance to The Raven Cycle, by Maggie Stiefvater.
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Duncan, Hal. “A Theory of Modes and Modalities.” http:// notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2009/07/theoryof-modes-and-modalities.html. On the theory of modes in Essay I of Anatomy of Criticism. Duncan, Helga L. “‘Here at the fringe of the forest’: Staging Sacred Space in As You Like It.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43, no. 1 (2013): 121–44. Notes Frye’s “green world” view of Shakespeare’s comedies. Duncan, Joseph E. “Archetypal Criticism in English.” Bulletin of Bibliography 40, no. 4 (December 1983): 206–30. Duncan, Rebecca Stephens. “Reading Slumdog Millionaire across Cultures.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 46, no. 2 (2011): 311–26. The film offers the opportunity to rethink the romantic-quest paradigm as it has been established by Frye. Duperray, Max. “Neo-Gothic: Frontières incertaines d’un concept littéraire” [Neo-Gothic: Uncertain Boundaries of a Literary Concept]. Caietele Echinox 35 (2018): 13– 24. In French. Says that the metafictional mode is what Frye designated in his definition of the cycles of literary history. Duralia, Daniela. “Teaching William Faulkner’s Use of Classical Myth in Absalom, Absalom!” International Journal of Arts & Sciences 10, no. 1 (2017): 283–98. Uses certain features of Frye’s ironic mode to characterize Faulkner’s Thomas Sutpen. Duran, Angelica. “The Blind Bard, According to John Milton and His Contemporaries.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 46, no. 3 (September 2013): 141–57. “Up to line 12, Milton’s Sonnet XIX universalizes the emotion of the dreamvision to any readers, sighted or blind, who have felt great love. That universalizing move is in itself paradoxical, as Northrup Frye’s homey and helpful description articulates about literary innovation: ‘I’m saying that everything is new, and yet recognizably the same kind of thing as the old, just as a new baby is a genuinely new individual, although it’s also an example of something very common, which is human beings.’” – “A Textbook Case of Comparative Cultural Studies.” Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2014. Discovers four types of brand storytelling using Frye’s typology: romance, comedy, tragedy, and irony and satire. Analyses the narrative type and structure of branded contents of three applications using these types. Durán, Gloria. La magia y las brujas en la obra de Carlos Fuentes [Magic and Witches in the Work of Carlos
Fuentes]. Mexico City: UNAM, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1976. In Spanish. English trans. The Archetypes of Carlos Fuentes. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980. Applies Frye’s critical categories in analysing the magic and witches in the work of Fuentes. Durand, Jean-François. “Introduction.” In Les Métamorphoses de L’Artiste. Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2013. 13–32. In French. In Anatomy of Criticism Northrop Frye emphasizes the interest in literary criticism of the distant gaze, which alone makes it possible to grasp the coherence of large sets. Thus from a painting: “The more one moves away, the more the overall conception becomes visible.” Dwan, David. “Important Nonsense: Yeats and Symbolism.” New Literary History 50, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 219–43. “Although René Wellek could produce a confident set of reflections on symbolism for New Literary History in 1970, and theories of the symbol were central to literary criticism for figures like Northrop Frye, this is no longer where the critical conversation predominantly resides.” Dyck, Erika, and Alex Deighton. Managing Madness: Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017. Observes that the Canadian settlers in the late nineteenth century tended to adopt what Frye called the “garrison mentality”—“closely knit societies clinging to familiar values in the face of a frightening primitive wilderness.” Dyer, Klay. “Vassanji, M.G. The Book of Secrets.” Ilha do Desterro 31 (April 2008): 165–72. Articulates a certain critical impatience with Canada’s apparent obsession with what Northrop Frye identified as the great riddle troubling Canadian sensibility, namely “Where is here?” “By Canadian literature,” wrote critic E.K. Brown in the opening chapter of his seminal book On Canadian Poetry (1943), “I shall understand writing by those who having been born in Canada, passed a considerable number of their best creative years in this country, and also writing by those who, wherever they may have been born, once arrived in Canada did important creative work and led much of their literary life among us.” Clearly comfortable with the “element of indefiniteness” at the heart of his definition, a presence that many of his contemporaries were determined to schematize, Brown also articulates in this denotation a certain critical impatience with Canada’s apparent obsession with what Northrop Frye identified as the great riddle, specified above, troubling Canadian sensibility.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
DyrkjØb, Jan Ulrik Krielbaum. “Bibellæsning og billedbrug” [Reading the Bible’s Imagery]. Kristeligt dagblad (21 May 1984). In Danish. – “Fortællingens rigdom og metaforens nØdvendighed” [The Richness of the Story and the Necessity of the Metaphor]. HelsingØr stiftsbog (1992): 42–5. In Danish. – “Fra litteraturkritik til teologisk æstetik” [From Literary Criticism to Theological Aesthetics]. PhØnix 12, no. 2 (1988): 74–83. In Danish. – “Magtens sprog og kaerlighedens sprog: Nogle teologiske perspektiver i Northrop Fryes forfatterskab” [The Language of Power and the Language of Love: Some Theological Perspectives in Northrop Frye’s Writing]. In På fortaellingens graense, ed. Hans Hauge and Kjeld Holm. Rpt. in Kredsen 50, no. 1–2 [1983]: 1–35. In Danish. On the theological implications of Frye’s writings. Argues that the entire body of Frye’s work had direct and indirect implications not only for biblical criticism but for theology as a whole. Gives special attention to The Great Code. – “Northrop Frye’s Visionary Protestantism.” In Lombardo, Ritratto, 145–57. Maintains that “in important respects the structure of [Frye’s] thinking can only be fully appreciated if it is seen in a theological context.” Argues against the views of Fredric Jameson (who claims that Frye reductively allegorizes history) by showing that Frye’s typological reading of the Bible always involves a complex double thrust—a dialectic that moves toward discontinuity and radical transcendence and that, therefore, places his work in the tradition of visionary Protestant theology. E Eagleton, Terry. “The Idealism of American Criticism.” New Left Review 127, no. 1 (May–June 1981): 53–65. On Frye’s relation to the New Criticism and to forms of neo-Marxist cultural critique. – Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. 91–6. Sees Anatomy of Criticism as a transition between New Critical formalism and structuralism. Says that Frye’s system is more rigorously closed to history than that of the New Critics and that it conceives of literature not as a means for yielding knowledge about reality but as “a kind of collective Utopian dreaming.” Judges Frye to be an anti-humanist because of his emphasis upon classifying things scientifically; at the same time, says Frye is a Christian humanist “who offers literature as a displaced version of religion” and whose Arnoldian
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vision of a classless society is simply an affirmation of “his own middle-class liberal values.” Earl, Paul D. “Orderly Marketing: Reality, Rhetoric or Myth.” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 3, no. 3 (2011): 329–50. Draws on Frye’s understanding of myth in The Great Code and The Double Vision. Earle, Neil. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in American Popular Culture. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1994. Uses Frye’s archetypal theory in rereading the Oz story. Eastman, Arthur M. “Shakespearean Criticism.” In William Shakespeare: His World, His Work, His Influence, ed. John Andrews. New York: Scribners, 1985. 753–6 [747, 748]. On Frye’s Shakespearean criticism in “The Argument of Comedy,” Anatomy of Criticism, and A Natural Perspective. – A Short History of Shakespearean Criticism. New York: Random House, 1968. 370–82. Maintains that the extravagant power of horizontal analogy in Frye’s criticism is not balanced by the power of vertical generalization. Isolates and summarizes the central concepts in each of the four chapters of A Natural Perspective. Sees Frye’s value as a Shakespearean critic in his “definition and rationalization of the Shakespearean comic and romantic structure” (the three main parts of the action, the roles of the clown and idiotes, and metamorphoses at the end of the plays) and in his exploration of the romances in depth. On the other hand, echoes Reuben Brower’s view (see above) that Frye’s Shakespearean criticism is both circular and reductive. Ebert, Teresa L. “The Poverty of (Post) Humanities.” Knowledge Cultures 4, no. 6 (2016): 25–54. “Brooks and other postwar critics teach that texts of culture should be read as parables of language and that, as Northrop Frye argues, a literal reading (unearthing the ‘prose sense’) is not ontologically possible. De-literalizing the real—translating ‘the working day’ of labor into the unrepresentable—is the main theoretical work of (post) humanities.” Ebine, Hiroshi. “Bungaku no taikei to sanbun janru” [System of Literature and Prose Genres]. Eigo Seinen/The Rising Generation 137 (1 July 1991): 178–9. In Japanese. Part of a special section of this journal devoted to Frye. See also the articles by Yamagata, Nakamura, Maeda, and Itirano. – “Northrop Frye and the Novel.” Eigo bungaku sekai [The English Literary World] 11 (February 1969): 18–21. In Japanese.
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Ecchio, C.A. “Hacia un modelo de la narratividad: Mikhail Bakhtin y Northrop Frye en diálogo” [Towards a Narrative Model: Mikhail Bakhtin and Northrop Frye in Dialogue]. In Spanish. Revista de Humanidades 28 (January 2013): 121–48. On the similarity of the narrative theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Frye. Echeruo, Michael C. “Joyce’s ‘Epical Equidistance.” English Studies in Africa 39, no. 1 (1996): 1–12. “Joyce’s ‘epical’ factor, then, was as concerned with a theory of kinds as of modes, specifically of modes of representation or mediation. Frye’s observation in Anatomy that drama is only epos absorbed in decorum holds the key to much of the mystery of Joyce’s apparent eclecticism. This becomes all the more interesting considering the exegetical and Jesuitical methods by which Joyce and Frye reach their conclusions.” Eder, D.L. “An Anatomy of Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” In Studies in Literature: Selected Papers by Graduate Students in English at the City University of New York. New York: CUNY, 1966. Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. “The Ways of Plotting Plots.” Dalhousie Review 83, no. 2 (2003): 165–87. “Plot (as much as plotlessness) is a function of ideology, whether it be suspended or scrambled by anarchical temperaments like Byron’s and Musset, or conceived in terms of the ‘Newtonian’ laws that Aristotle and Northrop Frye have brought to the universe of narrative.” Editorial. “Northrop Frye’s Greatest Gift: His Books.” Globe and Mail (16 July 2010). https://www. theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/northropfryes-greatest-gift-his-books/article4330489/. “Northrop Frye was not much attached to the term ‘comparative literature,’ and it would be a mistake to gather, from a controversy at the University of Toronto about the merger into a larger entity of that university’s Centre for Comparative Literature, which he founded, that his legacy is embodied in any academic institution. Rather, Professor Frye left us his books, especially three of them”—Fearful Symmetry, The Great Code, and Anatomy of Criticism. Editors of Manas. “The Benefit of the Doubt.” Manas 32, no. 22 (28 May 1969): 1–6. On Frye’s views of anxiety and the ethics of change. – “How Men Think.” Manas 25, no. 2 (12 January 1972): 1–5. On Frye’s understanding of science and his “myth of concern.” – “Meaning, Order, Identity.” Manas 37, no. 17 (25 April 1984): 1–5. On Frye’s views of mythology and science.
– “The Myths We Live By.” Manas 30, no. 4 (26 January 1977): 1–5. On the meaning of myth in Frye. – “Our Uncreated Identity.” Manas 39, no. 3 (15 January 1986): 1–4. On Frye’s The Modern Century. http://www. manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeXXXIX_1986/ XXXIX-03.pdf. – “‘Reality Is What We Create.’” Manas 34, no. 44 (4 November 1981): 1–5. On Frye’s theory of “concern” in The Stubborn Structure. – “Science and Myth.” Manas 25, no. 51 (20 December 1972): 1–5. On Frye’s understanding of the relation between science and mythology. Edmundson, Mark. “Against Readings.” Profession (2009): 56–65. “The teacher, to begin with, represents the author: he analyzes the text sympathetically, he treats the words with care and caution and with due respect. He works hard with the students to develop a vision of what the world is and how to live that rises from the author’s work and that, ultimately, the author, were he present in the room, would endorse. Northrop Frye does something very much like this in his book on Blake, Fearful Symmetry; George Orwell achieves something similar in his famous essay on Dickens. In both cases, the critic’s objective is to read the author with humane sensitivity, then synthesize a view of life that’s based on that reading.” Edwards, Alicia. “Do the Ghosts Roam along the Corridors Here at Ordsall Hall?” Journal of Popular Culture 52, no. 6 (December 2019): 1312–33. Edwards, Brian. Border Land. Geelong, Victoria, Australia: Mattoid Grange, Deakin University, 2009. “When Northrop Frye developed a structural framewok for consideration of all literature, he prescribed four mythoi (or pregeneric elements) and, defining a theory of myths, linked them to the seasons: the Mythos of Spring—Comedy, the Mythos of Summer—Romance, the Mythos of Autumn—Tragedy, and the Mythos of Winter—Irony and Satire. He thought in broad terms of typical modes and forms and, extrapolating to the seasons, he invests literary forms with rhythms, markers and practices fundamental to life.” (dust-jacket abstract) Edwards, Paul. “The Farm and the Wilderness in Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drunkard.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 9 (August 1974): 56–65. Argues that one finds in Tutuola’s novel the structure of apocalyptic and demonic imagery Frye discusses in Anatomy of Criticism.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Edwards, Philip. “The Abandoned Cave.” In Shakespeare and the Confines of Art. London: Methuen, 1968. 48–70. Summarizes Frye’s arguments in A Natural Perspective about Shakespeare’s comedies, which he then uses to interpret A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. Eeckhout, Bart. Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 24, 30, 47, 54, 231, 232, 254, and 261. Glances here and there at Frye’s views on Stevens. Efron, Arthur. “Could You Kindly Direct Me to the Office of Civil Disobedience?” Paunch 24 (October 1965): 5–17 [14–15]. Sees Frye’s work as one of the trends in current criticism that reveals “innoculatory [sic] variations on the one-dimensional.” Frye is one-dimensional in his reliance on myth, especially the myth of the Bible, as the foundation of programs of literary education. Egan, David. “Literature and Thought Experiments.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74, no. 2 (2016): 139–50. Calls on Frye’s ideas of naive and continuous allegory to bring focus to his exposition of thought experiments. Egawa, Toru. “Literature and the Myth of Identity.” Kyôyô no tame no sôzôryoku [The Educated Imagination], trans. Toru Egawa and Masahiko Maeda. Tokyo: Taiyosha, 1969. 129–51. In Japanese. Egendorf, Laura K. “Shakespeare’s Comedic Style.” In Elizabethan Drama. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Eguíbar, Miasol. “Moments of Nationalism: Global and Local Intersections in Canadian Literature.” HyperCultura 1 (2017): 1–11. “The literature of writers like Margaret Laurence or Hugh MacLennan, the nationalist critical work by Northrop Frye or Margaret Atwood, are often read as postcolonial reactions against British literary and ontological models, and as the basis to forge an autonomous sense of Canadianness. These efforts, however, did not go far beyond this point, and gradually, what can only be called an identity crisis settled in.” Ekelund, Bo G. “Citing the World: A Geometric Data Analysis of Swedish Literary Scholars’ Use of Foreign Critical Resources.” Poetics 55 (April 2016): 60–75. Elam, Keir. “Natural Perspectivism: Frye on Shakespearean Comedy.” In Lombardo, Ritratto, 181–94. Notes the extent to which recent criticism of Shakespeare’s comedies can be traced back to Frye’s Anatomy, A Natural Perspective, and “The Argument of Comedy,”
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and then looks at the most vocal recent critics of Frye’s approach, the textualists and the historicists. Elbarbary, Samir. “The Aesthetics of the English Novel.” Arab Journal for the Humanities 3, no. 11 (1983). On various theorists of the novel: James, Lawrence, Forster, Leavis, Booth, and Frye. “The concept underlying Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism is the close connection between literary texts and oral myths, and that the romance, confession, and anatomy merge with novel—which weaves forms of imaginative prose into a pattern.” Elder, R. Bruce. “Myth and the Cinematic Effect in Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan.” AModern 5 (December 2015). https://amodern.net/article/myth/. The Canadian “interest in mythic consciousness, I contend, is . . . connected to the rise of the cinema: the interest that Canadian communications theorists Eric Havelock, Marshall McLuhan, Harley Parker, and Northrop Frye have had in the form of consciousness represented in myth can be related to their era’s engagement with cinema. My purpose in this article is to demonstrate the connection between the cinema and the interest Canadian poetics has taken in mythopoesis.” – “The Toronto School of Communication Theory on Myth and Orality.” Ultimate Reality and Meaning 4, nos. 3-4 (2011): 191–223 (published 2015). “An essential link that drew Havelock, McLuhan, and Frye [as adherents of the theory of the Toronto school of communication] is the philosophical historiography of Giambattista Vico, a late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century thinker whose historicism was as profound as McLuhan’s, Frye’s, and Havelock’s.” Includes separate sections of his essay entitled “McLuhan and Frye on the Poetic Culture of the 1960s as a Vichian Ricorso: Liberation or Menace” and “Frye and Cultural Relativism.” Elderfield, John. “Art and Memory.” Art Monthly 94 (1 March 1986): 3–8. Quotes Frye on sentimentality in art. El-Desouky, Ayman A. “Between Hermeneutic Provenance and Textuality: The Qur’an and the Question of Method in Approaches to World Literature.” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16, no. 3 (2014): 11–38. Explores the issue, raised by Frye’s comments on the Koran, of what it means to approach that sacred book literarily. – “Ego Eimi: Kerygma or Existential Metaphor? Frye, Bultmann and the Problem of Demythologizing.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 34, no. 2 (June 2007): 131–71. “Bultmann’s project, Frye’s critique of it, the implications of their work on the ontological status of the language of myth and metaphor, and the underlying conceptions of history and subjectivity,
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form the subject of this essay. . . . Though Frye’s late work already began to receive critical attention by the late 1990s, mainly through established scholars such as Jonathan Hart, Robert Denham, A.C. Hamilton, Michael Dolzani, Alvin Lee, James Kee, Imre Salusinszky, and others, the precise conceptions of typology and kerygma and their role in his late phase have so far received little extended analytic thought (perhaps with the exception of Hart and Denham, who between them give equal attention to kerygma and typology).” Eldridge, Richard. “Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy.” Review of Metaphysics 68, no. 2 (December 2014): 422– 3. In a review of Paul Raimond Daniels’s Nietzsche and “The Birth of Tragedy,” says that “Daniels’s accounts— somewhat reminiscent of Northrop Frye’s defenses of the significance of metaphor and myth in the formation of values, as against theoretical science and demotic language—of the powers and importance of both art in general and the works of Rilke and Mahler in particular are illuminating.”
1972. 160–73. Uses a quotation from Frye as a text for championing new methods for teaching and learning about the imaginative products of culture. Believes that Frye’s notions about the possibility of an Arnoldian classless culture are essentially mistaken. Suggests a Marxist model for regenerating education and ridding it of the New Critical tendencies said to be represented by Frye’s approach. Ellis, Frank M. “Northrop Frye’s Theory of Comedy.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Philadelphia, 11 October 1986. Photoduplicated typescript. 14 pp. Reviews Frye’s theory of the dramatic structure of comedy: it is based upon the conventions of New Comedy, in which the blocking of a young man’s desire for a young woman is eventually overcome. Shows how this theory is adequate to explain the action of plays in which there are no women, such as Captivi and Volpone, because the structural principles, in which desire figures importantly, remain the same.
Elliott, J.E. “The Social Structure of English in the Text of Theory.” New Literary History 44, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 425–47. “High theory received a broad welcome in English departments . . . not because the older formalisms had failed in their hermeneutic task but because it no longer mattered how well they succeeded. One could rest content with indeterminacy as a selfratifying value rather than a function of scale because scaling would only be meaningful where the knowledge it produced was thought to be. Such, arguably, was the case for English studies at the time Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism appeared. By contrast, where this knowledge was losing its institutional legitimacy, the subtleties of Frye’s Anatomy seemed supererogatory, its scientific ambitions faintly absurd. An emphasis on the refinement of the tradition instead of its radical reconception would also send a false message: one that belied the fact that the brave new American university after 1970 would no longer be able to sustain the research-knowledge ideal across the spectrum of academic fields. Market forces, system consolidation, and massified enrollments would force out a different and uncertain role for English studies. Indeterminacy understood as a property of critical acts projected this uncertainty as a measure of disciplinary alignment in the university.”
Ellison, Fred P. “Soledade-Persephone: A Cyclical Myth in A Bagaceim.” In Woman as Myth and Metaphor in Latin American Literature, ed. Carmelo Virgillo and Naomi Lindstrom. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985. 27–41. Calls upon Frye’s theories in Anatomy of Criticism to argue that one of the characters in A Bagaceira (Soledade) is an embodiment of the Persephone archetype.
Ellis, Catherine. “The Function of Northrop Frye at the Present Time.” College English 31 (March 1970): 541–7. Rpt. as “Arnold’s Other Axiom,” in The Politics of Literature: Dissenting Essays on the Teaching of English, ed. Louis Kampf and Paul Lauter. New York: Pantheon,
Elliott, Andrew B.R. “The Charm of the (Re)Making: Problems of Arthurian Television Serialization.” Arthuriana 21, no. 4 (2011): 53–67. “It is a testament to the power of visual subversion that King Arthur’s Disasters [an animated British television series]
Ellison, Tim. “Four Intriguing Ideas from Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” Plowshares at Emerson College (13 July 2018). http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/ four-intriguing-ideas-from-northrop-fryes-anatomyof-criticism/. On Frye’s idea of autonomous verbal structures, his theory of modes, his cycle of the mythoi, and myth criticism. “The question of whether we are willing to engage with myth always comes down to the question of whether we are willing to admit the existence of some mystical element in the universe. Frye is a believer in the human spirit, two words whose contradictions and affinities generate a sort of electricity, a spark we didn’t know we were missing until we read something that takes them seriously. Studying the work of Northrop Frye, even if you ultimately don’t agree with him, takes you further into the mysteries at the heart of literature, the nature of story, and the relationship of the word to the world.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
explicitly mentions the king’s size only on their website, which claims—with tongue firmly in cheek—that ‘his diminutive stature is easily compensated by his officious, egocentric behavior.’ The undertone seems to ring clear: that despite his mythic inauguration in the medieval epics as a tall, mighty warrior slaying hundreds within a single battle, the real King Arthur is somewhat less imposing. This subversion ultimately downgrades him from a ‘mythic hero’ who is superior to man and nature to an inferior, ‘ironic hero,’ several rungs further down on Northrop Frye’s celebrated list of heroic virtues.” Ellmann, Richard. “Dissent and the Academy.” New York Review of Books 10 (15 February 1968): 6, 8, 10 [8]. Explains Frye’s views on the social context of criticism as they appeared in his essay, “Speculation and Concern.” Defends Frye’s theory of education—one based on a dialectic of detachment and concern— against the criticisms of Louis Kampf. Elsky, Martin. “Prophecy and Poetry: The Second World War and the Turn to Biblical Typology in George Herbert’s The Temple.” Postmedieval 10, no. 1 (March 2019): 95–110. Frye cited as an example of typological criticism following the groundbreaking work of Rosemond Tuve. Elsner, Thomas. “The Voice That in Madness Is Wanting.” Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 2, no. 3 (2008): 98–108. In a review of Ross Woodman’s book Sanity, Madness, Transformation, Elsner remarks on Woodman’s discussion of the unconscious madness at play in the relationship with his teacher, Northrop Frye. El-Zein, Amira. “Mythological Tuareg Gods in Ibrahim al-Koni’s Work.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 35 (2015): 263–72. “Examines the Tuareg myths which form a large part of Libyan novelist’s Ibrahim al-Koni’s work. It focuses especially on the role ancient Egyptian religion occupies in his fiction and essays. It analyzes in particular two novels: Anubis and The Seven Veils. The author relies on the theories of Northrop Frye, Pierre Brunei, John Vickery, and Eric Gould, who emphasize the archetypal nature of literature and its connection to mythology.” (author’s abstract) Emamipour, Ali. “William Shakespeare’s Caliban and Margaret Atwood’s Surfacer: Survival through the Third Space/Thing.” Comparative Literature: East & West 2, no. 1 (May 2018): 1–11. “In the first essay of Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, the Canadian literary critic and theorist Northrop Frye through employing examples of world literature as ancient as Aristotle’s Poetics to the present era explores the systematic modes of fiction in one of which the protagonist’s ‘escape from
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society’ constructs the building blocks to their salvation. Similarly, Margaret Atwood in Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature traces the ways nature had been represented up to the middle of the nineteenth century. While in the late eighteenth century, Edmund Burke’s cult of the beautiful and the sublime, which focused on the inspirational and ‘awe at the grandeur of Nature,’ was predominant in nature poetry, in the first half of the nineteenth century a Wordsworthian Romanticism reigned supreme, which viewed nature as ‘a kind Mother or Nurse who could guide man if he would only listen to her.’” Enckell, Henrik. “Reflection in Psychoanalysis: On Symbols and Metaphors.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 91, no. 5 (October 2010): 1093–114. “In literature it has usually been maintained that fiction has a sense, but no reference. Poems and novels have a meaning, but they do not refer to a world. In Northrop Frye’s terminology fiction is centripetal (i.e. it is closed and points only inwards) while scientific prose is centrifugal (it points outwards). Ricoeur believes this is a simplification.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2017. For entries that refer to Frye, see “anatomy,” “Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays,” “archetype,” “Blake, William,” “Bloom, Harold,” “Canada,” “Canadian literature,” “comedy,” “Frye, Northrop,” “Macpherson, Jay,” “New Brunswick,” “prosody,” “satire,” and “Shakespeare.” Engelborghs, Maurits. “Frye en de mythekritiek” [Frye and Myth Criticism]. Dietsche Warande & Belfort 112 (1967): 303–6. In Norwegian. An introductory account of Frye’s criticism. Looks at Frye’s work largely by way of the essays in the English Institute volume devoted to him: Northrop Frye in Modern Criticism. Engelke, Matthew. “Text and Performance in an African Church: The Book, ‘Live and Direct.’” American Ethnologist 31, no. 1 (2004): 76–91. Says that “‘Bible knowledge’ has become part and parcel of the social and religious imagination of postcolonial Africa,” just as it has in the West. Believes apparently that Frye’s The Great Code provides evidence of this claim. England, Eugene. “Why Nephi Killed Laban: Reflections on the Truth of the Book of Mormon.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 22 (Fall 1989): 32–51 [32–8]. Maintains that Frye’s study of the Bible’s literary typology can be applied to the Book of Mormon as well. Epstein, Heidi. “Post-War Trauma and Postmodern Love.” Biblical Interpretation 22, no. 3 (May 2014): 253–91. Notes that Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory enlists Frye’s terms to make his case about
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pastoral irony and about the anti-pastoral variations among the war poets. Erbs, Paul BØrge. “Ind i Bibelen med Northrop Frye” [Into the Bible with Northrop Frye]. Præsteforeningens Blad [weekly newsletter of the Danish Pastors’ Union] 90, no. 24 (2000): 554–64. In Danish. Erdman, David V., and John E. Grant. “America: New Expanses.” In Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. On Blake’s Orc cycle. “The birth or rising of Orc, seen in archetypal perspective as the first phase of a cycle, has come to seem an inevitable component of Blake’s meaning. Yet ‘the Orc cycle’ may be a more characteristic creation of Northrop Frye’s cartography than of Blake’s poetic system, which strove for escape from circular closure in space and time. A careful reading of America, either from a strictly historical perspective, as employed by David Erdman, or from the perspective established by intrinsic structural analysis, seriously raises the question of the relevance of any cyclic symmetry to the poem engraved in 1793.” Erliani, Hera, Singgih Daru Kuncara, and Indah Sari Lubis. “The Journey of Magnus Chase’s Character as Mythical Hero in the Sword of Summer Novel by Rick Riordan.” Ilmu Budaya 3, no. 2 (April 2019). “This research focuses on the journey of Magnus Chase’s character as the mythical hero in The Sword of Summer, a novel by Rick Riordan. This research has two purposes. The first is to identify the stages of Monomyth that appear in the journey of Magnus Chase’s character. . . . The second is to identify kind of Mythoi of The Sword of Summer novel. The researchers applied Joseph Campbell’s theory of Monomyth and Northrop Frye’s theory of Mythoi to answer their research questions.” Ersu, Ding. “A Semiotic Interpretation of Northrop Frye’s Theory of Symbols.” In Fu-lai yen chiu: Chung-kuo yü hsi fang [Frye Studies: China and the West], ed. Wang Ning and Yen-hung Hsü. Beijing: Chung-kuo she hui k’o hsüeh ch’u pan she [Social Sciences Press of China], 1996. 140–8. In Chinese. Espie, Jeff. “Wordsworth’s Chaucer: Mediation and Transformation in English Literary History.” Philological Quarterly 94, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 377–403. On the relationship between Wordsworth and Chaucer, using a typological hermeneutic within the scriptural, historical, and literary-historical contexts described in Frye’s The Great Code. Esterhammer, Angela. “The Constitution of Blake’s Innocence and Experience.” English Studies in Canada 19 (June 1993): 151–60. Sees Frye’s essay “Blake’s
Introduction to Experience” as pointing “the way on toward a new understanding of Romantic poetry in terms of performative utterance.” – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake, ed. Angela Esterhammer. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 16. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. xvii–xxxiv. Comments on each of the twenty-eight essays and one book (The Return of Eden) that comprise volume 16 of Frye’s Collected Works. Estermann, Barbara. “Shelley’s Antimasques of Life: Revisioning the Triumph.” ELH 81, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 1193–224. “The change that is an integral part of every masque is often symbolized by diurnal progression. Northrop Frye points out that we frequently see ‘a cyclical progression from chaos to cosmos, unorganized energy to new life’ that is revealed ‘in a cyclical movement from darkness to dawn, winter to spring, age to youth.’” Estok, Simon C. “Bridging the Great Divide: Ecocritical Theory and the Great Unwashed.” English Studies in Canada 31, no. 4 (December 2005): 197–208. “One of the primary goals of her [Diana Relke’s] book is to refute the claims Northrop Frye makes in his influential Conclusion to the three-volume Literary History of Canada that there is ‘a tone of deep terror in regard to nature’ in Canadian poetry, and, moreover, that Canadian poetry is characterized by a dualistic way of knowing nature. Frye argues that ‘The human mind has nothing but human and moral values to cling to if it is to preserve its integrity or even its sanity, yet the vast unconsciousness of nature in front of it seems an unanswerable denial of those values.’ As Relke explains, the problem with Frye’s conclusions is that they stem from ‘perceptions . . . based upon the experience of poetry written almost exclusively by men.” One of the results of Frye’s remarkable essay, according to Relke, is that ‘the work of women poets either remained on the peripheries of Canadian myth criticism or was subjected to the imposition of this dualistic way of knowing nature.’” – “Discourses of Nation, National Ecopoetics, and Ecocriticism in the face of the US: Canada and Korea as Case Studies.” Comparative American Studies 7, no. 2 (June 2009): 85–97. “One of the results of Frye’s famous essay, according to Diana Relke, is that ‘the work of women poets [often] remained on the peripheries of Canadian myth.’ While it certainly remains debatable how much Relke succeeds in refuting Frye’s terror thesis, there is no question that she foregrounds the experience and nature poetry of Canadian women.”
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Eun, Yeop Oh. “The Rhythm of the Moon and Archetypal Time in Jean Toomer’s Blood-Burning Moon.” Comparative Literature 56 (2012): 211 ff. In Korean. Uses Frye’s theory of imagery in Anatomy of Criticism to analyse the archetypes in Toomer’s short story. Evans, John X. “Introduction.” In Adjoining Cultures as Reflected in Literature and Language, ed. John X. Evans. Tempe: Arizona State University, 1983. 3–4. Gives a summary of Frye’s paper “Criticism and Environment,” presented at the fifteenth triennial congress of the Fédération Internationales des Langues et Littératures Modernes, 3 September 1982. Evans, Malcolm. “Deconstructing Shakespeare’s Comedies.” In Alternative Shakespeares, ed. John Drakakis. London: Methuen, 1985. 67–94 [76–85]. On the ways that deconstruction is said to have undermined Frye’s structural and thematic reading of the comedies. Everett, Yayoi Uno. Reconfiguring Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Opera: Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, and Tan Dun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Draws on Frye’s theories of myth among other critical frameworks. “In order to establish a more dynamic system of narrative analysis, literary theorists and semioticians have developed theories for their study of myths that embed valuative oppositions within a hierarchical framework of narrative archetypes. Let us now turn to the construction of myth as narrative in relation to Northrop Frye’s mythoi, James Liszka’s adaptation of Frye’s categories in his broad cultural analysis of myths, and Byron Almén’s formalization of Frye’s and Liszka’s theories into narrative archetypes for application to musical analysis. Evron, Nir. “‘Interested in Big Things, and Happy in Small Ways’: Curiosity in Edith Wharton.” Twentieth Century Literature 64, no. 1 (March 2018): 79–100. “The view of curiosity that Wharton makes explicit in French Ways is enforced with considerable consistency in her other texts. . . .” I shall “describe the shifting valences of curiosity, first in Wharton’s autobiographical writing, where it figures as an unqualified virtue, and then in her social satires. It is there, in her novels—a genre in which, in Northrop Frye’s words, ‘the technical problem is to dissolve all theory into personal relationship’—that Wharton’s conservative anxieties about the desire for novelty become salient.” Ezzy, Douglas. “Theorizing Narrative Identity: Symbolic Interactionism and Hermeneutics.” Sociological Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1998): 239–52. Compares two of Frye’s narrative patterns—comedy and tragedy—with those of Ricoeur and Goffman.
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F Fabiny, Tibor. “Beteljesedett idő” [It’s Time]. In Northrop Frye: A Biblia igézetében: Esszé, prédikáció, interjú. Budapest: Hermeneutikai Kutatóközpont, 1995. 38–42. In Hungarian. An interview with Frye, conducted 4 May 1990. – A hermeneutika elmélete: [The Theory of Hermeneutics] Szeged: JATE Press, 1998. In Hungarian. A university textbook with selections from the work of Auerbach, Palmer, Ricoeur, Hirsch, Szondi, Frye, and Kermode. – “The Literal Sense and the ‘Sensus Plenior’ Revisited.” In Literary Theory and Biblical Hermeneutics, ed. Tibor Fabiny (Proceedings of the International Conference on “Reading Scripture—Literary Criticism and Biblical Hermeneutics, Pannonhalma, Hungary, 4–6 July 1991.) Szeged, Hungary: Department of English, Attila József University, 1992. 156–68. Shows how Frye, among others, has helped to recapture the sense of the literal meaning in biblical interpretation. – “Myth and Kerygma: Northrop Frye’s ‘Critique’ of Bultmann.” In The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Demands on Hermeneutics, ed. Jeffrey F. Keuss. Burlington: Ashgate, 2003. 89–100. – “Northrop Frye: Kettős Tükör” [Northrop Frye: Double Mirror]. ÚjNautilus (25 December 2012). In Hungarian. http://ujnautilus.info/northrop-frye-kettos-tukor. – “Northrop Frye and Béla Hamvas.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE– L’Harmattan, 2014. 186–96. On certain similarities between Frye and Hamvas, such as the motif of transparency and their attitudes towards established educational institutions. – “Northrop Frye and the Rediscovery of Typology.” In The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature. London: Macmillan, 1991. 4–9. On Frye’s concept of typology, which is seen as theoretically significant because of Frye’s understanding of typology as a figure of speech and because of the typeantitype distinction he makes between the phases of revelation in the Bible. A revised version of The Lion and the Lamb appeared as Figura and Fulfillment: Typology in the Bible, Art and Literature. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016. – “Northrop Frye és a mítoszkritika” [Northrop Frye and Myth Criticism]. Helikon 34 (1988): 314–16. In Hungarian. Examines Frye’s creative contribution to twentiethcentury criticism, concentrating on the Anatomy and Frye’s books on Shakespeare.
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– “Northrop Frye magyarul” [Northrop Frye—in Hungarian]. Idő nélküli világ. Supplement to vol. 9 of Harmadkor. Szeged, Hungary: József Attila University, 1988. 1–2. In Hungarian. Points to Frye’s significance as a critic and notes that this publication includes the first selection of Frye’s work in Hungarian. – “A shakespeare-i tragédia és komédia komplementaritása” [Complementarity of Shakespeare’s Tragedy and Comedy]. Látó: Szépirodalmi folyóirat 5, no. 3 (March 1994). http://lato.adatbank.transindex. ro/?cid=1631. In Hungarian. Refers throughout to Frye’s Shakespearian criticism. – “Transzparencia—egy közös gondolat Northrop Fryenál és Hamvas Bélánál” [Transparency Is Common to the Thought of Northrop Frye and Bela Hamvas]. In A nevezetes névtelen: 30 éve hunyt el Hamvas Béla, ed. Darabos Pál and Szathmári Botond. Budapest: Osiris: Hamvas Béla Kör, 1999. 49–62. In Hungarian. “I compare the thinking of two philosophers: Béla Hamvas, Hungarian, and Northrop Frye, Canadian. . . . I would like to magnify the recognition of thinkers far away from each other in space, who may not know anything about each other, while being concerned with the related aspects of the two biographies.” – “Typology: Pros and Cons in Biblical Hermeneutics and Literary Criticism (from Leonhard Goppelt to Northrop Frye).” Revista de Filología Hispánica 25, no. 1 (2009): 138–52. A survey of various twentiethcentury theories of biblical typology in biblical hermeneutics and literary criticism, concluding with an overview of Frye’s multivalent use of the principle. – “‘Veritas Filia Temporis’: The Iconography of Time and Truth and Shakespeare.” Acta Literaria Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae 26, nos. 1–2 (1984): 63–98 [88–9]. Fabre, Giorgio. “Freddo come Frye” [Cold as Frye]. l’Unita (27 May 1987). In Italian. Fabretti, Gherardo. “L’interpretazione della mimesis negli ultimi due decenni” [The Interpretation of Mimesis in the Last Two Decades]. Tesi online. https:// www.tesionline.it/v2/appunto-sub.jsp?p=40&id=527. In Italian. On Frye’s role in the interpretation and reassessment of mimesis during the past two decades. Considers Frye’s definitions of mythos, dianoia, and anagnorisis. Fagan, Edward R. Science and English: A Rapprochement through Literature. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1965. Presents three views of literature as a bond between science and English, the first of which is the view that the sciences are
contributing to the restructuring of literary forms, illustrated by quotations from Nigel Dennis, Northrop Frye, Stephen Spender, Ken Kesey, and Claude Mauriac. Falconer, Delia. “A Woman’s Destiny at the End of Days.” The Age [Melbourne] (11 February 2017). Review of Transit, by Rachel Cusk. Cusk makes use “of the littleknown ‘anatomy’ form identified by literary theorist Northrop Frye. The anatomy’s energy comes not from plot but the obsessive dissection of its subject; it is episodic, its sections opening like an advent calendar’s window onto variations on a theme.” Fallon, Stephen M. “The Equanimity of Influence: Milton and Wordsworth.” Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate 26 (2016–17): 126–40. “Northrop Frye argued that ‘[l]iterature may have life, reality, experience, nature, imaginative truth, social conditions . . . for its content; but literature . . . is not made out of these things. Poetry can only be made out of other poems.” If, with some allowance for exaggeration, this is the case, it is especially true of epic, the most intensively self-reflexive genre. At least from the time that Vergil contained the Odyssey and Iliad in the two halves of his Aeneid, epic poets have competed with predecessors whom they seek to contain and surpass. In this essay I will address how Wordsworth makes his poetry out of Milton’s poetry, and particularly his Prelude out of Paradise Lost. . . . I will suggest that for Wordsworth, reading Milton’s poetry is a profoundly enabling condition for writing his own.” Falqueto Lemos, Adriana, Joana d’Arc Batista Herkenhoff, and Carlos Eduardo Ferreira da Cruz. “A violência e a tragédia em God of War” [Violence and Tragedy in God of War]. Revista Soletras 32 (July–December 2016): 105–18. In Portuguese. “The objective of the discussion brought about by this paper is to reflect on the ostensible presence of violence in the video game God of War (2005), by Sony, under the scope of literary criticism. Taking the studies of the tragic mode, developed by Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), the study aims to highlight the presence of tragic elements in the game architecture and their implications for the production of meaning by the players.” (author’s abstract) Fan Yue Noo. “On the Feasibility of Archetypal Criticism beyond the Western Tradition.” Contemporary Writers Review 4 (2012). In Chinese. Farae, Nabil Awadh Yahya. “Transmittance of Alienation and Blissfulness in Childhood to Adulthood: A Study
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in the Light of Joyce Cary’s Selected Novels.” Language in India 17, no. 10 (October 2017): 175–81. Uses Jung, Freud, Joyce, and Frye to unravel the psychological answers to the problems of adulthood in Cary’s fiction. Farjeat, Luis Xavier López, and Romo, Vicente de Haro. “Cuadernos de Anuario Filosófico” [Philosophical Yearbook Notebooks]. Serie Universitaria 193 (2007): 5–79. In Spanish. In Critique de la critique (1984) Tzvetan Todorov develops what he calls dialogic criticism but only after he has rehearsed questions about poetic language raised by Frye and a host of other critics. Färnlöf, Hans. “La place du déplacement: Réflexions sur la dimension mythique du Colonel Chabert” [The Place of Displacement: Reflections on the Mythical Dimension of Colonel Chabert]. Australian Journal of French Studies 56, no. 3 (2019): 287–306. Draws throughout on the principles of Frye’s The Secular Scripture and Anatomy of Criticism. Farrington, Robert M. European Lyric Folkdrama. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Relies on Frye’s mythopoeic theories throughout.
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Canadian scholar Northrop Frye’s book The Educated Imagination, where he distinguishes the way the sciences and the arts construct imagination from opposite ends. Frye suggests that science begins with the world as it is, and from a rational and intellectual approach science turns to imagination. On the other hand, “art begins with the world we construct, not with the world we see. It starts with the imagination, and then works towards ordinary experience.” Fazzini, Marco. “Geoffrey Hill: Un poeta in maschera ci parla d’amore” [A Masqued Poet Speaks to Us about Love]. Annali di Ca’ Foscari: Rivista della Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere dell’Università di Venezia 29, nos. 1–2 (1990): 117–31. In Italian. “In the analysis that Frye makes of the poetry of the western world from the Middle Ages to our days, he notes a framework of poetic symbolism built on four main levels. The vision of Logos, the conventional Paradise, occupies the first level, and immediately behind it is the vision or illusion of the existence of an earthly paradise or Garden of Eden towards which the soul tries to ascend.” Uses Frye’s levels of symbolism schema to interpret Hill’s poetry.
Farshi, Golnaz Sarkar. “Is a Dramatic Bakhtiyār-nāme Possible? Sketch of a Social Systems Theoretical Adaptation Methodology.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 20, no. 1 (2018): 103–27. “The abundant literature on adaptation theories and methods stops short of offering an abstract model which suits adaptation across all different literary modes and genres. Instead, they mostly cover the adaptation of one communication system to another, for example, literature to film. To close this gap, I rely on Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory and his communication model as well as notions of medium and form. Coupling his theory with the literary theories of Northrop Frye and Mikhail Bakhtin, I not only revive these theories in a new context, but also propose a method for literary adaptation that serves adapting across different modes and genres within the subsystem of literature.” (author’s abstract)
F.D. “Macpherson, Jay.” In The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English, ed. Lorna Sage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 413. Macpherson’s work “is mythic and spare, influenced by William Blake, Robert Graves, and Northrop Frye.”
Faught, Brad. “A Feast of Thought: Northrop Frye.” University of Toronto Magazine (Spring 2002): 8. Biographical sketch of Frye and his career at the University of Toronto, on the occasion of honouring twenty University of Toronto thinkers who enlivened the world of ideas.
Feddern, Stefan. Der Antike Fiktionalitätsdiskurs. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2018. Brief commentary on Frye’s and Hayden White’s theory of emplotments.
Favaro, Paola, and Cyrus Manasseh. Connecting Disciplines and Tracing an Educated Imagination: Biennale of Sydney Pavilions Design Summer Studio. Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2010. “The term ‘educated imagination’ is borrowed from the
Fear, Rhona, and Ray Woolfe. “The Personal and Professional Development of the Counsellor: The Relationship between Personal Philosophy and Theoretical Orientation.” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 12, no. 3 (September 1999): 253–62. “The notion of a vision of reality is an old one; present in Greek literature and in recent times it has been developed in the service of literary criticism, most significantly by Northrop Frye. Frye identifies four visions of reality, in each of which a particular structure is present but a different drama is enacted. Each vision involves the hero or heroine in a journey or quest.”
Feder, Herbert. “Northrop Frye’s Aestheticism and Moral Development.” Interchange 11, no. 1 (1980–1): 76–90. Argues that in spite of Frye’s aestheticism and his rejection of value judgments in criticism, his work does have a moral and religious dimension, and that “there is in Frye a veiled didacticism which, because it is concerned with such ‘extra-literary’ questions as truth
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values, religious vision, and morality, makes the critic an important figure when one considers the place of literature in moral development and moral education.” Feder, Avraham. “The Torah Belongs to All of Us.” Jerusalem Post (25 December 2001): O8. “Both ideological schools of thought [Orthodox and Conservative] could learn some low-key subtlety and humility from two Bible students who are not identified as either Orthodox or Conservative, the late gentile professor of literature Northrop Frye and the secular Israeli essayist and translator Hillel Halkin. Frye said: Whatever in the Bible is historically accurate is not there because it is historically accurate, but for reasons that would make inaccurate history equally acceptable. Halkin has said that the Bible, if read as literature, is unique in its ability to evoke in us the illusion that it is not an illusion. One doesn’t have to agree with Frye or Halkin. But their insights illuminate the ever-elusive splendor of the Torah in a way which ideologically motivated warriors too often miss. As to a possible counter-argument that both Frye and Halkin are treating the Bible as only literature, let it be understood that whatever one considers the Bible to be, it is literature.” Feder, Lilian. “Myth, Poetry, and Critical Theory.” In Literary Criticism and Myth (Yearbook of Comparative Criticism, vol. 9), ed. Joseph P. Strelka. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980. 51–71 [53–5]. Rpt. in Theories of Myth: Literary Criticism and Myth, ed. Robert A. Segal. New York: Garland, 1996. 79–99. An evaluation of Frye’s contribution to archetypal criticism. Judges Frye to be most fruitful when his insights “grow out of the familiar attributes of the gods and heroic figures and the narrative contents of traditional myths,” but finds that his theory of the monomyth obscures more than it elucidates. Fedorushkov, Edyta. “‘Метабола’ эпштейна и ‘метаметафора’ кедрова как поэтикохудожественная ревизия метафоры: о двух главных понятиях метареализма” [Epstein’s ‘Metabole’ and Kedrov’s ‘Metametaphor’ as a Poetic-Artistic Revision of Metaphor: About Two Key Terms of Metarealism]. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis: Folia Litteraria Rossica 9 (2016): 9–21. In Russian. Points to Frye’s citing Onians’s Origins of European Thought in The Great Code, which Frye uses to illustrate the concreteness of language in its mythical phase. Fee, Margery. “Criticism (Canada).” In Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. London: Routledge, 1994. On the role played by Frye’s notion of
the “garrison mentality” in the criticism of Canadian literature. – “Predators and Gardens.” Canadian Literature 197 (Summer 2008): 6–9. “Northrop Frye’s use of Margaret Atwood’s phrase “the bush garden” from The Journals of Susanna Moodie as both a title for his first collection of critical essays about Canadian literature and a reference to ‘the Canadian sensibility’ is highly resonant. If read one way, it places Canadians between forest and city, ascribing to them a special relationship to the wilderness despite Canada’s high level of urbanization. And, as does Locke, it connects garden, settler, and property rights. This is a colonial move, in a tradition that is only now becoming visible to its makers, mainly because of the work of Aboriginal scholars who see things differently. Linda Hutcheon reads Frye as seeing ‘the colonial mentality that had exploited the Native peoples of Canada’ as ‘also responsible for exploiting the land upon which they had first lived.’” – “Retrieving the Canadian Critical Tradition as Poetry: Eli Mandel and Northrop Frye.” Essays on Canadian Writing 45–6 (Winter–Spring 1991–2): 235–53. Rpt. in Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence, ed. Branko Gorjup. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. 184–202. Eli Mandel’s views concerning poetry, literary criticism, and the Canadian critical tradition often conflict with those of Frye. They disagree about the fundamental relation between literature and criticism. Frye considers literary verbal structures to be the subject of critical study where criticism is as distinct from literature as geology from rocks. Mandel denies this distinction. His “savage criticism” does not allow the critic to step outside the literary endeavour. – and Janice McAlpine. Guide to Canadian English Usage. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997. “Canadian English is a variety of English in its own right, with its own distinctive mix of features. Yet in the past Canadians wanting to find out about their language have often had to choose between British and American guides. The Guide to Canadian English Usage offers an alternative based on what Canadian writers (among them Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Northrop Frye, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Robert Kroetsch, and Miriam Waddington) actually do.” Fehskens, Erin M. “The Epic Hero in Wilson Harris’s Palace of the Peacock.” Journal of Modern Literature 41, no. 4 (Summer 2018): 90–106. “Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth century writing on the hero marks for many, including Miller, the advent of hero studies in the modern era. He is followed by a cast of iconoclastic
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scholars in the twentieth century, invested in making sweeping and comprehensive typologies of the hero in ‘world literature’ (which tends to be glossed as European, with the occasional mention of the Indian epic, The Mahabharata). See Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces and Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism for well-known examples.” Fejes, János. “Strangers of Popular Culture—The Verbal and Pictorial Aesthetics of Mythological Metal Music.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Communicatio 4, no. 1 (2017): 37–60. “For my research, I will use three main threads: 1) history of religion (looking for the connections of the reception of ancient topics in contemporary society, e.g. New Age Cults and New Religious Movements); 2) reception theory, as the thoughts of Northrop Frye, Wolfgang Iser, and John Fiske—all should help to understand the general processes behind reading and producing texts; 3) subculture studies.” (author’s abstract) Fekete, John A. “Modernity in the Literary Institution: Strategic Anti-Foundational Moves.” In The Structural Allegory: Reconstructive Encounters with the New French Thought, ed. John Fekete. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 228–47 [230, 238–9]. Considers briefly the place Frye’s work has occupied in North American criticism over the past several decades. Frye’s emphasis on conventional literary patterns has helped reorient criticism away from the pole of subjectivity and toward the interrelations of literature and other verbal disciplines. At the same time, Frye’s idealism became isolated from critical theory and method, and it legitimized the formalism of the New Critics. – “Northrop Frye: A Critical Theory of Capitulation.” In The Critical Twilight: Explorations in Ideology of Anglo-American Literary Theory from Eliot to McLuhan. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. 107–31. A slightly expanded version the following entry. – “Northrop Frye: Parameters of Mythological Structuralism.” Telos 27 (Spring 1976): 40–60. A Marxist critique of Frye’s work, which intends to show that “Frye’s theory embodies aesthetic capitulation to the commotive forms of domination” and that “it proposes a view of culture structurally articulated to preclude radical historical praxis.” Felce, Ian. “‘The Lovers of Gudrun’ and the Crisis of the Grail Quest.” In William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2018. “Northrop Frye argued against Morris’s use of romance being regarded as ‘an escape from his social attitude,’ later emphasising the genre’s capacity as a narrative
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of revolution in which it is ‘much more frequently the individual, the hero or heroine, who has the vision of liberation, and the society they are involved with that wants to remain in a blind and gigantic darkness.’” Felch, Susan M. “Secular and Post-secular in China and the West: A Response to Ping-cheung Lo.” Christianity & Literature 68, no. 1 (December 2018): 68–73. “Lo suggests that the ‘development of a literary-theological mind’ in China, particularly as pioneered by Yang, can be understood as a ‘microcosm for understanding the macrocosm of society at that time’—a society that wished to rejuvenate itself in a post-Mao era by looking to the resources of Western civilization and its Christian worldview. However, it was not the strictly theological that Yang found useful in Christian thought—that is, it was not the doctrine of God and certainly not the doctrine of the Incarnation, Christianity’s unique contribution to language about God, that shaped his literary method. (Hence Lo’s footnote on Yang’s exclusion of Christo-centric language from his utilization of Northrop Frye, whose work Yang much admired.)” Feldman, Lada Čale. “Science, Space, Time: Contours of (Croatian) Literary Anthropology.” Narodna umjetnost—Hrvatski časopis za etnologiju i folkloristiku 1 (2002): 75–96. “Insofar . . . as Frye’s work is noted at all by practitioners of cultural studies, it is an example of fallacious or misguided (insofar as they are ahistorical) ideologies.” Fell, John L. “Storytelling & Mythmaking.” Film Quarterly 33, no. 4 (Summer 1980): 36–7. Review of Frank McConnell’s Storytelling & Mythmaking. “McConnell adapts a design of archetypal criticism enunciated by Northrop Frye (the lawgiver) in Anatomy of Criticism, but where Frye posited a seasonal, mythic quaternary [Comedy (Spring), Romance (Summer), Tragedy (Fall), Satire (Winter)], McConnell turns to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract. Rousseau establishes four sets of relationships between individual and state, and from this series of covenants, Storytelling & Mythmaking extrapolates a cyclic succession of structural patterns, each defining a dimension of civic order.” Felperin, Howard. “Romance and Romanticism.” Critical Inquiry 6 (Summer 1980): 691–706. Rpt. as “The Uses of the Canon: Elizabethan Literature and Contemporary Theory.” In Romance and Romanticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Outlines Frye’s theory of romance and romanticism and then argues that The Tempest cannot be read as a naive romance in Frye’s sense; rather, it shows an ironic sophistication in relation to romance, which is what makes it modern.
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– “Romance and Romanticism: Some Reflections on The Tempest and Heart of Darkness, Or When Is Romance No Longer Romance?” In Shakespeare’s Romances Reconsidered, ed. Carol McGinnis Kay and Henry E. Jacobs. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. 60– 76 [61–4, 68–9]. Summarizes Frye’s views on romance and romanticism, the former being a displacement “from the original unity of a putative mythic source.” Believes Frye’s idea that romance tries to recapture the “pristine mythic shape” does not properly account for the problematic and ironic view of romance we find in such plays as Shakespeare’s The Tempest. – Shakespearean Romance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Press 1972. 314–16. Calls Frye the Prospero of modern students of romance and “the foremost theorist of the romantic imagination since Coleridge.” Summarizes Frye’s approach to Shakespearean comedy and romance: his view from the “middle distance,” his grouping of the plays, and his understanding of displacement. Says that Frye abandons the problem of history, that his view of Shakespearean romance has “a regressive and primitivist cast,” and that he retreats “into an insulated and synchronic world of myth,” thus neglecting questions of mimesis, truth, and nature. Feltracco, Daniela. “Northrop Frye and the Neural Theory of Metaphor.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 103–6. On Frye’s theory of metaphor and its relation to such neural theories as those of George Lakoff. – “Northrop Frye e la critica archetipica” [Northrop Frye and Archetypal Criticism]. Paper presented at the interdisciplinary seminar La Comparazione una e Plurima, held at the Centro Internazionale sul Plurilinguismo, Udine, Italy, 22 April 2002. In Italian. Fendt, Gene. “Aristotle and Tolkien: An Essay in Comparative Poetics.” Christian Scholar’s Review 49, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 63–82. The difference between Tolkien and Aristotle’s idea of catharsis “is probably due to Tolkien thinking of his own works, which are, as Northrop Frye would say, on the high levels of myth and romance, where characters have greater than human, even godlike powers, and the world itself is embued with a kind of magic-talking trees, for instance. This is a different kind of arresting strangeness than that available in Aristophanes—or even in those tragedies where the gods appear (again, perhaps precisely because, as Tolkien said, they do appear). His own mythopoeic works provide a greater and more continuing intensification of ‘arresting strangeness’ than can be carried out on stage, or in what Frye calls the lower mimetic and ironic
modes of any art form. So, perhaps the slightness of the connection between dramatic catharsis and the arresting strangeness of Fantasy is further evidence of Tolkien’s point that ‘Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy,’ though what Frye called the low mimetic and ironic modes (such as those endemic to our present age—where such fantastic things can appear only as jokes or puerilities— are also hostile to Fantasy).” Fennell, William O. “Theology and Frye: Some Implications of The Great Code.” Toronto Journal of Theology 1 (Spring 1985): 113–21. Thinks that Frye makes too radical a separation between the language of the Bible and faith and that it is better to see a dialectical relationship “between a myth’s visionary insight and linguistic power to convey meaning, on the one hand, and faith’s understanding of reality on the other.” Sets against Frye’s “spiritualizing” and “idealizing” of the Bible a more realistic and historical kind of understanding. Cannot accept Frye’s identifying God with the literal words of Scripture, and finds his interpretation of the phases of revelation to be essentially secular. Fens, Kees. “Het eerste en het laatste woord: (Artikel over lezen en poëzie n.a.v. Northrop Frye)” [The First and the Last Word: Article about Reading according to Northrop Frye]. Volkskrant (31 August 1990). In Dutch. On the reading of poetry according to Frye’s view. Ferenčuhová, Mária. “Metaphor, Metonymy and Metalepsis: Three Tropes in Contemporary Slovak Documentary.” Images: The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication 24 (2014): 27–40. Cooking History by Peter Kerekes “is not a traditional historical documentary. Its poetic structure refers to Northrop Frye’s thesis in his book New Directions from Old, where Frye states that writing history can be similar to writing poetry. . . . The metaphorical conception of Cooking History is also close to the conception of Hayden White’s Metahistory. White perceives historical writing in terms of tropological pre-figuring. It means the historian accedes to the past with a kind of tropological preconception. S/he chooses not only the predominant trope but also a genre that is determined by the trope. White relates metaphor to romance, metonymy to tragedy, synecdoche to comedy, and irony to satire.” Férez Mora, Pedro Antonio. “Hamlet: The Advent of Modernity.” Cartaphilus: Revista de Investigación y Crítica Estética 10 (2012): 45–54. Calls on Frye’s view of the tragic and ironic heroes, as these are defined in the theory of modes in Anatomy of Criticism.
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Ferguson, Will. “On the Road with Will.” Maclean’s (24 October 2004): 52–3. “Northrop Frye once noted that what set Canada apart in the western hemisphere was our lack of a distinguishable frontier—a line that advanced purposefully across the map like an isobar separating one world from another, with ‘settlement’ on one side and ‘vanishing wilderness’ on the other. In this, our experiences diverged drastically from those of the United States. The American ‘frontier thesis’—a heavily symbolic narrative of progress and order steamrolling over the chaos of an untamed land—may be historically suspect, but its psychological impact on American society cannot be underestimated. . . . The effect upon the Canadian psyche, Frye argued, was something he famously called the garrison mentality: a sense of dread and loneliness bred into us from cowering behind palisaded walls, far from ‘home’ in a land as savage as it was indifferent. The existential heebie-jeebies, as it were. (Our obsessive love of enclosed shopping malls can be seen as a continuation of this nervous tic, though personally I blame the weather.) But garrison is too dark a word. ‘Garrison’ suggests gnawing despair and impending attack. I prefer the term ‘outpost,’ because it includes a wider range of possibilities.” Ferlo, Roger. “Poetry and the Religious Imagination: The Power of the Word.” Anglican Theological Review 98, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 588–9. A review of Poetry and the Religious Imagination: The Power of the Word, ed. Francesca Bugliani Knox and David Lonsdale. “Two helpful introductory essays (by Michael Kirwan and Georg Langenhorst) map out the theoretical ground connecting theological reflection and poetic practice— beginning with literary thinkers attuned to biblical and theological categories (Northrop Frye, Frank Kermode, George Steiner) and following up with theologians sympathetic to—even formed by—the play of the poetic imagination (John Henry Newman, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, and the lesserknown Karl-Josef Kuschel).” Fernández, Charlie Jorge. “The Terrible Mother Archetype in James Joyce’s “The Boarding House” and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer.” In Joyce’s Heirs: Joyce’s Imprint on Recent Global Literatures, ed. Margarita Estevez-Saa. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 2019. 56–72. Fernández, Juan J. Lanero. “De pretensiones y fracasos: La interpretación poética de la Biblia. [Of Pretensions and Failures: The Poetic Interpretation of the Bible]. Estudios Humanísticos: Filología 27 (2005). In Spanish. Focuses on the biblical hermeneutics of Frye, with the purpose of making a literary interpretation of the Bible, as opposed
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to the theological one. Seeks to discover why a poet reads the biblical texts. Fernández Merino, Mireya. “El juego de miradas en Ancho mar de los Sargazos” [The Game of Gazes in the Wide Sargasso Sea]. Caribe: Revista de Cultura y Literatura 3, no. 1 (Summer 2000): 69–84. In Spanish. “In Anatomy of Criticism, Northop Frye emphasizes precisely the character of similarity and difference that the great works of literature hold among themselves. There is an inheritance of that language that resembles and differs from the general language. Such kinship is like a family tree in which new, old and future works can find their mark, because, like the human being, each work keeps with the rest a set of features that make it a literary work and, at the same time, elements that allow it to distinguish itself from the others and provide it with its particular features. They are the mythos, the symbols, those archetypal features that speak of the social character of literature, reflecting from the reality of fiction the recreation of a world, that of the human being and its history. From this perspective, the literary work oscillates between the similarity of that narration as mythos, and the desire that gives it its own form and expression. The work approaches itself and simultaneously to others. Fernández Sosa, Luis F. “Northrop Frye y unos poemas anagógicos de Lezama Lima” [Northrop Frye and Some Anagogic Poems of Lezama Lima]. Hispania 61 (December 1978): 877–87. In Spanish. Looks at Lima’s poetry from the perspective of the transvaluation implicit in Frye’s concept of anagogic vision. Fernández-Caparrós, Ana. “Death and the Community of Comic Romance: Sarah Ruhl’s Poetics of Transformation in Dead Man’s Cell Phone.” Contemporary Theatre Review 25, no. 4 (2015): 488–501. “In the second part of my analysis [of Sarah Ruhl’s play] I draw on Northrop Frye’s literary formalism to underscore how the re-imagining of genre conventions is used to respond to the contemporary meditation on mortality.” Ferrada, Susana. “Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín: Una obra teatral satírica” [Lorca’s The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the Garden: A Satirical Play]. Dicenda 33 (2015): 113–32. In Spanish. According to Frye, “Two things are essential to the satire; one is wit or humor founded in fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or absurd, the other is an object of attack. Attack without humor, or pure denunciation, forms one of the boundaries of satire.”
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Ferrara, Mark S. “Blake’s Jerusalem as Perennial Utopia.” Utopian Studies 22, no. 1 (2011): 19–33. “Kathleen Raine suggests that Blake . . . knew ‘some of the Proceedings of the Calcutta Society of Bengal.’ Perhaps more surprising than the influence of Hinduism on Blake is the suggestion that his ‘poems and proverbs may be better understood in terms of the logic, epistemology, and teaching methods of Zen Buddhism.’ While such assertions lack the historical support that proponents of the Hindu influence on Blake’s work enjoy, it was Northrop Frye who in 1961 first made the astonishing claim that terms from Blake and Mahayana Buddhism could be used interchangeably.” Ferré, Vincent. “Le chevauchement des genres dans l’œuvre littéraire.” [The Overlapping of Genres in the Literary Work]. Fabula (28 February 2015). In French. Ferreira, Luciana. “A recriação mítica do mundo e o mito da primavera” [The Mythical Recreation of the World and the Myth of Spring]. Revista Eventos Pedagógicos 3, no. 1 (2012). In Portuguese. For her research on the mythical foundations in Marina Colasanti’s A Mulher Ramada, Ferreira draws on the theories of myth in the works of Frye and Mircea Eliade, among others. Ferreira, Sandra. Da estátua à pedra: Percursos figurativos de José Saramago [From Statue to Stone: Figurative Paths of José Saramago]. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2014. In Portuguese. Three of Frye’s books translated into Portuguese are appealed to throughout: Anatomia da crítica; O caminho crítico; and Fábulas de identidade. Ferrer, Kyle. “Literature Aestheticizes Existence in a Positive Way.” Old Gold & Black [Wake Forest University Student Paper] (23 October 2019). “‘We can’t speak or think or comprehend even our own experience except within the limits of our own power over words, and those limits have been established for us by our great writers,’ Northrop Frye tells us. Literature exposes us to those limits, and proceeds to stretch aesthetic standards into personally transformative experience.” Feshbach, Sidney. “The Structural Modes of Wallace Stevens’ ‘The Noble Rider and the Sounds of Words.’” Wallace Stevens Journal 28, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 81–100. Looks at parallels between Stevens’s “The Noble Rider and the Sounds of Words” and Frye’s theory of modes in the Anatomy. Fetz, Marcelo. “Negotiating Boundaries: Encyclopédie, Romanticism, and the Construction of Science.” História, Ciências, Saúde–Manguinhos 24, no. 3 (July– September 2017): 645–63. Glances at the romantic conception of science as understood by Frye.
Feuer, Jane. “Genre Study and Television.” In Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism, ed. Robert C. Allen. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1992. Examines the question of whether or not television sitcoms fit Frye’s definition of “new comedy.” Feuer, Menachem. “Almost Friends: Post-Holocaust Comedy, Tragedy, and Friendship in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.” Shofar 25, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 24–48. “Foer’s novel begins with a contemporary blend of the comic mode and one of its derivations, the quest Romance. According to Northrop Frye, the comic mode often presents a hero who is pitted against a villain or antagonist; in the end, the villain is either banished or transformed by the actions of the hero. The quest Romance draws on this mode, but it commonly includes the hero, his antagonist, and others, who travel to find a lost object and who, in the process, transform the land, which has become depleted, back to its original splendor. . . . [The] restoration of community is the goal of many such quest Romances: in fact, Northrop Frye sees this as their major feature.” Feuerhahn, Niels. “Narrative, Identity, and the Disunity of Life.” Philosophy and Literature 40, no. 2 (October 2016): 526–48. Refers to Frye’s distinction between grasping the whole in life rather than the whole of it. Ficová, Sylva. “HIMNF or How I Met Northrop Frye.” Intralingo (7 December 2011). http://intralingo.com/ himnf-or-how-i-met-northrop-frye/?comment=show. On Ficová’s coming to Frye by way of her interest in Blake. – “Northrop Frye in Czech.” In Canada in Eight Tongues: Translating Canada in Central Europe, ed. Katalin Kürtösi. Brno: Masaryk University, 2012. –“Northrop Frye, William Blake and the Art of Translation.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 269–71. On the importance of Frye’s work for the translation profession and how it influenced her own translations of Anatomy of Criticism and Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Fiddes, Paul. “The End Discloses a Desired World: Northrop Frye.” In The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature. London: Blackwell, 2000. 15–23. Analyses modern and postmodern theorists Frank Kermode, Northrop Frye, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Ricoeur to enrich the emerging dialogue between theology and literature. What these theorists have in common is a growing awareness that all narrative is
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to some degree eschatological. To approach a literary text eschatologically means to consider whether and to what extent the narrative ending organizes the whole (Kermode); expresses a desired world (Frye); disperses, defers, or unravels meaning (Derrida); or opens up hope (Ricoeur). – Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999. Rejects Frye’s assertion that the U-shaped curve is the basic narrative pattern of the Bible. Fiegel, Michael Leon, Jr. “Cyperpunk e la Teoria della Letteratura di Frye” [Cyberpunk and Frye’s Theory of Literature]. Part 2 of Il cyperpunk: E il nuovo mito. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it& u=http://www.intercom.publinet.it/1999/mito4.html& prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522cyberpunk%2Be% 2Bla%2Bteoria%2522%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D% 26sa %3DG. In Italian. An extended account of how Frye’s theory of modes can help us understand the movement of cyberpunk from irony to myth. “One of the most definitive ways to look at the progression of literary types through history is the model proposed by Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism. One of the foci of Frye’s theory is the presence and movement of myth in various types of readings. Frye looks at the main character (usually, but not always the hero) in these different literary types, giving them a name as he proceeds. The types of characters are then described according to the different degree of power and ability. Since myth is what we are looking for in cyberpunk, we should see exactly what kind of myth and what type of character we are dealing with in cyberpunk literature. What if we find out that according to Frye’s theories, a cyberpunk protagonist is an anti-hero and that the mythology we see in cyberpunk literature is part of the ironic phase? If this were the case, then cyberpunk would represent little more than isolation and despair in a world of dead gods; this is precisely what many critics have said, and precisely what I disagree with. To prove that cyberpunk leads to a new myth, you must first show exactly what cyberpunk is not. The outline of literature that Frye traces in Anatomy of Criticism demonstrates this very explicitly. Before dividing literature into categories, Frye differentiates between the narrative types of comedy and tragedy. Differentiation is the key to placing cyberpunk narrative in the scheme of things.” Fields, Dana. “The Reflections of Satire: Lucian and Peregrinus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 143, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 213–45. “Northrop Frye has suggested that the function of satire is to shake us out of our comfortable preconceptions; a careful,
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reflective reading of this work [The Death of Peregrinus] can find just such a disruptive force acting upon our complacent views of the world and ourselves. Findlay, L.M. “The Divine Legation of Northrop Frye.” English Studies in Canada 19 (June 1993): 161–78. An extended review essay of Frye’s biography (Ayre), interviews (A World in a Grain of Sand), his reprinted essays (Myth and Metaphor and The Eternal Act of Creation), reviews and occasional pieces (Reading the World), two books on his work (Hamilton, Balfour), and Words with Power. “The Canadian Moses offers a version of the Canadian mosaic which may be naive, outdated, and ominously Euro-centric, but at least Frye faces up to the challenge of finding a language and story that will work for consensus and effective collectivity and against the self-regarding argot of the bourgeoisie academic vanguard. . . . The human race can dominate, violate, disfigure, destroy. The fact that that is not all it can do was the heart of Frye’s divine legation.” – “Frye’s Shakespeare, Frye’s Canada.” In Shakespeare in Canada: “A World Elsewhere?,” ed. Diana Brydon and Irena R. Makaryk. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 292–308. Offers a Marxist critique of the politics of Frye’s readings of both Shakespeare and nation, seeking thereby to open a space for “educational and political activism.” Finholt, Richard. “Northrop Frye’s Theory of Countervailing Tendencies: A New Look at the Mode and Myth Essays.” Genre 13 (Summer 1980): 203–57. Sees the chief principle in the first two essays of Anatomy of Criticism to be the tension created by the tendency in literature to move in two directions, towards desire and the ideal world of myth and towards reality and the world of plausibility. Argues that the “plausibility tendency” in literature underlies the theory of modes and that the “mythic tendency” underlies the theory of myths. Presents a revised form of the theory of modes, which is used to outline “the inner logic of the mythic cycle.” Seeks in the process to clarify some of Frye’s terms and treats some of the implications of his two theories, especially those related to a theory of reading. Fisch, Harold. A Remembered Future: A Study in Literary Mythology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. 1–3 and passim. Sets his own view of historical archetypes in opposition to Frye’s. Claims that for Frye “literary structure is spatial rather than temporal.” Fischer, Joachim. Review of A Fresh Light on Utopia, by Károly Pintér. Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 19, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 173–6.
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“Northrop Frye, Robert C. Elliott, Michael Holquist and Johan Huizinga’s concept of the homo ludens provide the theoretical foundations for the ludic aspect of his theory of literary utopias.” Fischer, Lucy. “Xala: A Study in Black Humor.” Millennium Film Journal 7–9 (Fall 1980–1): 165–72. “Instead of the multiple weddings that Frye finds typical of the resolution of Western comedies (e.g., the quadruple marriage that ends As You Like It), the Muslim tradition of polygamy allows Sembene a variation on that model by incorporating all the marriages into one character’s experience. According to historians, classical comedy grew out of ancient fertility rites, hence the practice of comic actors in the time of Aristophanes wearing oversized phalluses as part of their costume. In Sembene’s film, however, the comic hero is stricken with impotence, or ‘xala,’ on the night of his marriage.” Fischer, Michael. Does Deconstruction Make Any Difference? Poststructuralism and the Defense of Literature in Modern Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. One chapter devoted to the justification of literary criticism in Frye and Arnold. – “Frye and the Politics of English Romanticism.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 222–9. Notes that many of the issues in dispute about literary theory are centred in values that Frye himself affirmed—freedom, diversity, democratic openness. Frye is able to examine his beliefs while affirming them. – “The Imagination as a Sanction of Value: Northrop Frye and the Uses of Literature.” Centennial Review 21 (Spring 1977): 105–17. Extensively rev. version of “The Imagination as a Sanction of Value: Northrop Frye and the Usefulness of Literature,” in Fischer, Does Deconstruction Make Any Difference? Poststructuralism and the Defense of Poetry in Modern Criticism. See two entries immediately above. Studies Frye’s understanding of the importance of literature to life. “Frye’s attempt to vindicate the usefulness of literature without at the same time arguing for its truth marks the attenuation as well as the continuation of [the] Romantic viewpoint . . . He ultimately answers arguments that minimize literature’s ethical and social value by removing any grounds which would permit a rational and objective discussion of such a question.” – “The Legacy of English Romanticism: Northrop Frye and William Blake.” Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 11, no. 4 (Spring 1978): 276–83. An extensive review essay which considers Frye’s writings from Fearful Symmetry (1947) through 1978.
– “Revisiting Frye’s Defence of Poetry in Another Anxious Time.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth. University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013. – Stanley Cavell and Literary Skepticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. 12–17. In examining the relations between Cavell’s scepticism and recent poststructuralist theory, glances at Frye’s new critical assumptions about the unity of the literary object. – “Using Stanley Cavell.” Philosophy and Literature 32, no. 1 (April 2008): 198–204. Points to Frye’s observing the difficulty in Romanticism of incorporating a social theme with a theme of individual enlightenment. Cavell tried to make room for both. Fischer-Seidel, Therese. Mythenparodie im modernen englischen und amerikanischen Drama: Tradition und Kommunikation bei Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett und Harold Pinter [Myth Parody in Modern English and American Drama: Tradition and Communication in Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, and Harold Pinter]. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1986. In German. In interpreting works by Williams, Beckett, Albee, and Pinter, follows Frye’s definition of mythos as characterizing the function of the formal mythological elements in literature. – “Archetypal Structures and Literature in Joyce’s Ulysses: Aristotle, Frye, and the Plot of Ulysses.” In Self-Reflexivity in Literature, ed. Werner Huber et al. Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005. 87–98. Calls on two of Frye’s achievements for his commentary on Joyce’s novel—Frye’s antimimetic theory of literature and his turning away from psychological or mythical explanations for the origin of the mythoi. Fischler, Alan. ‘“It Proves That Aestheticism Ought to Be Discarded’: W.S. Gilbert and the Poets of Patience.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 66, no. 3 (December 2011): 355–82. Glances at the application of Frye’s theory of comedy to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience. Fishelov, David. “Poetic (In-)Justice in Comedy.” Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate 25, no. 2 (2015–16): 175–97. “Despite the fact that we often express our response to comedy in the language of morality (‘he gets what he deserves’ ), there must be another factor responsible for shaping our judgement and evoking our enjoyment . . . this other factor, the source of our tilted moral judgements, as well as the source of the pleasure that we take in comedy’s happy
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ending, is that of a deep, archetypal emotion that favors lovers’ union and reproduction, or in Frye’s words: ‘We may call it the drama of the green world, its plot being assimilated to the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land’; and the roots of this archetypal emotion lie in the Phallic songs and rituals from which comedy was born as a literary genre. When we take this archetypal emotion into consideration, we can explain not only the adjustments of our moral judgements while responding to comic plots but also the fact that romantic comedy seems to be the best survivor of all literary genres. Frye has neatly described comedy’s unusual endurance.” Fisher, Douglas. “When Northrop Frye Rained on Keith Davey’s Parade.” The Daily Graphic (Portage La Prairie, MB) (7 March 2002): 4–6. About a difference of opinion in 1949 between Fisher, editor of the student magazine at Victoria College, and Davey, president of the student body. When Davey proposed doing away with the literary magazine, Frye stepped in to veto the proposal. Fisher, Jason. “The Imaginative and the Imaginary: Northrop Frye and Tolkien.” Lingwë—Musings of a Fish. http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2008/12/imaginative-andimaginary-northrop-frye.html. Blog, with replies, on Frye and Tolkien. Fisher, Thomas. “Evolutionary Transformation.” Designing Our Way to a Better World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. The debate over evolution versus intelligent design reveals “two very different ways in which humans have related to the natural world, at least in Western culture. As the literary critic Northrop Frye observes, ‘There have been two primary mythological constructions in Western culture. . . . [In the older mythology] Man was a subject confronting a nature set over against him. Both man and nature were creatures of God, and were united by that fact.’ Starting in the eighteenth century, the old mythology, Frye argues, found itself usurped by a new mythology rooted in science and technology and based on ‘the conviction that man had created his own civilization.’ Frye recognizes that ‘a major principle of the older mythology was the correspondence of human reason with the design and purpose in nature which it perceives.’” Fishley, Daniel. “God’s Absence as Textual Presence: The Radical (Literary) Theology of Northrop Frye.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 18, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 193–201. “This study begins with a question. What is the status of the Biblical text for contemporary Radical theologians? To be more precise, what is the relationship between the textual artifacts that populate
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Christian and theological thought and the speculative assertions made by Radical theologians? It is my contention that Radical Theology as a discourse does not have a substantial account for what it is that the Bible does in their analysis. In this essay, I will both critique this absence, as well as offer a potential corrective via the literary theory of Northrop Frye. I do this not because Frye offers the best example of how Radical theologians should proceed. Instead, Frye provides an example of what it means to think through a text and what it means to correlate the textual world with the world itself.” Fiskevold, Marius, and Anne Katrine Geelmuyden. Arcadia Updated: Raising Landscape Awareness through Analytical Narratives. London: Routledge, 2018. “In order to be shareable among a group of people as well as conceivable by an individual, a landscape image must be proposed by the landscape analyst through a publicly uttered analytical narrative. This act of ‘educated imagination,’ in literary scholar Northrop Frye’s precise expression, is part and parcel of being able to present a visible and symbolic landscape to others.” Fisli, Éva. “Úrnő ír [Mistress Writes] (Margaret Atwood verseihez [poems]).” Holmi 4 (2008): 526–9. In Hungarian. The myth, according to Northrop Frye does not describe but includes a particular situation in such a way that it does not limit its significance to that situation. The truth is inside, not outside. Margaret Atwood, who was Frye’s student, overwrites the myth of Penelope in her poems. Fitch, John G. “Dualism and Duel-ism: Kant and the Separation of Poetry from ‘Pure’ Reason.” In The Poetry of Knowledge and the ‘Two Cultures. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Notes Frye’s commitment to the idea that the primary aim of the poet is to create a structure of words for its own sake. Fite, David. Harold Bloom: The Rhetoric of Romantic Vision. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985. 15–17 and passim. Outlines Frye’s influence on the development of Bloom’s early theories of romanticism and comments on their differing views of the literary tradition: Frye sees it as an ideal order, Bloom as a competition. Fitzpatrick, Ryan, and Susan Rudy. “‘If everything is moving Where is here?’ Lisa Robertson’s Occasional Work on Cities, Space and Impermanence.” British Journal of Canadian Studies 26, no. 2 (2013): 173–89. “British geographer Doreen Massey challenges the notion that place is ‘some romance of a pre-given collective identity or of the eternity of the hills’ and suggests instead that it is the intersection point of
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multiple trajectories through space and time, from the quick movements of the weather to the geologic movements of mountains. Massey asks, quite explicitly, ‘if everything is moving Where is here?’ reminding us of the difficulty of assigning identity to a space that is constantly shifting and helpfully echoing both the organising question of our symposium at the British Library in September 2011—‘Where is here Now?’—and what Northrop Frye considered the key question of Canadian culture in the 1960s—‘Where is here?’ In so doing, Massey’s insistence on a shifting ‘here’ situates Frye’s concerns with geography in a contemporary frame and asserts the importance of temporality, inviting us to think about what happens to space in the face of impermanence. In the late twentieth-century work of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the notion of impermanence was linked to urban space where, as those of us who live in big cities know, things are moving all the time. Where, in the urban contexts that shape literary studies in the twenty-first century, is here? And is ‘here’ anywhere else?” Flanagan, Joseph. “Literary Criticism of the Bible.” In Trinification of the World: A Festschrift in Honor of Frederick E. Crowe, ed. Thomas A. Dunne and JeanMarie Laporte. Toronto: Regis College Press, 1978. 210– 40. Begins with a summary of the theories of modes, myths, genres, and symbols in Anatomy of Criticism. Seeks to show how the four theories interrelate by using them to interpret the Bible, concluding that Frye’s interpretive scheme “seems to offer a rich context for theological interpretations.” Fleck, Linda L. “From Metonymy to Metaphor: Paul Auster’s Leviathan.” Critique 39, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 258–70. Uses Frye’s theory of tragedy to interpret Auster’s novel. Fleming, Bruce. “Gertrude Stein, Facebook, and the NEFWG [Navy Evaluation and Fitness Reports].” Southwest Review 100, no. 2 (2015): 273–84. “Northrop Frye made the point decades ago that all literary works fit within a limited framework of seasons and the past: ‘new’ literature is merely recycling of old—a point central to literary theory in the turbulent 1970s and 1980s. There’s nothing new under the sun: not book plots, not phrases, not even with ideas—as Alfred North Whitehead suggested dispiritingly, Western philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to Plato.” Fleming, John G. “In Canada.” Senior Correspondent (4 February 2016). http://www.seniorcorrespondent. com/articles/2016/02/04/in-canada.1860314. “While I was in graduate school, a professor at Toronto named Northrop Frye was unofficially crowned the reigning
monarch of English language literary criticism. Frye was indeed an impressive and stimulating critic of literature, and he could teach you to see things in texts you hadn’t seen before, but I never was able to grasp the distinctively ‘Canadian’ character of his insights about the Bible or William Blake often claimed by his compatriots.” Fleming, John V. “Palinode.” In Luis de Camões: The Poet as Scriptural Exegete. Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2017. “We can say little with confidence about the ‘sincerity’ of conventional poetry altogether. How can a sonnet be a sincere vehicle of emotion, when the emotion is limited to a certain rhyme scheme and fourteen lines? Dr. Johnson famously impugned the sincerity of the grief expressed in Milton’s Lycidas on account of the elaborate pastoral conventionalism of the poem. ‘Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.’ But Northrop Frye, answering Johnson, defined as a fallacy ‘the confusion between personal sincerity and literary sincerity. . . . Personal sincerity has no place in literature, because personal sincerity as such is inarticulate. . . . If we ask what inspires a poet, there are always two answers. An occasion, an experience, an event, may inspire the impulse to write. But the impulse to write can only come from previous contact with literature, and the formal inspiration, the poetic structure that crystallizes around the new event, can only be derived from other poems.’” Fleming, W.G. “Contribution of Northrop Frye.” In Ontario’s Educative Society, vol. 3, Schools, Pupils, and Teachers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971. 23–5. Gives a brief summary of Frye’s views on the aims of education, drawn primarily from Frye’s “The Critical Discipline.” – Ontario’s Educative Society, vol. 5, Supporting Institutions and Services. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971. 179. Comments on Frye’s “distinctly antiprogressive ideas” as presented in his introduction to Design for Learning. Fletcher, Angus. Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1964. Passim. A work that both depends on and expands Frye’s idea of allegory. Fletcher’s notes frequently provide commentary on some of Frye’s fundamental concepts. See index, 409. – “Foreword.” In The Literature of Fact: Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. Angus Fletcher. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. vii–xxiv [xi–xii, xvi–xvii]. Summarizes Frye’s essay in this collection, “History and Myth in the Bible,” and points to the
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paradoxical implications in his reading of the Bible from the perspective of anagogy and revelation. – “Frye and the Forms of Literary Theory.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 276–85. On Frye’s having identified in Anatomy of Criticism the “symbolic energy” of literature and on the inventive quality of Frye’s criticism, like that of Bach and Borges in their respective creations. – “Northrop Frye: The Critical Passion.” Critical Inquiry 1 (June 1975): 741–56. Treats a number of diverse topics: Frye’s style, the function of “desire” in his criticism, his general theory of outline, the nature of the literary canon, and his conceptions of the archetype, history, and myths of freedom and concern. Also looks at the way Harold Bloom has “advanced upon Frye,” even though this advance is “in Frye’s direction.” Concludes by remarking on the absence of a developed phenomenology in Frye. – “Utopian History and the Anatomy of Criticism.” In Northrop Frye in Modern Criticism (Selected Papers from the English Institute [1965]), ed. Murray Krieger. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. 31–73. Partially rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 24, ed. Sharon R. Gunton. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. 219–22. Aims to counter the complaint of various critics who hold that there is an unresolved conflict between Frye’s theory of archetypes and the fluid texture of history. Shows that historical observations are basic to Anatomy of Criticism and that Frye employs a type of Utopian historiography to connect his visions of past and future. Suggests also that part of Frye’s power derives from his revitalizing the flow of romantic sensibility and vision that the post-Eliot critical tradition had slighted. Fletcher, John. “The Criticism of Comparison: The Approach through Comparative Literature and Intellectual History.” In Contemporary Criticism (Stratford-on-Avon Studies 12), ed. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer. London: Edward Arnold, 1970. 107– 29 [122–3]. Looks briefly at Frye’s work in the context of a general theory of literature. Remarks that Anatomy of Criticism “represents the best kind of comparatist criticism, ranging widely for its examples and illumining the known with a fresh dimension.” Fletcher, Joseph. “Leibniz, the Infinite, and Blake’s Early Metaphysics.” Studies in Romanticism 56, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 129–5. “Precedent for reading [Blake’s] No Natural Religion as an embrace of Berkeley and a rejection of Locke’s theory of knowledge and perception as presented in the Essay concerning Human Understanding was established by Northrop Frye, the
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first chapter of whose seminal Fearful Symmetry is entitled ‘The Case against Locke.’ Discussing Locke’s famous distinction between real, nonmental primary qualities of objects and merely perceived secondary qualities, Frye links Locke—and Newton—to a corpuscular or atomistic philosophy. In setting Blake in opposition to such metaphysics, Frye locates a precursor in Berkeley, whose principle of esse est percipi—to be is to be perceived—Frye finds to have ‘some points in common’ with Blake. Frye presents the tabula rasa version of Locke, for whom sight involves ‘an involuntary mind remains passive and receives impressions automatically.’ Contrasted to this account is Berkeley’s idealism, which denies the reality of objects outside the mind. On Frye’s reading, Blake’s tractates adopt elements of Berkeley’s thought to present a model of active perception and an immanently creative Poetic Genius. Kathleen Raine elaborates on Frye’s interpretation.” Fluck, Winifred. “‘The American Romance’ and the Changing Functions of the Imaginary.” New Literary History 27, no. 3 (1996): 415–57. Glances at Frye’s view of romance in The Secular Scripture. Fodor, Géza. “Termékeny rosszhiszeműs” [Creative Malice]. Holmi 3 (2004): 285–300. In Hungarian. Discusses Frye’s theory of the comic plot. Fonio, Filippo. “Des Divines Comédies de presque mil ans après: Le voyage dantesque comme dénonciation et forme de reésistance aux maux d’aujourd’hui” [Divine Comedies Almost a Thousand Years Later: The Dantesque Journey as a Denunciation and a Form of Resistance to the Evils of Today]. Perspectives médiévales 40 (2019). In French. The Divine Comedy almost competes with the Bible in the same structuring roles with respect to the Western imagination that Northrop Frye ascribed to both Testaments. Forchtner, Bernard. “Memory Goes On: Past, Legitimacy and Identity in the Making.” Review of The Sins of the Fathers, Germany, Memory, Method, by Jeffrey K. Olick. Archives Européennes de Sociologie 59, no. 3 (December 2018): 507–11. “As Olick is fundamentally concerned with narrative, Northrop Frye’s ‘narrative archetypes,’ which describe different modes in which stories can be emplotted, offer a further avenue for exploring the notion of ‘genre.’” – Review of The Discourse Studies Reader: Main Currents in Theory and Analysis, ed. Johannes Angermuller, Dominique Maingueneau, and Ruth Wodak. Journal of Language & Politics 15, no. 6 (2016): 818–20. Thinks the volume would have been strengthened by having a
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much broader focus on narrative genres in the tradition of Frye and Hayden White. – and Klaus Eder. “Europa erzählen: Strukturen Europäischer Identität” [Narrating Europe: Structures of European Identity]. In Europäische Identitätsforschung und Rechtspopulismusforschung im Dialog. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2017. 79–100. In German. Identities are based on stories that describe and demarcate individual and collective narratives. Many confusing narratives are told about Europe. Instead of focusing on the content of such stories, the contributors to this volume look at the archetypal narrative forms of these stories and the emotional structures they convey. Forchtner and Eder draw heavily on Frye’s narrative theory, especially his view of the four mythoi. Forget, André. “Where We Are: The Place of ‘Place’ in Contemporary Canadian Writing.” The Town Crier (2 March 2015). http://towncrier.puritan-magazine.com/ debate/northrop-frye/. “Perhaps no one contributed as much to the creation of ‘Canadian literature’ as a field of study, and perhaps no one was as fascinated by the role that place played in Canadian literature as Northrop Frye. In one of the most famous pronouncements on Canadian literature, his 1965 “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada,” Northrop Frye suggested that Canadian writing and the Canadian literary imagination have been fundamentally shaped by the nation’s landscape. There is the distance between populated centres, the political and social realities of colonialism, the fact that Canada was, for a long time, viewed largely as an inconvenient expanse of trees and rocks standing between Europe and trade with the far east (consider that two of our great epic themes—the railroad and the northwest passage—are about trying to find more convenient ways of getting across the country as quickly as possible). Northrop Frye argues that all of these factors have created a ‘garrison mentality,’ one that is neurotic, untrusting, and perennially convinced that whatever ‘real life’ is, it must be happening elsewhere.” Forker, Charles R. Review of Shakespeare and the Nature of Love: Literature, Culture, Evolution, by Marcus Nordlund. Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England 24 (2011): 204–6. “In one of his lectures on Shakespeare Northrop Frye also gives us a dramatic reason to take the sisters’ analysis of their father’s state seriously. ‘When you start to read or listen to King Lear, try to pretend that you’ve never heard the story before, and forget that you know how bad Goneril and Regan and Edmund are going to be. That way, you’ll see more clearly how Shakespeare is building up our sympathies in the opposite direction.’”
– “The Green Underworld of Early Shakespearean Tragedy.” Shakespeare Studies 17 (January 1985): 25. “Discusses the significance of greenery or vegetation as a component of . . . Shakespeare’s tragic ethos. Shakespeare’s includes details of foliage and landscape even in his darkest plays.” Forst, Graham. “‘Frye Spiel’: Northrop Frye and Homo Ludens.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 36, no. 3 (September 2003): 73–86. Capitalizing on the appearance of the first ten volumes of the Collected Works of Frye, shows how Frye took Johan Huizinga’s sociological notion of homo ludens— man the player—and developed its implications for the humanities. Contends that “play is reading’s central motif and that for Frye, readers see things holistically only when “playfully” detached: literature “is the quintessential ‘playful’ medium because it is ‘detached from immediate action.’” – “Kant and Frye on the Critical Path.” In O’Grady and Wang, Northrop Frye, 19–28, and as “The Purpose of the Purposeless: Kant and Frye on the Uses of Art” in Wang and O’Grady, New Directions, 137–52. Sees the Kantian tradition as an important source of Frye’s ideas. – “Mediation Matters: Archetypes of Transference.” University of Toronto Quarterly 86, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 1–13. “This interdisciplinary article examines how cultural archetypes reflect the universal human desire to heal the trauma of the Fall. These archetypes are explored here as they appear in politics, aesthetic philosophy, literature (particularly drama), opera, and religion. The main archetypes examined are those of the ‘gap’ (the abyss between natural and spiritual man opened at the Fall) and the ‘bridge’ (the means by which man attempts to span this ‘gap’). The central focus is on Western philosophy and literary and opera narrative” (author’s abstract). Frye’s insights and understandings are called on throughout. The last section is devoted to Frye and Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. – “‘A Minister and a Rabbi . . .’ The Parallel Careers at the University of Toronto of Northrop Frye and Emil Fackenheim.” Canadian Literature 221 (June 2014): 199–203. Wonders why there was so little contact between Frye and Emil Fackenheim, who were colleagues at the University of Toronto, and wonders as well why there is so little reference in Frye to the Holocaust. “The Frye-Fackenheim divide provides an astonishing contrast and when it is thought about, it must be done so in the context of a supreme, and very Canadian, irony. When Fackenheim was deported from Scotland to Canada in 1940, he was immediately imprisoned in a Canadian war prisoners’ internment
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camp. The camp was in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The city that imprisoned the man who was to become the greatest Holocaust philosopher in the world is the same city that produced one of the world’s greatest humanistic literary critics: Northrop Frye.” – “The Seduction of Figaro: Gender and the Archetype of the ‘Tricky Servant.’” In Donaldson and Mendelson, Frye and the Word, 280–9. On the relationship between Figaro and Rosina as establishing a dialogue between archetypal criticism of Frye’s variety and gender criticism. Forsyth, R.A. ‘“Europe,’ ‘Africa’ and the Problem of Spiritual Authority.” Southern Review [Australia] 3, no. 4 (1969): 294–323. Finds that Frye’s idea of “the drunken boat” is clearly present in the works of T.H. Huxley, Freud, Marx, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Fort, Keith. “Satire and Gnosticism.” Religion & Literature 20 (Summer 1988): 1–18. Argues that the view of reality in Gnosticism is quite similar to the darkest visions of irony as outlined by Frye in Anatomy of Criticism. Fortier, D’Iberville. “I rapporti tra l’Italia e il Canada” [Relations between Italy and Canada]. Canadiana: Aspetti della storia e della letteratura canadese, ed. Luca Codignola. Venice: Marsilio Editions, 1978. 11–19 [17]. In Italian. Looks briefly at how Frye’s criticism reflects the history of Canada. Fortier, Mark. Theatre Theory: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1997. 115–17. On Frye’s view of The Tempest. Fortunati, Vita. La letteratura utopica inglese: Morfologia e grammatica di un genere letterario [English Utopian Literature: The Morphology and Grammar of a Literary Genre]. Ravenna: Longo, 1979. 28–30, 34, 90, 117, 121. In Italian. In an account of utopian fiction in the English tradition, glances at Frye’s view of utopias as Menippean satires, rather than as novels or romances. – “Northrop Frye: La letteratura come utopia e le utopie letterarie: Studio di The Stubborn Structure” [Northrop Frye: Literature as Utopia and Literary Utopias: A Study of The Stubborn Structure]. Atti della accademia della Scienze dell’Istituto di Bologna 65, no. 2 (1976–7): 103–20. In Italian. Places the concept of Utopia, with its power to construct visions of other and different worlds, at the centre of Frye’s critical work. – “Utopia as a Literary Genre.” In Dictionary of Literary Utopias, ed. Vita Fortunati and Raymond Trousson. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000. 634–43. Reviews Frye’s understanding of utopia, along with the utopian theories of Frank Manuel, Darko Suvin, and others.
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Foster, Amber. “Nancy Prince’s Utopias: Reimagining the African American Utopian Tradition.” Utopian Studies 24, no. 2 (2013): 329–48. “In his study of literary utopias, Northrop Frye argues that utopias must appeal to ‘something which existing society has lost, forfeited, rejected, or violated, and which the utopia itself is to restore.’” Foster, Travis M. “Campus Novels and the Nation of Peers.” American Literary History 23, no. 3 (2014): 462–83. “I’ll be tracing fraternity and nostalgia as recognizable features across multiple texts, using a method of genre criticism that, as Northrop Frye famously celebrates, refuses to underestimate convention or succumb to the tendency to ‘think of the individual as ideally prior to society,’ although one, too, that can often occlude the fluid interrelationship between conventions.” Foteva, Ana. “Handke’s Die Fahrt im Einbaum: Utopia as a Counter-Historical Performance Theater versus Media and Historiography.” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 53, no. 1 (February 2017): 43–67. Draws on Hayden White’s theory of emplotment, which was developed from Frye’s theory of mythoi (narrative forms). Foucault, Michel. “Structuralism and Literary Analysis.” Critical Inquiry 45 (Winter 2019): 531–44. “But what is structuralism? It’s extremely difficult to define it when we consider that under this word we designate analyses, methods, works, and individuals as different as, for example, the history of religions as done by Dumézil, the analysis of mythologies by Lévi-Strauss, the analysis of the tragedies of Racine by Barthes, the analysis as well of literary works as it’s currently done in America with Northrop Frye, the analyses of folktales that Russians like Propp have done, the analyses of philosophical systems like those of Guéroult. All of that gets placed under the structuralist label—so it’s perhaps a bit risky to try to illuminate all these problems with such a confused notion. . . . First of all, it’s very difficult to see in what way the method of analysis of folktales by Propp can resemble the method of analysis of philosophical systems by Guéroult—in what way the analysis of literary genres by Frye in America can resemble the analysis of myths by Lévi-Strauss.” Foucault’s talk, translated by Suzanne Taylor and Jonathan Schroeder, was published in Critical Inquiry fifty-two years after it was presented as a lecture in Tunis. Foulke, Robert D. “Criticism and the Curriculum: Part II.” College English 26 (October 1964): 30–7. Presents a curricular model that has its roots in Anatomy of Criticism. Outlines four critical approaches for teaching
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literature—the formalistic, the synoptic, the analogical, and the generic—each of which has its parallel in Frye’s work. Argues that together these approaches could become the basis for structuring a college program in literary studies. Foulke, Robert D., and Paul Smith. An Anatomy of Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972. A textbook anthology organized on the basis of Frye’s four narrative patterns. The general introduction (pp. 1–41), as well as extensive critical material throughout the book, relies heavily upon the principles of Anatomy of Criticism. Fowler, Alastair. Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. 118–20, 150–1, 241–3. Comments on Frye’s systems of generic classification throughout, especially on his taxonomies of prose fiction, myths, and modes. – “The Life and Death of Literary Forms.” New Literary History 2 (Winter 1971): 199–216 [201–3, 208–11]. Argues that literary forms are born and die, that the historical duration of literary works need not coincide with the duration of the forms they use. In the course of developing his argument, glances at several of Frye’s contentions about form, mode, and genre, taking issue especially with Frye’s theory of modes. ‘“Not only does [Frye] ignore many elements of generic transformation altogether; but even the historical changes he does discuss have really had a more fluctuating tendency than he suggests.” Fragopoulos, George. ‘“Singing the silent songs, enchanting songs’: Bob Kaufman’s Aesthetics of Silence.” Journal of Modern Literature 40, no. 1 (2016): 147–63. Points to Frye’s definition of the lyric as “preeminently the utterance that is overheard.” Francioso, Monica. “Impegno [Commitment] and Alì Babà: Celati, Calvino, and the Debate about Literature in the 1970s.” Italian Studies 64, no. 1 (2009): 105–19. Francis, R. Douglas. “Northrop Frye and E.J. Pratt: Technology as Mythology.” In The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2009. Chapter 9 is devoted to the understanding of technology and communication by Pratt and Frye. – Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009. Shows how well-known individuals who are not considered theorists of technology, such as William
Lyon Mackenzie King and Northrop Frye, offered important insights into the subject. – “Turner versus Innis: Bridging the Gap.” American Review of Canadian Studies 33, no. 4 (December 2003): 473–85. Rpt. as “Turner vs. Innis: Two Mythic Wests” in One West, Two Myths II: Essays on Comparison, ed. C.L. Higham and Robert Thacker. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2006. 15–28. Calls on several of Frye’s observations about myth to differentiate the view of the American West by Frederick Jackson Turner and of the Canadian West by Harold Innis. Francis, Wynne. “Irving Layton.” In Canadian Writers and Their Works (Poetry Series, vol. 5), ed. Robert Lecker et al. Toronto: ECW Press, 1985. 141–234 [154–7, 209–10]. Traces Frye’s reviews of Layton’s poetry during the early 1950s and Layton’s one-sided quarrel with Frye. Francke, William. “James Joyce.” In The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, ed. Rebecca Lemon et al. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 642–53. “Frye read Joyce’s contribution to literature and culture in the perspective of a continuity with the Catholic tradition that remained his intellectual root.” Frank, Arthur, and Daniel Marchalik. “Institutional Madness: Shakespeare as Hospital Survival Guide.” The Lancet 393, no. 10186 (25 May 2019): 2114. “The literary scholar Northrop Frye summed up what’s strange about the play. ‘After an act or two, we decide that . . . every character in it is insane.’ The play opens as the Duke of Vienna announces that he is travelling abroad to undisclosed locations, leaving the powers of the state to Angelo, as his deputy. Angelo immediately begins to enforce laws of sexual conduct that have been long unenforced. Brothels are torn down, and working women and their pimps, who are depicted half comically and half tragically, are literally carted off to prison. Those rounded up include the noble youth Claudio, sentenced to die for having impregnated his fiancée, an act that formerly would have been acceptable because the marriage was already contracted. Claudio sends his friend to enlist Claudio’s sister Isabella to plead with Angelo to spare his life. Angelo becomes infatuated with Isabella, drops his puritanical persona, and offers clemency in exchange for sex. The violence of his proposal is exacerbated by Isabella being a novice nun, whose first spoken lines express a wish that the restrictions of the order she is joining were stricter. All this is watched over by the Duke, who never actually left town but disguised himself as a friar. Frye’s summary is too good not to quote: ‘Finally, the Duke returns to his own shape, and, after stretching everyone’s nerves to
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the utmost limits of endurance, hands out pardons all around with great complacency.’” Frank, Kevin. “Censuring the Praise of Alienation: Interstices of Ante-Alienation in Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God.” Callaloo 34, no. 4 (2011): 1088–100. “Will Harris [in his essay ‘Okonkwo in Exile’] insightfully views the African hero’s journey described by Clyde Ford as mirroring ‘the “monomyth” of Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye. But the pattern of the hero’s journey from home into a ‘literal or metaphoric (exilic) underworld’ does not fit exactly for the colonized whose quest involves going to the ‘mother country’ or attending the mother country’s institutions in his or her own land. The colonized given such opportunities is trained to think he is going not to the underworld, but to the over-world, against which his home can never measure up.” Frank, SØren. “The Aesthetic of Elephantiasis: Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children as an Encyclopaedic Novel.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 46, no. 2 (May 2010): 187–98. Drawing on Frye, Edward Mendelson, and Franco Moretti, discusses encyclopedic features in Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children and argues that the novelist’s ambition to incorporate the whole of life is simultaneously a serious and ironic enterprise carried out on the level of discourse. Franke, William. Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015. “Even as elastic a term as Romanticism, while not necessarily in need of a univocal definition, has an intuitive sense and suggests paradigmatic qualities shared by typical exemplars. According to Northrop Frye, ‘the central theme of Romanticism is that of the attaining of an expanded consciousness,’ while for Thomas McFarland, among a number of leading motifs of the Romantic ‘sensibility’— solitude, imagination, organicism, medievalism, subjectivity—‘the most constant of all defining factors is nature.’ Not directly competing with these authors’ approaches to Romanticism through myth and pastoral respectively, I wish to propose a different sort of dominant family resemblance trait.” Frankenberg, Günter. “Human Rights and the Belief in a Just World.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 12, no. 1 (2014): 35–60. “I borrow the categories of tragedy and romance from Northrop Frye’s and Hayden White’s archetypical genres providing emplotments and rather freely transfer them from history to biography, and later to the narratives of human rights law.”
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Fransson, Anna-Lisa. “Tragedy or Chivalrous Romance? The Swedish Government and the Baltic Sea Pipeline.” Nature and Culture 9, no. 3 (Winter 2014): 266–87. “Literary theorist Northrop Frye writes that tragedy reflects periods of social history when a ruling class has lost effective power but retains ideological prestige, which is reminiscent of the Swedish government in the pipeline case.” Franz, Paul. “Burden of Proof: On Jonathan Culler’s Theory of the Lyric.” PN Review 42, no. 3 (January– February 2016): 16–19. “If there is a tutelary spirit of Culler’s book, it is not Paul de Man but the Canadian critic Northrop Frye. This appears not only from incidental echoes, as when Culler’s first chapter proposes ‘An Inductive Approach’ to the genre, recalling Frye’s account of his practice in the Anatomy of Criticism, nor even when a later one, ‘Structures of the Lyric,’ takes as its starting point an articulation of the conceptual relationship between lyric subgenres drafted for, but ultimately excluded from, that work. Rather, Frye’s influence pervades the book at a more fundamental level, introducing a certain tension into its characterization of lyric as a ‘tradition.’” Fraser, John. “Mr. Frye and Evaluation.” Cambridge Quarterly 2 (Spring 1967): 97–116. Rpt. in Fraser, The Name of Action: Critical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. 152–69. An attack on Frye’s critical position, particularly his ideas about evaluation as they are presented in “Criticism, Visible and Invisible.” Concludes that Frye “is probably doing more to bring discredit upon literary studies than anyone else now writing.” Fraser, John. Telling Tales. Toronto: Collins, 1986. Writes about Frye as one of forty-five living Canadians he has come to know during the course of his career in Canadian journalism. Fraser, Keath. As for Me and My Body: A Memoir of Sinclair Ross. Toronto: ECW Press, 1997. 67–9. Fraser, Matthew. “Northrop Frye: Signifying Everything.” The Varsity (1 October 1979): 6–7. Frye replies to a series of questions by Fraser on life in the 1930s, creative writing, the language of fiction, teaching religion, the value of the university, and the destruction of the honour course at the University of Toronto. Fraser, Peter. “The Musical Mode: Putting on ‘The Red Shoes.’” Cinema Journal 26, no. 3 (Spring 1987): 44. Notes that modality in film is what Frye calls the “radical of presentation.”
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Fraundorfer, Markus. Brazil’s Emerging Role in Global Governance: Health, Food Security and Bioenergy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Notes the centrality of Aristotle in the use of narrative to make sense of the world. Frye, whose four narrative patterns are key to his theory of mythos also derive from Aristotle. Fredeman, William E. “Roy Daniells (1902–1979).” English Studies in Canada 5, no. 4 (1979). Frederickson, Kathleen. Review of New World Myth: Postmodernism and Postcolonialism in Canadian Fiction, by Marie Vautier. Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies 4, no. 2 (Winter 2000). https://legacy.chass.ncsu. edu/jouvert/v4i2/fred.htm. “Yet even Northrop Frye— whose theories about ‘traditional’ myth Vautier cites frequently in contrast to ‘New World Myth’—maintains the plurality and shiftiness of myth, writing that myth allows for a ‘a world of swirling currents of energy that run back and forth between subject and object.’” Frederico, Lealis Guimarães. “Concepções de Critica Literária em Northrop Frye, T.S. Eliot e Roland Barthes” [Conceptions of Literary Criticism in Northrop Frye, T.S. Eliot and Roland Barthes]. Revista Terra e Cultura [Centro Universitário de Londrina, Brazil] 13, no. 25 (January–June 1997): 31–8. In Portuguese. Free, William J. “Structuralism, Literature, and Tacit Knowledge.” Journal of Aesthetic Education. 8, no. 4 (October 1974): 65–74. Describes a dualism of those who “wish to treat literature as a dialect of language analyzable through terms analogous to those of Saussurean structural linguistics, and those who want to treat literature as a version of myth and therefore a form of social or psychological mediation. Loosely speaking, the first group is best represented by Roland Barthes and his colleagues at the École Pratique des Hautes études in Paris. The latter group is a more amorphous set of disciples of men as varied in approach and discipline as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Northrop Frye, and Gaston Bachelard.” Freed, Foster. “Role Models.” 2005. http://www.rockies. net/~spirit/sermons/a-alls-foster.php. A sermon in which Freed nominates Frye as one of four contemporary Protestant saints. The other three: Lydia Gruchy, William J. Seymour, and Betsie ten Boom. Freedman, James O. “Teachers and Teaching.” Inside Higher Ed, 27 March 2007. http://www.insidehighered. com/views/2007/03/27/freedman. On Frye as a teacher when Freedman was an undergraduate at Harvard. Freedman, Linda. “Tom Altizer and William Blake: The Apocalypse of Belief.” Literature and Theology
25, no. 1 (2011): 20–31. On the importance of Blake for Thomas J.J. Altizer’s radical theology. Altizer is “Professor Emeritus of New York State University at Stony Brook, where he worked for a time with the extraordinary Blake scholar, David Erdman. His reading of Blake shares Erdman’s fervid desire to read transcendence in immanence and is also indebted to Northrop Frye’s seminal mid-20th century re-evaluation of Blake’s mythic structures as well as the idea of myth as a coincidence of the sacred and profane advanced by Mircea Eliade, whom Altizer met after leaving his Divinity School training in Chicago.” Freitag, Gina, and André Loiselle, eds. The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. Frye’s theory of the “garrison mentality” and Margaret Atwood’s Survival serve as touchstones for many of the essays in this collection. French, Goldwin. “Introduction, I.” Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education, ed. Goldwin French and Jean O’Grady. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 7. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. xxiii–xxxiv. Frendo, Maria. “William Blake, Hubert Parry and Jerusalem: The Literary, the Visionary and the Political.” International Journal of Arts & Sciences 9, no. 2 (2016): 461–70. “Blake’s theory of poetry would have been more easily accepted had he lived in the Renaissance, a position held by Northrop Frye. However, as he lives when he does, we have a unique example of an artist saying what he pleases without the least tendency, which social recognition often encourages, towards the parasitic in literature, the sycophantic in religion, the malignant in politics, or the subversive in art.” Frendt, Gene. “Language, Truth and Literature: The Grammars of Truth in the History of Philosophy.” International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science 1 (2017): 19–35. “Examining the history of philosophy, we can see that the word ‘true’ is used in many ways. These ways parallel the modes Northrop Frye saw ordered in literature. Just as his Anatomy of Criticism outlines literature’s devolution from myth to romance to the high mimetic, low mimetic and ironic. We see the history of philosophy descends from mythic metaphysics to a self-deconstructing irony. Between these we can find three asymmetrically related modes of ‘being true’ which exhibit the same functions and interrelations as Frye’s three intermediate modes in literature. Given the work of Gödel and Tarski there is good reason to suspect that the sort of relationships pointed out by Frye and exhibited in Kant are necessary for any linguistic being. Truth is said in many ways;
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these ways are systematically related and allow no closure on any particular one.” Frey, Daniel. “Paul Ricœur, lecteur du Grand Code (Northrop Frye).” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuse 80, no. 2 (2000): 263–82. Ricoeur’s reading of The Great Code indicates a shift towards a more flexible understanding—one that joins the text and the reader. By this move, Ricoeur connects his biblical and philosophical hermeneutics. Friedland, Martin L. The University of Toronto: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Presents, among many other things, colourful accounts of intellectual figures from Daniel Wilson to Northrop Frye. Frye’s role in the university appears throughout. Friedlander, Benjamin. Review of The Poetics of Sensibility, by Jerome McGann. Criticism 42, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 255–61. On the difference between the poets Frye treated in his influential “The Age of Sensibility” (Blake, Chatterton, Cowper, Burns, Smart) and those discussed by McGann (William Jones, Erasmus Darwin, and a host of women poets: Frances Greville, Ann Yearsley, Mary Robinson, Ann Batten Cristall, Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, and Felicia Hemans). Friedländer, Saul. “A Soáh az emlékezet és a történelem közöt” [The Shoah between Memory and History]. Múlt és Jövő [Past and Future] 3 (1991): 5–12. In Hungarian. Refers to Paul Fussell’s reading of World War I, which is dependent on Frye’s theory of modes. Friedman, Barton R. Fabricating History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Notes Frye’s exploration in his essay “New Directions from Old” of the uncertain boundaries between history and fiction. Friedman, Norman. “Introduction to the Frye/Friedman Correspondence.” Hypotheses: NeoAristotelian Analysis 15 (Fall 1995). Friedman, Ted. “Myth, the Numinous, and Cultural Studies.” http://www.flowjournal.org/2009/08/ myth-the-numinous-and-cultural-studies-tedfriedman-georgia-state-university-atlanta/commentpage-1/?print=print. “For the last few years, I’ve been preoccupied with a concept that hasn’t received much academic attention lately: myth. Specifically, the idea that popular culture narratives are forms of myth. The heyday for this turn of thinking was the 1960s and 1970s. That was when literary and film scholars influenced by Carl Jung and Northrop Frye formed the ‘myth and symbol’ school, looking for transcendental archetypes in modern narratives.”
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Frigerio, Vittorio. “Cui prodest? Réflexions sur l’utilité et l’utilisation de la théorie des genres dans la culture de masse” [Who Benefits? Reflections on the Utility and Use of Genre Theory in Mass Culture]. Belphegor 3, no. 1 (December 2003). In French. http://etc.dal.ca/ belphegor/vol3_no1/articles/03_01_Friger_cuipro_ fr.html. Applies Frye’s ideas about genres to the productions of mass culture. – Review of Les amoureux de Schéhérazade: Variations modernes sur les Mille et une nuits by Dominique Jullien [The Lovers of Scheherazade: Modern Variations on the Thousand and One Nights by Dominique Jullien]. Dalhousie French Studies 89 (Winter 2009): 167–8. In French. “There are texts which cover the history of literature in a subterranean way, appearing at different periods, in different countries, adapted to the taste of the day, modified, revised and corrected for the needs of a cause or an aesthetic. Northrop Frye wrote a beautiful volume to demonstrate brilliantly what little needed to be proved by finding the Bible at the basis of all the Western literary tradition. Without fostering these claims, Dominique Jullien goes through a beautiful skeleton of texts of French and Francophone literature to find at the corner of the pages the reincarnations of the caliph Haroun-Al-Raschid.” Frosch, Thomas. “Why George Has to Die: Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and the Myth of the Goddess.” Journal of Ethnic American Literature 5 (2015): 5–21, 135. “Northrop Frye distinguished between ‘the refined writer too finicky for popular formulas and the major one who exploits them ruthlessly.’ In this essay I will argue that for Naylor to kill George, after making him such a positive character that she herself ‘cried for a whole year, knowing that [he] was going to die,’ was absolutely right.” Frow, John. “On Literature in Cultural Studies.” In The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, ed. Michael Bérubé. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2008. 44–57. “While literary studies has provided an enduringly powerful paradigm of the rhetorical analysis of texts, it continues to find itself in almost complete disarray over the principles that would constitute its integrity as what Northrop Frye called ‘an impersonal body of consolidating knowledge.’” Frutkin, Ren. “Emphasis.” Yale—Theatre 1, no. 1 (Spring 1968): 4. Discusses the main topic of the first issue of this journal, which is Greek theatre, and speaks of imagination as the ability of creating models by human experience, according to Frye.
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“Frye (Herman) Northrop 1912–1991.” In The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide. Oxford, UK: Helicon, 2010. Fu, Jie. “The Archetypal Deformation of the Flood Myth in George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss.” Journal of Guizhou University of Technology (Social Sciences) 4 (2008). In Chinese. Uses Frye’s archetypal theory to explain the different understandings of the end of the novel, to demonstrate the reasonableness of the end, and to clarify Eliot’s intentions. Fuchs, Dieter. “Menippean Satire and Academic Romance in David Lodge’s Small World.” English Studies in Canada 43/44, nos. 4/1 (December 2017/March 2018): 180–96. Fujimura, Thomas H. “Mode and Structure in The Merchant of Venice.” PMLA 81 (1966): 499–511. Finds three of Frye’s fictional modes relevant to understanding the play. Fulford, Robert. “Moments of a Century: Northrop Frye Explains William Blake.” Imperial Oil Review 84, no. 437 (Summer 2000). The publication of Fearful Symmetry was, according to Fulford, one of the twenty events that shaped Canadian culture. – “Northrop Frye: Television Critic.” National Post (6 July 2002): A16. Spurred by the publication of Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, Fulford reflects on Frye’s volunteer work with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, particularly his reviews of CBC’s television programs. – “Resurrection Lit: Bob Rodgers Brings Canadian Icons to Life on the Page.” National Post (28 June 2016): B3. Review of Rogers’s novel The Devil’s Party: Who Killed The Sixties?, which features characters named Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. – “Sneaking up on Northrop Frye: Canada’s Critical Icon Is Well Worth Reading, but Start Light or You’ll Be Sorry.” National Post (10 July 2012). “Since his death in 1991 the world has learned a good deal about his private opinions through his published letters and diaries. A would-be student of Frye can acquire a feel for him from this material and still more from his relatively informal books, such as The Modern Century, The Educated Imagination and The Critical Path.” – “An Unbeliever’s Gratitude at Christmas.” National Post (23 December 2017): A15. “The power of JudeoChristian thought opened the practical imagination of the West, suggesting what wonderful ideas humans could have, and what wonderful things they could do. Northrop Frye, a Canadian Methodist minister who
became one of the great literary theorists of the world, suggested the destination where all this leads: ‘The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.’” Fülöp, József. “Érintkező életművek: Northrop Frye és Rudolf Kassner” [Contact Lives: Northrop Frye and Rudolf Kassner]. In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 197–204. In Hungarian. Examines the intellectual relationship between Frye’s and Kassner’s views on metaphor and the Bible. Fumaneri, Maria Luísa. “Wallace Stevens: O hermetismo como leitura do real” [Wallace Stevens: Hermeticism as a Reading of the Real]. Anuário de Literatura 21, no. 1 (2016): 92–113. In Portuguese. “According to Northrop Frye, the difference between ‘reason’ and ‘imagination’ in the sense of poetic imagination in Stevens’s essays is that imagination tends to the particular (work, understood, aristotelically, as representation of particulars), whereas reason tends to universal (concept).” Also shows how Frye’s understanding of metaphor guides his interpretation of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Furniss, Tom. “James Hutton’s Geological Tours of Scotland: Romanticism, Literary Strategies, and the Scientific Quest.” Science & Education 23, no. 3 (2014): 565–88. https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/39986/. “Some strands of the constructivist history of science have used the literary genre theory of Northrop Frye to highlight the literariness of scientific writing (Making Natural Knowledge). The analysis of Hutton’s geological tours of Scotland . . . suggests that they can be read in terms of Frye’s account of quest romance.” Furstenberg, Rochelle. Jerusalem Post Magazine (27 May 1982): 18. A review of Frye’s paper, “Vision and Cosmos,” presented at First Annual Conference of the Institute for Literary Research, held at Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, 17–20 May 1982. Fusini, Letizia. “Looking for Common Ground: A Thematic Comparison between Tang Xianzu’s and Shakespeare’s Dramatic Imagination.” Asian Theatre Journal 36, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 302–26. “Dreams and visions are, for Shakespeare, vehicles to the rebirth that characterizes the comic resolution, for whoever visits the ‘green world’ of dreams, to say it with Northrop Frye, will be radically transformed. What will change, however, is not human nature but the perception thereof and this recognition will have beneficial effects into the
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‘normal’ world of quotidian reality . . . Northrop Frye shows how the latter elaborates on the ancient ritual pattern of the death and resurrection of a God-Man, which pertains to both Christianity and paganism, and which is also a mythological interpretation of the ‘yearly triumph of spring over winter.’ In so doing, Frye aligns Elizabethan comedy to the ancient genre of the New Comedy and to the tradition of the medieval miracleplay cycles, which follow the laws that Dante ascribed to the form of the commedia. Frye denominates them as ‘the laws of the comic form,’ explaining that these engender a ‘rhythmic movement from normal world to green world and back again.’” Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. 311–14 and passim. Summarizes Frye’s cyclical theory of modes and then uses the ironic mode with its demonic imagery to characterize the literary response of a number of writers to World War I. Draws on Frye’s criticism throughout. G Gabin, Rosalind J. “From Theory of Genres to Theory of Language: Rhetoric’s Relation to Literary Criticism.” Dieciocho 8 (Spring 1985): 63–9 [64, 66–7]. Argues that Anatomy of Criticism is an “outstanding example” of a modern critical work that moves away from a New Critical conception of poetics towards extra-textual concerns. Frye thus helps to usher in what has become widespread in literary discussion in the 1980s—a collapsing of sharp distinctions between poetics and rhetoric. – “Northrop Frye: Modern Utopian.” Classical and Modern Literature 3, no. 3 (1983): 151–64. Locates a number of differences between Frye and Plato, but argues that the “Republican” structure of Anatomy of Criticism, “with its commitment to unity, remains its informing element” and makes it fundamentally Platonic. Shows how the principle of unity informs much of Frye’s criticism, both literary and social, and concludes that the Platonic utopian vision of wholeness in Frye’s work is what makes it “unpalatable” for the contemporary critical sensibility that wants to de-hellenize criticism by deconstructing all unified structures of meaning and knowledge. Gábor, Kiss. “Az ember és árnyé kai: Northrop Frye és az irodalmí szimbolizmus Chamisso Peter Schlemihl jének példáján” [Man and His Shadows: Northrop Frye and Literary Symbolism in the Example of Peter Schlemihl’s Chamisso]. Nagyvilág: Világirodalmi folyóirat 59, no. 3 (2014): 318–37. https://www.academia.edu/38941898/
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Az_ember_%C3%A9s_%C3%A1rny%C3%A9kai. In Hungarian. Gabriella, Kataryn R. “Rosewood for Northrop Frye.” Anglican Theological Review 100, no. 2 (Summer 2018): 595. A poem: Rosewood for Northrop Frye The name of the ancient book of the grammar of poetry is “Rosewood.” What you are teaching us is the universal language of creation. “Rosewood” images of original speech made visible in myth, of whose outlines we find ourselves aware. “I am telling you what you already know and what shall be when the Tree of nature’s Mystery bums and flowers into the Tree of Life: ‘Rosewood’ Recognise and behold the bright leaves of poetry building a desired structure, where the flames and rose would be seen as one: transformed: as human vision.”
Gadpaille, Michelle. “Thematics and Its Aftermath: A Meditation on Atwood’s Survival.” Primerjalna Knjizevnost 37, no. 3 (2014): 165–77. “It is not being claimed that Atwood invented thematic criticism. It would be more accurate to trace the concept to the work of Northrop Frye, as does Donna Bennett in her entry for the Oxford Companion, as well as a Slovene critic, Mirko Jurak. A distinguished scholar, Frye taught at the University of Toronto in the years when Atwood studied there. Though not exclusively a Canadianist, Frye brought the rigor of his Blake and Shakespeare scholarship to Canadian literary production. His criticism dealt with archetypes, and in his Anatomy of Criticism, Frye boldly dictated the form of all literature, both synchronically and diachronically. His writing had an oratorical certainty backed by encyclopedic knowledge and ethical humanism; these features facilitated acceptance of the universal. It was one piece by Frye (the ‘Conclusion’ to the Literary History of Canada) that indelibly marked the future of Canadian criticism. As an aid to understanding 19th-century colonial culture, he gave us the concepts of the ‘garrison mentality’ and the ‘bush garden,’ each of which elucidates an aspect of Canada’s conflicted colonial position. Frye posited that the imaginary order created by words—even colonial words—occupied a
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position just as valid as the order of nature in which human beings lived—even the monstrous wilderness of the early settlers, and that the first order offered clues to the national psyche in its struggle with the second. While human experience of the natural order was local and specific, the world of words was universal and articulated in archetypes. Frye’s was a claim of true literary universality.” Gailus, Jeff. “The Myths That Make Us.” Alternatives Journal 38, no. 3 (May–June 2012): 10–13. “Frye, one of the most influential literary critics of the 20th century, identified two distinct themes in Canadian literature: ‘The identity of the sinister and terrible elements in nature with the death-wish in man,’ and the ‘fusion of human life and the life in nature,’ embodying a ‘sense of kinship’ between humans and the natural world. Margaret Atwood, perhaps Canada’s greatest living woman of letters and a student of Frye’s at the University of Toronto, riffed off his work to conclude that ‘survival’ was a central part of the early Canadian experience and, as a result, our literature.” Gair, Christopher. “‘Thalatta! Thalatta!’”: Xenophon, Joyce, and Kerouac.” In Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition, ed. Shelia Murnaghan and Ralph M. Rosen. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018. “[T]he patterns deployed by Joyce also anticipate Kerouac’s fiction (most notably, The Subterraneans, Visions of Cody, and Big Sur, but also many other works) in significant ways. Northrop Frye’s seminal Anatomy of Criticism, published in 1957, the same year as On the Road, describes this connection, in a manner that usefully historicizes Kerouac’s reading of Joyce. For Frye, ‘If a reader were asked to set down a list of things that had most impressed him about Ulysses, it might reasonably be somewhat as follows. First, the clarity with which the sights and sounds and smells of Dublin come to life, the rotundity of the character-drawing, and the naturalness of the dialogue. Second, the elaborate way that the story and the characters are parodied by being set against archetypal heroic patterns, notably the one provided by the Odyssey. Third, the revelation of character and incident through the searching use of the stream-of-consciousness technique.’” Gál, Andrea. “Útban Utópia felé: Államelméletek fikcionalizálása” [On the Road to Utopia: The Fictionalizing of Political Theory]. Korunk 2 (2015): 98–104. In Hungarian. “Without exaggeration, a library of material is available to whoever wants to examine the nuances of the rather dynamic and flexible concept of utopia, including an essay by Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias.”
Galchinsky, Michael. “The Problem with Human Rights Culture.” South Atlantic Review 75, no. 2 (2010): 5–18. Proposes to look at human rights literature not in terms of genre but of mode. “Whereas generic arguments are historical and contingent, modal arguments from Aristotle to Northrop Frye to Hayden White are logically derived, independent of location, and transhistorical. Modes seem suited to human rights, which claim to be rational, independent of location, and transhistorical.” Gall, Robert S. “Living On (Happily) Ever After: Derrida, Philosophy and The Comic.” Philosophy Today 38 (1994): 167–80. Calls on Frye’s theory of comedy to help explicate the comic in Derrida. Gállego, Cándido Pérez. “Harold Bloom: Un ‘superhombre’ de la crítica Americana” [Harold Bloom: A “Superman” of American Criticism]. REDEN: Revista española de estudios norteamericanos 5 (1992): 1–10. In Spanish. “Harold Bloom has created a new way of making criticism that excells the comparative method that was emerging after Harry Levin. . . . Bloom moves away from Northrop Frye’s puritanism by preaching eroticism of the text and penetrates, through reading, into the sexual life of the reader.” (author’s abstract) Galván, Luis. “Auto sacramental y aventuras caballerescas: La Divina Filotea de Calderón” [Autos sacramentales and Chivalrous Adventures: La Divina Filotea de Calderón]. In La dramaturgia de Calderón: Técnicas y estructuras, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Enrica Cancelliere. Pamplona: Iberoamericana/Vervuert Verlag, 2006. 215– 27. In Spanish. In studying the similarity between the motives and structure of Calderón’s autos sacramentales and several works of chivalry, calls on Frye’s view of romance in The Secular Scripture. – “Elementos para un plan de educación literaria” [Elements of a Plan for Literary Education]. Revista de Literatura 66, no. 132 (July–December 2004): 537–54. In Spanish. Offers a program of literary education that draws on Frye’s principles as outlined in Design for Learning and elsewhere. – “El libro y la azucena de Calderón de la Barca en perspective comparatista auto y comedia” [The Book and the Lily of Calderón de la Barca in the Comparative Perspective of the Auto and Comedy]. Actas del Congreso “El Siglo de Oro en el Nuevo Milenio” 1 (2005): 753–63. Ed. Carlos Mata and Miguel Zugasti. Pamplona, Spain: EUNSA, 2005. In Spanish. – “Estrategias retóricas de autoridad” [Rhetorical Strategies of Authority]. In Palabra de Dios, Sagrada Escritura, Iglesia, ed. Vicente Balaguer y Juan Luis
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Caballero. Simposios Internacionales de Teología 29. Pamplona: Eunsa, 2008. 249–52. In Spanish. Begins with a discussion of rhetoric as one of the five modes of language in Frye’s late work. – “Imágenes y anagnorisis en La Celestina” [Imagery and Recognition in La Celestina]. Nueva Revista Filología Hispánica 53, no. 2 (2005): 457–79. Glances at Frye’s account of the double vision of tragedy. – “Mito, interés y compromiso: Arquetipos narrativos en los libros de caballerías” [Myth, Interest and Commitment: Narrative Archetypes in the Books of Chivalry]. Revista de Filología Hispánica 25, no. 1 (2009): 102–21. In Spanish. An investigation of the Spanish sixteenth-century books of Castilian chivalresque romance by way of Frye’s theory of romance in The Secular Scripture in order to reveal the deep structure of this genre. – “Visiones para una poética [Visions for a Poetic], por Luis Galván.” Revista de Filología Hispánica 25, no. 1 (2009): 1–7. In Spanish. An introduction and overview of the proceedings of the conference Visiones para una poética: En el cincuentenario de “Anatomy of Criticism” de Northrop Frye, held at the University of Navarra 24– 25 May 2007. The introduction is preceded by “Sumario Analítifco/Analytical Summary,” which contains the abstracts in both English and Spanish of the papers presented at the conference. Galvin, Brendan. “A Note on T.S. Eliot’s ‘New Hampshire’ as a Lyric Poem.” Massachusetts Studies in English 1 (Fall 1967): 44–5. Observes that the poem conforms to Frye’s definition of lyric. Gambetta, Eugenia. “‘No tiene iglesias, ni escuelas’: El gaucho y los modelos de civilización en la novelística rioplatense” [They neither Have Churches nor Schools’: The Gaucho and the Cultural Models in the River Plate Novels]. Alpha 38 (July 2014): 39–50. In Spanish. Gan, Peter. Review of The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition, ed. Miklós Vassányi, Enikő Sepsi, and Anikó Daróczi. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017. One notable chapter is Sára Tóth’s “on Northrop Frye’s dialectical relation between mystical unity and divine immanence on the one hand and postmodernity’s diversity and otherness and divine transcendence on the other.” Gang, Zhu. “Literary Heritage of Northrop Frye: An Interview in the Frye Centre.” Foreign Literature Newsletter 2 (1999). Ganim, John M. “Drama, Theatricality and Performance: Radicals of Presentation in the Canterbury Tales.”
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In Drama, Narrative and Poetry in the “Canterbury Tales”, ed. Wendy Harding. Toulouse, France: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003. 69–82. Chaucer manipulates a number of Frye’s “radicals of presentation,” allowing perpetual reinterpretation through the overlay of what had usually been considered quite distinct radicals of presentation. Ganzevoort, R. Ruard. “Narrative Approaches.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, ed. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore. Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2011. 214–23. Frye’s work is one of four sources for understanding narrative approaches in practical theology. Gao Hai. 神话的诗学 : 诺·弗莱文学批评理论研究 = Mythical Poetics: A Study of Northrop Frye’s Literary Critical Theory. Beijing: Zhongguo ren min da xue chu ban she, 2008. In Chinese. Gao, Ruiyi. “The U-shaped Narrative Structure in The Sorrows of Young Werther.” Journal of Chuxiong Normal University 1 (2015): 27–31. In Chinese. Garber, Marjorie. “Heyday.” Symploke, 27, nos. 1–2 (2019): 433–41. “The literary theorists who spoke at the [English] Institute in the 40s and 50s included, among others, W.K. Wimsatt, Cleanth Brooks, Lionel Trilling, Northrop Frye, Leslie Fielder, and M.H. Abrams. If this group sounds a little parochial, a little Ivy-League-y or East-Coast-y, and more than a little white and male, that was the Institute—and that was to a large extent the North American theory lineup, in those years.” – “Over the Influence.” Critical Inquiry 42, no. 4 (Summer 2016): 731–59. In a commanding study of the influence of critic upon critic, pays special attention to the influence of Frye on Harold Bloom. – “Ovid, Now and Then.” Chapter 2 of The Muses on Their Lunch Hour: New York: Fordham University Press, 2017. 11–31. “During what might be called the long mid-century period, the period from about 1950 to about 1980, interest in myth and in archetypes and archetypal criticism held an honored place in both literary and popular culture. . . . Critical theorists from Francis Fergusson to Kenneth Burke to Northrop Frye led the way with strong cross-cultural claims about similitude and difference. A quest for universals and universal myths and patterns preoccupied scholars, whether in the archetypes of Frye or the quite different archetypes of Carl Jung. . . . Myth was everywhere. And then the moment was gone. Historical questions about the local, the specific, the contingent and the idiosyncratic took center stage, and universal claims— claims about universal symbols or universal practices
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or universal beliefs—tended to be regarded as naïve, or hegemonic, or both.” Garber goes on to examine the connection between Frye and Fredric Jameson and Frye and Harold Bloom. Her chapter on Shakespeare includes Frye as one of eight Shakespeareans noted “for their memorable combination of scholarship and lecture/performance.” Garber, Michael G. “Tragicomedy, Melodrama, and Genre in Early Sound Films: The Case of Two ‘Sad Clown’ Musicals.” CINEJ: Cinema Journal 5, no. 2 (2016): 53–86. “Berlin’s lyrics for ‘Alice in Wonderland’ exemplify what Feuer calls the ‘Ode to Entertainment’: “The narratives of musicals place themselves firmly within a long tradition of popular entertainment. . . . The Ode to Entertainment is working out of this shared tradition.” Further, ‘wherever such numbers occur, they always serve a finale function, including us in the celebration of another entertainment triumph.’ This ‘showbiz’ mode links itself most closely with the comic mythos. In musicals with a New Comedy structure, the Ode to Entertainment is part of the celebration of the united romantic couple, who are a metaphor for the triumph of spring. As Northrop Frye describes it, these celebrations become an expression of the communitas of a community of goodwill. At the story’s end, all negative elements are either integrated into this society or expelled and the ‘good’ society takes form around the couple.” García Arteaga Aguilar, Ricardo. “Historia del Descenso en El Orfeo de Tennessee Williams” [History of the Descent in The Orpheus of Tennessee Williams]. Casa del Tiempo (Mexico) 3, no. 29 (June 2001): 45–53. In Spanish. Interprets Williams’s play in terms of the four mythoi of Frye. García, Pedro Javier Pardo. “Consideraciones sobre la teoría del desplazamiento en Northrop Frye” [Considerations of the Theory of Displacement in Northrop Frye]. Contextos 11, nos. 21–2 (1993): 291– 316. In Spanish. The notion of “displacement” is one of the recurring constants in Frye’s work, though it appears in different contexts and in different places. García seeks to reconstruct a more coherent and unified theory than Frye’s somewhat fragmentary presentation affords. García Sánchez, Franklin B. “Prerrealismo y fantasía en Larra: El doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente” [Prerealism and Fantasy in Larra: The Doncel of Don Enrique the Doliente]. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 15, no. 3 (Spring 1991): 517–29. In Spanish. Draws on Frye’s theory of romance as developed in The Secular Scripture.
Gardner, John. “The Idea of Moral Criticism.” Western Humanities Review 31 (Spring 1977): 97–109 [99–101]. Says that, like the New Critics, Frye claims “that what counts in literature is not what it says, what it affirms and promulgates, but only how well it works as a selfcontained, organic whole busy doing whatever it does.” Such a position abandons the primary function of art, which is affirmation. Garin, Manuel. “Truth Takes Time: Los vínculos entre heroínas, géneros y narrativas en tres series televisivas de J.J. Abrams” [Truth Takes Time: The Interplay between Heroines, Genres and Narratives in Three J.J. Abrams’s Television Series]. Comunicación y Sociedad 26, no. 2 (2013): 47–64. In Spanish. “Beyond the distinguished names and revolutionary strategies that we have linked to Abrams’ method (conceiving it as a collective, teambased dynamic), his distinct combination of emo gen and wow gen virtually always leads to happy ending formulas. Formulas close to what Northrop Frye called Hollywood gimmicks and weenies, thus bringing his series nearer to comedy.” Garofalo, Daniela. “Romanticism and Pleasure; Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure.” European Romantic Review 25, no. 1 (January 2014): 68–74. Garrett, James M. “Writing Community: Bessie Head and the Politics of Narrative.” Research in African Literatures 30, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 122–35. On, among other things, the romance patterns in Head’s fiction, as these patterns are defined by Frye. Garrido Ardila, J.A. “Diégesis y digresiones episódicas en el Quijote” [Diegesis and Episodic Digressions in Don Quixote]. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 92, no. 8 (2015): 879–96. In Spanish. Turns to Frye’s theory of displacement to explain the function of the digressive stories in Don Quixote. – “Origins and Definition of the Picaresque Genre.” In The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature: From the Sixteenth Century to the Neopicaresque, ed. J.A. Garrido Ardila. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 1–23. Sees Lazarillo de Tormes as exemplifying Frye’s “hence,” as opposed to his “and-then,” narrative principle, as these are established in The Secular Scripture. Garrido, Germán. “Las palomas de Gracchus: Una poética kantiana de la lectura” [Gracchus Pigeons: A Kantian Poetics of Reading]. Revista de Filología Hispánica 33, no. 1 (2017): 207–38. In Spanish. Paul Ricoeur moves away from structuralism in affirming the historical and
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contingent character of the conventions of literature that Frye classifies in Anatomy of Criticism. In Spanish. Garrod, Stan. “Glimpses from a Train Window: Some Reflections on Phronesis and Pedagogy.” English Studies in Canada 37, no. 2 (June 2011): 17–27. Uses Frye’s train-window metaphor from The Modern Century to reflect on “the interconnectedness of phronesis, imagination, metaphor, and environmental/geographic education.” Garzón Martínez, Camilo. “La génesis de la Constitución Política de Colombia de 1991 a la luz de la discusión sobre el Mito Político” [The Genesis of the 1999 Political Constitution of Colombia in the Light of the Discussion about the Political Myth]. Desafíos 29, no. 1 (2017): 109– 38. In Spanish. Calls on Frye’s notion that all the genres of literature derive from myth. Gaskill, Nicholas. “The Close and the Concrete: Aesthetic Formalism in Context.” New Literary History 47, no. 4 (Autumn 2016): 505–24. “As Northrop Frye puts it in reference to The Winter’s Tale, ‘the meaning of the play is the play, there being nothing to be abstracted from the total experience of the play. Progress in grasping the meaning is a progress, not in seeing more in the play, but in seeing more of it.’” Gassol i Bellet, Olivia. La “Pell de brau” de Salvador Espriu, o, El mite de la salvació [The “Pell de brau” by Salvador Espriu, or, The Myth of Salvation]. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2003. In Catalan. Applies Frye’s notion of encyclopedic form to the works of Salvador Espriu. Gaston, Sean. “The Impossibility of Sympathy.” The Eighteenth Century 51, nos. 1–2 (2010): 129–52. “At the time that Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin were warning of the political dangers of empathy (Einfühlung), the North American academy was embracing the eighteenth century as a century of feeling, sensibility, and sympathy. In From Classic to Romantic (1946), Walter Jackson Bate had made the case for the ‘age of feeling,’ and in the 1950s Northrop Frye introduced his influential notion of the ‘age of sensibility’ as a broad description of literature after Pope and before Wordsworth.” Gatenby, Greg. Toronto: A Literary Guide. Toronto: MacArthur and Co., 1999. Includes Frye in his literary ramble through Toronto’s neighbourhoods. Gatewood, John B. “A Short Typology of Ethnographic Genres: Or Ways to Write about Other Peoples.” Anthropology and Humanism 9, no. 4 (December 1984): 5–10. “My method of identifying literary genres differs
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from previous writers on the topic, such as Thornton and Marcus and Cushman. Thornton explicates the historical rise of the ethnographic monograph as a distinctive literary form during the nineteenth century. Marcus, following Northrop Frye, focuses his analysis on the rhetorical devices by which an ethnography compels its reader’s belief in the truth, or at least the credibility of its claims. These approaches—historical and rhetorical—are commendable.” Gaudio, Michael. “Looking as a Scholar, Thinking Like a Rattle Head: On William Laud, Little Gidding, the Law, and the Gospel.” Oxford Art Journal 36, no. 3 (2013): 345–68. Gault, Cinda. “Grooving the Nation: 1965–1980 as a Literary Era in Canada.” American Review of Canadian Studies 38, no. 3 (2008): 361–79. On the role of Frye’s “Conclusion” to the Literary History of Canada and his own brand of thematic response in the criticism of Canadian literature. Gautier, Gary. “Henry and Sarah Fielding on Romance and Sensibility.” Novel 31, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 195–214. Stakes out a position for reading Fielding midway between Frye’s theory of romance and the ideologically grounded theory of Henry Knight Miller. Gavaler, Chris. “Genre Apocalypse.” Chronicle of Higher Education (26 January 2015). http://chronicle.com/ article/Genre-Apocalypse/151327/. On Frye’s place in the new questions about the study of genre. A response in part to Rothman, Joshua, below. Gay, David. “‘The Humanized God’: Biblical Paradigms of Recognition in Frye’s Final Three Books.” In Kee, Northrop Frye and the Afterlife of the Word, 39–57. Maintains that the culminating focus of recognition in Frye’s final three books is the idea of a humanized God, which is identified with the release of imaginative power. – “The Persistence of Vision: Northrop Frye in the Context of Religion.” Christianity and Literature 55, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 445–61. Review essay of Robert D. Denham, Northrop Frye: Religious Visionary and Architect of the Spiritual World; Jeffrey Donaldson and Alan Mendelson, eds., Frye and the Word; and Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts, ed. Robert D. Denham. – “‘Rapt Spirits’: 2 Corinthians 12.2–5 and the Language of Milton’s Comus.” Milton Quarterly 29, no. 3 (1995): 76–86. Notes Frye’s distinction between the language of love in Corinthians and the language of argument and refutation, in which Milton’s Comus is skilled.
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– “‘Waiting to Be Recognized’: Reading as Process in Northrop Frye’s The Double Vision.” Christianity and Literature 44 (Spring–Summer 1995): 327–43. Argues that Frye’s last book deliberately identifies critical and social vision. Gearey, Adam. “Love and Death in American Jurisprudence: Myth, Aesthetics, Law.” In Studies in Law, Politics and Society, vol. 33. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 2004. 3–23. Gebbia, Alessandro. “L’idea di letteratura canadese in Frye” [Frye’s Idea of Canadian Literature]. In Lombardo, Ritratto, 313–30. In Italian. On the aesthetic and social concerns in Frye’s criticism of Canadian literature. – “Introduzione” to La narrazioni magiche [The Magical Narratives], by Fredric Jameson. Rome: Lerici, 1977. In Italian. – “L’ultimo nuova mondo” [The Last New World]. MondOperaio 40 (June 1987): 115–17. In Italian. – “Osmosi tra le storie culturale e sociale” [Osmosis between Cultural and Social Stories]. Avanti (3 July 1987). In Italian. Geddes, John. “Frye Saw Antony and Cleopatra’s Air ‘Thick with Information’ Making It Shakespeare’s Perfect Play for the 21st Century.” Maclean’s (22 April 2016). On the impending 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, a reminiscence about having attended Frye’s nowpublished Shakespeare lectures. “Back in the early 1980s, Frye saw an era dawning that reminded him of Antony and Cleopatra. In the play, the Roman Empire sprawls into the Middle East; it’s nothing like the contained atmosphere audiences sense in Shakespeare’s English history plays. ‘We’re not in a closely knit kingdom anymore,’ Frye said. ‘There’s only one world, so there’s no patriotism, only more or less loyalty to competing leaders.’ The shared currency of this boundless world is what we might now call data or content. ‘There are any number of messengers in the play, and the air is thick with information and news,’ Frye observed, ‘but nothing seems to be getting communicated, although when something does happen it affects the whole world at once.’” – “Surviving the Era of ‘Tantrum Style’ Politics.” Maclean’s (24 September 2019). https://www.macleans. ca/politics/washington/surviving-the-era-of-tantrumstyle-politics/. Notes Frye’s critical preoccupation with cultivating what he called democracy’s “shaping and controlling vision.” Draws substantially on Frye’s analysis of political rhetoric in The Well-Tempered
Critic, where he writes, “A mob always implies some object of resentment, and political leaders who speak for the mob aspect of their society develop a special kind of tantrum style, a style constructed almost entirely out of unexamined clichés.” – “Trump, the Pure Voice of Ego.” Maclean’s (15 May 2017). “When I need to get clear on something that’s been written or spoken, I find it helps to turn to the late Northrop Frye, the peerless University of Toronto literary critic. Frye, as usual, comes through on this one. In The Well-Tempered Critic, published in 1963, he itemizes what the pure voice of ego likes to drone on about. ‘It can,’ Frye said, ‘express only the generic: food, sex, possessions, gossip, aggressiveness and resentments.’ Has Trump ever held forth on anything not on Frye’s short list? Obviously his default mode is to let flow a rhetorical sludge of aggressiveness and resentments. But, often enough, he has resorted to boasting about his possessions, or sunk to puerile sex talk, or merely gossiped, or even, as in the beautiful cake example, lapsed into banal food chatter. Any of these subjects, naturally, can be discussed engagingly. But Frye explained how they also lend themselves to predigested verbiage in a way that makes them irresistible subjects for the voice of ego. ‘Its natural affinity,’ he said, ‘is for the ready-made phrase, the cliché, because it tends to address itself to the reflexes of the hearer, rather than to his intelligence or emotions.’” Gellrich, Jesse. “The Structure of Allegory.” In The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition: Poetic-Epic-Tragic: The Literary Genre, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984. 505–19. Glances briefly at Frye’s symbolic concept of genre, which is seen as a means of opening up the New Critical tendency to derive meaning solely from the surface texture of literature. George, Jibu Mathew. “The Ontology of Gods: An Account of Enchantment, Disenchantment, and ReEnchantment.” InThe Ontology of Religious Narratives: Nuances, Potencies, and Crossovers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 85–93. Calls on Frye’s classification of fictions in the First Essay of Anatomy of Criticism according to the hero’s power of action. Gergen, Kenneth J., and Mary M. Gergen. “Narrative and the Self as Relationship.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology: Social Psychological Studies of the Self: Perspectives and Programs, ed. Leonard Berkowitz. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1988. 17–56. Translated into Hungarian as “A narratívumok és az Én, mint viszonyrendszer,” in Válogatás a szociális
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
megismerés szakirodalmából, ed. J. László. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1992. 127–73. Rpt. in Narratívák 5: Narratív pszichológia, ed. J. László and Beáta Thomka. Budapest: Kijárat, 2001. 77–119. In Hungarian. In this study of narrative psychology, the authors begin by describing the micro-structure of the “intelligible narrative” in Western culture, followed by a catalogue of the four basic types of narrative forms derived from Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. Frye’s mythoi are then combined with the authors’ definitions of narratives based on how they organize change in terms of a time continuum (stability narratives, progressive narratives, and regressive narratives). This produces the complex of narrative types: the tragic narrative (in which a progressive narrative is followed by a regressive one), the comedy-romance narrative (in which a regressive narrative is followed by a progressive one), the “happily ever after” narrative (in which a progressive narrative is followed by a stability narrative), and the romantic legend narrative (in which progressive and regressive phases alternate). Gerhardt, Christine, ed. Handbook of the American Novel of the Nineteenth Century. Boston and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2018. Frye’s views on romance and utopian fiction are noted. Gerhart, Mary. “Northrop Frye.” In The Question of Belief in Literary Criticism: An Introduction to the Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur. Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag H.-D. Heinz, 1979. 47–67. Chapter 2 is devoted to Frye’s general contribution and his views on the issue of belief. – “The Question of Belief in Literary Criticism.” In Creativity and Method: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, SJ, ed. Matthew Lamb. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1981. 385–8. Sees Frye’s work as representing a second stage of reflection on the question of the role of belief in literary criticism, following the first stage represented by I.A. Richards and preceding the present stage of neo-Kantians and hermeneutical critics. Summarizes Frye’s view on the issue: he seems to argue for a “categorical exclusion of the question of belief on the assumption that it is a threat to imagination,” but in fact he is always raising questions about meaning, verification, and commitment. Geritz, Albert. Review of The Portrayal of Life Stages in English Literature, 1500–1800: Infancy, Youth, Marriage, Aging, Death, Martyrdom: Essays in Honor of Warren Wooden, ed. Jeanie Watson and Philip McM. Pittman. Moreana 29, no. 109 (March 1992): 87–90. “Bennett A. Brockman’s ‘Medieval Children and the Poetics of Romance’ addresses this question: What did medieval
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children, whose literature was the same as that of their elders, learn from those romances? Brockman adds his observations about the romance genre to those of Henry James and Northrop Frye.” Gerrard, Alice, Henry Shannon, Alice Foster, Anglican Church of Canada, and United Church of Canada. Break Thru. Audiobook on LP. 2 audio discs, analog, 33 1/3 rpm. [Toronto]: United Church of Canada, 1967. Frye’s contributions highlighted in three areas: life on other planets, communications, and religion. Gerry, Thomas M.F. The Emblems of James Reaney. Erin, ON: Porcupine’s Quill Press, 2013. Notes the intellectual and imaginative debts Reaney owes to Frye, who was his dissertation adviser at the University of Toronto. – “‘Imagining Out Things’: The Act of Vision in James Reaney’s Alphabet.” University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 4 (October 2001): 357–68. “Many of Frye’s expressions of his insights into Blake’s ideas accurately describe James Reaney’s career as a visionary poet-dramatist.” – “Marvellous Playhouses: The Emblems of James Reaney.” Queen’s Quarterly 126, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 194–209. “The closing three textual lines of ‘Egypt’ are both a prayer for ‘vision’ and an intuitive conception of the world as it would be, reborn into freedom from the perspective harness pyramid grave [sic]. The words ‘dear’ and ‘brother’ indicate that in the recreated world love would be present and fundamental. Repeating the term that Warkentin stresses, in Fearful Symmetry Reaney’s teacher Northrop Frye explains that ‘Love, or the transformation of the objective into the beloved, and art, or the transformation of the object into the created, are the two activities pursued on this earth to repair the damage of the Fall.” Gerson, Carole. “Mid-Century Modernity and Fiction by Women, 1920–1950.” In The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, ed. Cynthia Sugars. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016. Notes that Frye and eight other early Canadian critics of Canadian literature were all educated abroad. Gervais, Marty. “Northrop Frye.” In Seeds in the Wilderness: Profiles of World Religious Leaders. Kingston, ON: Quarry Press, 1994. Chapter 21 is “Northrop Frye, The Great Code.” Getz, Kristina. “Big About Green”: The Ecopoetry of Earle Birney.” Canadian Literature 226 (Autumn 2015): 76–92. “While Frye noted that ‘[n]ature is consistently sinister and menacing in Canadian poetry,’ in Birney’s
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‘Transcontinental,’ it is humanity that presents the true menace.” Ghandeharion, Azra. “Yeats’s Archetypal Eternity in The Wild Swans at Coole.” Analele Universităţii Ovidius din Constanţa: Seria Filologie 1 (2015): 13–21. On Frye’s archetypal criticism as distinguished from that of Wheelwright and Jung. Gheran, Niculae. “Past History in the Dark Future: Romantic Heterotopias and the Preservation of Memories within the Dystopian City.” Caietele Echinox 27 (2014): 102–13. “Northrop Frye believed that ‘utopia is the comic inversion of the tragic structure of the “contract myth”’ and, hence, represents the desire for the restoration of that “which existing society has lost, forfeited, rejected, or violated.” Gibbons, Daniel R. “Inhuman Persuasion in The Tempest.” Studies in Philology 114, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 302–30. “Those who place greater weight on the affliction of Prospero’s mind, the fragility of his self-control, and the wrathful severity of his punishments throughout the play tend to see greater dramatic tension and moral urgency in the opening of the final act. One can see the contours of the disagreement in a survey of modern editorial commentaries. David Bevington portrays him as a wise humanist, burdened by responsibility, but not at all vicious. Northrop Frye regards Prospero as a thoroughly admirable model of self-control. . . .” Gieba, Kamila. “Schematy fabularne w polskiej literaturze okcydentalnej (na przykładzie prozy Eugeniusza Paukszty, Henryka Panasa i Józefa Hena)” [Fiction Schemes in Polish Occidental Literature (on the example of prose by Eugene Paukszty, Henry Panas, and Joseph Hen)]. Konteksty Kultury 4 (2014): 347–61. In Polish. “The paper analyses the plot patterns particular to the settler literature, dealing with the processes of settlement of the so-called Recovered Territories, annexed to Poland after 1945 in the aftermath of the Yalta Conference. For this analysis, Northrop Frye’s concept of plot patterns was applied. In the narratives under discussion, plot is usually organized by an ascending movement intended to correspond to positive transformations of the so-called Recovered Territories and improvement of the settlers’ situation. This is the case with novels by Eugeniusz Paukszta. The article also shows deviations from this principle, as introduced, among others, by Henryk Panas and Józef Hen. Transformation of the plot pattern customarily used in settler novels performs a demythologizing function and unmasks the negative aspects of the ‘resettlement epic.’”
Giffen, Sheila, and Brendan McCormick. “What’s New?” Canadian Literature 226 (Autumn 2015): 6–15. McCormick still finds it curious why he was not introduced to Frye in his post-secondary education. Gil Guerrero, Herminia. Poética narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2008. In Spanish. In a first chapter, entitled “A Growing Interest,” the author summarizes some works of literary criticism devoted to the influence of the Bible in literature in general, such as those of Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom. Gilbert, Elliot L. “‘A Wondrous Contiguity’: Anachronism in Carlyle’s Prophecy and Art.” PMLA 87, no. 3 (May 1972): 432–42. Notes that Thomas Carlyle’s writing has been deplored by some critics, Frye among them, as anachronistic; to the extent, however, that Carlyle considered time a “liar” and a “universal wonder-hider,” he deliberately employed anachronism both structurally and thematically in his work to express his most characteristic insights. Gilbert, Gaelan. “Martianus Capella and Saint Benedict: The Critical Arts of Encyclopedic Satire and New-old Forms-of-life.” Postmedieval, suppl. Critical/Liberal/Arts 6, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 406–16. “Mikhail Bakhtin and Northrop Frye have each emphasized that the Menippa or encyclopedic satire was a form of intellectual parody which targeted lofty individuals or schools of thought, casting them in scenarios of dialogue, dining and drinking—symposia, to be precise—as a way of critically disclosing the limits of their practical relevance.” Gilbert, Paula R., and Lorna M. Irvine. “Pre- and Postmortem: Regendering and Serial Killing in Rioux, Dandurand, Dé, and Atwood.” American Review of Canadian Studies 29, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 119–39. “When Northrop Frye wrote his now-famous concluding essay for the 1965 Literary History of Canada, he argued that Canadians historically have had significant respect for law and order in the face of mammoth, threatening, and sometimes monstrous wilderness space. Although Frye uses European existentialism and the Russian Revolution as examples of different social structures and philosophies, his underlying comparison throughout the essay is, in fact, between Canada and the United States. Assuming Canada’s overriding mythology to be pastoral, Frye found it an easy step to emphasize that Canada, unlike the United States with its history of revolution and technological productivity, is on a ‘quest for the peaceable kingdom.’ Following Frye’s lead, and writing a few years later, historians such as William Kilbourn have extended Frye’s assertion; writing in ‘The Quest
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
for the Peaceable Kingdom,’ Kilbourn suggests that the British North America Act ‘sets up objectives of peace, order and good government’ and, further developing the assumed contrast between Canada and the United States, argues that ‘in a masculine world of the assertive will and the cutting edge of intellect, a certain Canadian tendency to the amorphous permissive feminine principle of openness and toleration and acceptance offers the possibility of healing.’ Both Frye’s emphasis on peace and Kilbourn’s—and other historians’— willingness to gender North America so casually have been roundly debunked.” Gilchrist, Kim. “Mucedorus: The Last Ludic Playbook, the First Stage Arcadia.” Shakespeare (14 November 2017): 1–20. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/ 17450918.2017.1393455. “Argues that two seemingly contradictory factors contributed to and sustained the success of the anonymous Elizabethan play Mucedorus (c. 1590; pub. 1598). First, that both the initial composition of Mucedorus and its Jacobean revival were driven in part by the popularity of its source, Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. Second, the playbook’s invitation to amateur playing allowed its romance narrative to be adopted and repurposed by diverse social groups. These two factors combined to create something of a paradox, suggesting that Mucedorus was both open to all yet iconographically connected to an elite author’s popular text. Frye dismissed its combination of apparently simplistic romance and clowning as an example of ‘simple-minded plays of the public theatre.’” Gilead, Sarah. “Ubi Sunt: Allusion and Temporality in Victorian Poetry.” Victorian Poetry 56, no. 3 (Fall 2018): 265–85. “Scholars have noted the ways in which literary allusion rests on the notion of ‘the poet as heir.’ Christopher Ricks, citing J.B. Broadbent as the originator of the phrase, explains that ‘[l]iterary allusion is a way of dealing with the predicaments and responsibilities of ‘the poet as heir’” and of poetic ‘inheritance.’ As Northrop Frye points out in his essay on ‘Lycidas,’ the speaker of traditional elegy positions himself as inheritor of his predecessor’s poetic power: ‘In pastoral elegy the poet who laments the death is often so closely associated with the dead man as to make him a kind of double or shadow of himself.’” Gill, Glen Robert. “Archetypal Criticism: Jung and Frye.” In A Companion to Literary Theory, ed. David H. Richter. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley/Blackwell, 2018. 396–407. Argues that Frye developed his theory of the archetype through his study of Blake’s poetry and Frazer’s The Golden Bough, a theory he then applied to literature at large in Anatomy of Criticism.
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– “Beyond Anagogy: Northrop Frye’s Existential (Re) Visions.” In O’Grady and Wang, Northrop Frye, 42–53. Focuses on the principles of kerygma and ecstatic metaphor in Frye’s Words with Power: kerygma is “both the medium and the message of a collective humanistic epiphany.” – “Conclusion: Phenomenology and Postmodern Mythography: Northrop Frye’s Words with Power and the Theory of Kerygma.” In Northrop Frye and the Phenomenology of Myth. University of Toronto Press, 2006. 179–202. – “The Dialectics of Myth: Northrop Frye’s Theory of Culture.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE–L’Harmattan, 2014. 72–89. Argues that there has been a bifurcation in the view of Frye as a theorist of myth and as a social and cultural critic. Demonstrates that the two views are interrelated and interdependent as dialectical phases or elements in a single, over-arching vision or theory of myth-as-cultural-process. – “The Fisher Queen: Northrop Frye’s ‘Royal Metaphor’ and Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Fish.’” In Divisions of the Heart: Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Memory and Place, ed. Sandra Barry et al. Wolfville, NS: Gaspereau, 2001. 209–16. – “The Flesh Made Word: Body and Spirit in the New Archetypology of Northrop Frye.” In Donaldson and Mendelson, Frye and the Word, 123–36. Surveys Frye’s theory of myth and his notion of primary concerns. Argues that the kerygmatic thrust in Frye’s late work has an existential and phenomenological dimension, providing us with myths to live by. – “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye on Twentieth-Century Literature. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 29. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. xxiii–lviii. – “Northrop Frye’s Words with Power: The Function of Myth Criticism at the Present Time.” In Wang and O’Grady, New Directions, 199–218. Argues that Words with Power can lead to “a fuller awareness of the relationship between mythology, ideology, and history.” – Re-envisioning Myth in Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 31, no. 1 (2019) 3–15. “As literary critic Northrop Frye explains, myth requires continual revision and representation: ‘Myths have been retold and reinterpreted in countless ways by later writers, and will be to the end of human culture as we know it. . . . It does not follow that these repetitions of myths go back to a
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still more profound myth in the remote past. . . . [I]t is simpler to assume that the real sense of profundity is derived from the opposite process—that is, the accumulation and constant recreation.’” Gill, Sam. Review of The Semiotic of Myth: A Critical Study of the Symbol, by James Jakób Liszka. American Anthropologist 93, no. 3 (September 1991): 729–30. “Liszka analyzes the structure of myth in conversation with the positions of Vladimir Propp, Claude LéviStrauss, A. J. Greimas, and Claude Bremond. He uses the literary criticism of Northrop Frye. He recognizes myth narratives as oriented by one of four strategies—tragedy, comedy, romance, satire/irony— for reorganizing the tensions between hierarchical order and its disruption. Myths have a fundamental ambivalence toward the hierarchies they represent, and it is due to this ambivalence that myths must interpret.” Gillespie, Gerald E.P. “Newer Archaeologies of the Soul: Avatars of Religious Consciousness in Modern European Fiction.” Neohelicon 42, no. 2 (December 2015): 415–23. “By the late seventeenth century European savants could consult such ingenious speculations on the evolution of religion as Athanasius Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652) and Ralph Cudworth’s The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678). Among strands to follow in the grand narrative that works like these propose, we could, for example, focus on those elements which the critic Northrop Frye examined a generation ago in The Great Code: The Bible and Literature . . . With many fascinating nodular points over several millennia tacitly in mind, I will start out here arbitrarily from the Revolutionary age and the nineteenth century to consider some ways in which avatars of religious consciousness are reflected in literary works down to the present.” – “Rewriting an Older Genre: The Example of Norman Tutorow’s Addendum to the New.” Interlitteraria 2 (2010): 571–6. “Thus the Autobiography is proudly a miniaturized ‘newer’ testament that attempts to point the way toward superseding many aspects of the enormous inheritance of textual habits which the bible tradition has imprinted on Eurocentric cultures—a subject treated in major studies such as Northrop Frye’s The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981). In ‘rewriting’ Scripture, in no small measure against untold generations of preceding exegetes, but also in selective agreement with more recent biblical scholarship.” Gilliot, Claude. “Kontinuität und Wandel in der ‘klassischen’ islamischen Koranauslegung (II./VII.-XII./ XIX. Jh.)” [Continuity and Change in the “Classical” Islamic Interpretation of the Koran]. Der Islam 85, no. 1
(2008): 1–155. In German. Notes that just as the Bible is the “Great Code” for Christianity, in Blake’s sense and in Frye’s, so the Koran is the “Great Code” for Islam. Giltrow, Janet, and David Stouck. “‘Survivors of the night’: The Language and Politics of Epic in Antonine Maillet’s Pelagie-la-charrette.” University of Toronto Quarterly 71, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 735–54. “The most extensive theory of mode in literary study, Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism differs from what we observe in that it is more closely tied to history. Expanding on an idea in Aristotle’s Poetics, Frye classifies literature in five different modes according to the hero’s power of action: myth, romance, high and low mimesis, and irony. This is the basis for what Frye calls ‘historical criticism,’ and his survey of fifteen hundred years of European literature traces the centre of gravity moving steadily down the list from myth in the early Middle Ages to the ironic mode in the twentieth century. Although Frye allows for the presence of other modes during a given period (irony in Chaucer, for example), his understanding of mode is essentially a historical one.” Gin, Pascal. “Frontières et transversalité: La mondialisation littéraire à l’épreuve du comparatisme canadien” [Frontiers and Transversality: Literary Globalization Challenged by Canadian Comparatism]. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 36, no. 1 (2009): 25–39. Begins by suggesting that Frye’s famous question about Canadian identity, “Where is here,” is today more complex than questions about the specificity of place. “Here is where” might be a more appropriate question to ask about the localization of literary knowledge in a globalized world. Gingrich, Brian. “Pace and Epiphany.” New Literary History 49, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 361–82. “The main challenge for a critical analysis of epiphany lies in attending to its split mythical/historical character. Northrop Frye defines epiphany twice in the Anatomy of Criticism (1957): once from an archetypal perspective, as ‘the symbolic presentation of the point at which the undisplaced apocalyptic world and the cyclical world of nature come into alignment,’ and once from a historical one, as ‘the kind of non-didactic revelation’ presented by the ironic poets who, ‘succeed[ing] the Romantics,’ ‘turn away from the world’ toward considerations of ‘craftsmanship.’” Ginnan, Alexander. “From Recoil to Ruination.” Cineaction 86 (2012): 14–17. According to Bart Testa “the Canadian (he is referring to the English-speaking settler society) response to the landscape engendered a particular cast of mind which Northrop Frye theorized as ‘the garrison mentality.’ According to
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Frye, the Canadian experience consists of two spaces: the landscape with its inhuman scale and threatening otherness, and a safe interior space carved out for the sake of human survival.” Girard, René. “Doubles and the Pharmakos: LéviStrauss, Frye, Derrida, and Shakespeare.” In Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire, ed. Mark Anspach. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. 95–106. Looks at Frye’s discussion of the pharmakos as contributing to our understanding of the undifferentiated qualities of myth and ritual. – “Lévi-Strauss, Frye, Derrida, and Shakespearean Criticism.” Diacritics 3 (Fall 1973): 34–8. Uses Frye’s discussion of pharmakos to lend support to his own argument about “differentiation” in myth and ritual. Girardi, Enzo Noé. “Critica e letteratura nell’opera di Northrop Frye” [Criticism and Literature in the Work of Northrop Frye]. L’analisi critica e letteraria (2008): 47–81. In Italian. Girevska, Marija. “Сеќавање на Светото писмо: Стариот завет во Џојсовата “Телéмахијада” [Remembering the Scripture: Old Testament in Joyce’s “Telemachiad”]. Context/Контекст 16 (2017): 135–43. In Croatian. “Northrop Frye reads Joyce’s contribution to world literature and culture as a continuity of Christian tradition.” Gitay, Yehoshua. “Literary Criticism versus Public Criticism: Further Thoughts on the Matter of Biblical Scholarship.” In Methodology, Speech, Society: The Hebrew Bible. Stellenbosch: SUN MeDia, 2011. 13–29. Appeared originally in Old Testament Essays 19, no. 2 (2006): 633–49. Refers to Frye’s distinction between the public critic and the scholar. Notes how literary-textual scholars such as Frye have affected biblical scholarship. – “The Promise: The Winding Road—Genesis 13–14 in Light of a Theory of Narrative Studies.” Old Testament Essays 20, no. 2 (2007): 352–64. Begins with Frye’s principle that criticism “is a structure of thought and knowledge existing in its own right, with some measure of independence from the art it deals with.” Glaeser, Andreas. Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. In articulating a theory of identity formation, turns to the work of Frye, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Wittgenstein, and others. – “Hermeneutic Institutionalism: Towards a New Synthesis.” Qualitative Sociology 37, no. 2 (2014): 207– 41. “Herder’s (1772) path-breaking essay on the origins of language has helped to spur an explosion of research
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into the poetic possibilities of ‘natural’ languages by showing the hermeneutic work they enable through . . . ‘genre contexting’ as in Bakhtin and Frye.” Glausser, Wayne. “Groundhog Day at 25: Conflict and Inspiration at the Tipping Point of Seasonal Genres.” Journal of Religion and Film 23, no. 1 (April 2019): 1–21. “Says that Theorist of Archetypes Northrop Frye classified the major literary genres as four types, which he aligned with the four seasons. Frye correlated satire with winter and comedy with spring. February 2, Groundhog Day, sits halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. (This position accounts for the day’s importance to Wiccans, who emphasize the seasonal midway points.) The movie Groundhog Day literally takes place at this tipping point between winter and spring; in the more figurative sense, it sits poised between satire, the genre of winter, and comedy, the genre of spring. Ultimately, spring and the hopeful perspective of its director took control of the movie’s plot. But the dark satire of its star lead actor left indelible marks of winter on the finished narrative.” Glebovich, Afanasiev Sergey. “Extrapolation of Psychoanalysis by Empathy.” Society: Philosophy, History, Culture (20 December 2017). https://m. cyberleninka.ru/article/n/hudozhestvennoe-vospriyatiev-kontekste-teorii-empatii. In Russian. Deals with the provisions of empathic theories, particularly psychoanalytic ones, of art criticism. The proper form of such theories is found in the work of Frye, Norman Holland, and J. Poole. Glick, David. “Tragedy as Mediation: The Black Jacobins.” The Black Radical Tragic: Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution. New York: New York University Press, 2016. “The historicizing rigor of [David] Scott’s political periodization—in other words, the problem-space—does not carry over into his literary periodization: the opposition between romance and tragedy. In a sense it’s a problem of mediation. Michael McKeon’s insight into the work of Northrop Frye resonates here: ‘So far from enabling a theory of literary history, Frye’s modal periodization freezes history into an immobile “literary structure.” Literary modes are transhistorical; genres are historical. Genres can rise and fall and come and go—like empires or dinosaurs. Genres subtly refract and capture the interplay of residual and emergent properties and developments.” Glickman, Susan. “My Life with Northrop Frye: A Personal Take on the Nationalist Debate in Canlit History.” Books in Canada 31, no. 6 (September 2002): 39–40; revised version appears in Ellipse: Texts littéraires canadiens en traduction/Canadian Writing in Translation 87–88
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(2012): 14–20. Argues that Frye is wrong about the relation of the form of Canadian poetry to the British tradition. – “Northrop Frye’s Vision of Culture.” UBC Reports 37, no. 3 (2 February 1991): 2. – The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1998. Maintains that critics of Canadian literature—Frye and Margaret Atwood in particular—have misinterpreted the country’s dominant poetic tradition by claiming that it views nature as hostile. Admits that there is some truth to “Frye’s vision of a nation of malcontents huddled indoors, cursing the wilderness, and dreaming of warmer and more civilized places.” Yet stresses that most Canadian critics have shown remarkably “little awareness of the prestige of terror as an aesthetic category during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” That is, critics like Frye and Atwood fail to discern that the “terror” in much of Canadian nature poetry reflects the ruling aesthetic fashions at the time rather than just representing a “uniquely local pathology.” Glomb, Stefan. “Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism.” In Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon, vol. 21. Munich: J.B. Metzler, 1998. 433 ff.
his idol Bringhurst at the centenary conference on Frye held at Victoria College in 2012. – “The Legacy of Northrop Frye’s Vision of William Blake.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth. University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013. Godeanu-Kenworthy, Oana. “Creole Frontiers: Imperial Ambiguities in John Richardson’s and James Fenimore Cooper’s Fiction.” Early American Literature 49, no. 3 (2014): 741–70. In John Richardson’s Wacousta the “wilderness is not presented nostalgically. There is no ‘frontier’ to be settled in the American definition of the term; nature is an indomitable force, threateningly encroaching on the white settlements petrified in what Canadian theorist Northrop Frye calls a defensive ‘garrison mentality.’ Frye coined the term to define the general outlook of colonial Canada in which the settlers, not the wilderness, were perceived as weaker and endangered. Frye’s metaphor of the garrison captures a significant difference between Canadian and American narratives of the relationship between settlers and the wilderness. In the case of the latter, the natural world is to be conquered, tamed, and civilized by self-reliant individuals moving west.”
Godard, Barbara. “Feminism and/as Myth: Feminist Literary Theory between Frye and Barthes.” Atlantis 16 (April 1991): 3–21. Rpt. in Theory and Praxis: Curriculum, Culture and English Studies, ed. Prafulla C. Kar, Kailash C. Baral, and Sura P. Rath. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2003. Chap. 9.
Goedegebuure, Jaap. “The Bible in Modern Dutch Fiction.” In Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture Book: Reframing the Past, ed. Jane Fenoulhet and Lesley Gilbert. London: University College London Press, 2016. “I would like to argue that even though modern literature has undergone a process of secularization during the last two centuries, the Bible has remained a very rich source for poets and novelists, not only because of its stylistic and rhetorical aspects, as Northrop Frye amply illustrated in The Great Code and Words with Power, but also as a set of narrative models.”
– “Structuralism/PostStructuralism: Language, Reality and Canadian Literature.” Future Indicative: Literary Theory and Canadian Literature, ed. John Moss. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1987. 25–51 [27–33]. As background for looking at the poststructuralist critical practice in Canada, traces the differing perceptions that Canadian critics have had of Frye, as well as their differing critiques.
Godin, Benoît. “‘Innovation Studies’: Staking the Claim for a New Disciplinary ‘Tribe.’” Minerva 52, no. 4 (2014): 489–95. Review of Innovation Studies: Evolution & Future Challenges, by Ian Fagerberg, Ben R. Martin, and Esben Sloth Andersen. The “linear narrative of the romantic progress of ‘innovation studies’ towards Frye’s ‘happy ending’ resonates throughout the chapters of the book.”
Godbout, Kevin. “Robert Bringhurst’s Voice and the Ghost of Northrop Frye.” Brick Books (14 May 2015). https:// www.brickbooks.ca/robert-bringhurst-presentedby-kevin-godbout/. On the author’s admiration of Bringhurst as a poet and intellectual and about meeting
Goffart, Walter A. The Narrators of Barbarian History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Uses Frye’s theories to help answer questions about the nature and value of the Roman literary sources in Wolfram’s History of the Goths.
Glover, Douglas. The Enamoured Knight. Oberon Press, 2004. Appraises the form of Don Quixote, with help from Ian Watt, Mikhail Bakhtin, Milan Kundera, and Northrop Frye, among others.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
Gohil, K.P. “The Archetypes of Literature” (April 2018). https://kpgohil108.blogspot.com/2018/04/thearchetypes-of-literature-1951.html. “I’m going to share my own views regarding academic thinking activity on ‘The Archetypes of Literature’ written by Northrop Frye.” Goicoechea, David. “The Redemptive Future in Northrop Frye’s Typological Repetition.” Paper presented at Brock University, 14 February 1986. Unpublished typescript. 13 pp. Argues that Frye’s concept of typology in The Great Code is “a mode of thought and a figure of speech that has a double movement”: the spatial, which lifts biblical literature upward toward the level of anagogy and away from literal, historical meaning; and the horizontal or temporal, which through the authority of myth and metaphor “lets the past interpenetrate with the present by way of the future.” Uses Kierkegaard’s idea of repetition (“retaking”) to illustrate how Frye’s typological readings transcend the literal, ethical, and allegorical meanings of ordinary spatial and temporal understanding. Golban, Petru. “An Attempt to Establish a Bildungsroman Development History: Nurturing the Rise of a Subgenre from Ancient Beginnings to Romanticism.” Humanitas 5 (2017): 111–41. “Among the aspects of transition and as an essential difference between the romance and the novel is the element of characterization, which is also important for our surveyistic approach to the Bildungsroman development history. The most concise remark on this matter belongs to Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, in which he claims that the romancer ‘does not attempt to create “real people” so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes,’ whereas the novelist deals with personality, with characters wearing their personae or social masks. However, we may disagree with Frye’s affirmation that the romance deals with individuality and the novelist needs the framework of a stable society.” – “Victorian Critics and Metacritics: Arnold, Pater, Ruskin and the Independence of Literary Criticism.” Humanitas—Uluslararası Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 3 (2014): 47–68. “Northrop Frye speaks about the popular among artists’ conception of the critic as a ‘parasite and consequently literary criticism as a ‘parasite form of literary expression, an art based on pre-existing art, a second hand imitation of creative power.’” Golban, Petru, and Goksel Ozturk. “An Attempt to Survive from Paralysis: Epiphanies in Dubliners.” Border Crossing 1 (2017): 169–87. “Coexisting in the first half of the twentieth century with realism—a trend continuing the Victorian tradition as the art of verisimilitude and implicit simile (for Northrop Frye)—modernism
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represents a period as well as an umbrella term to name a number of trends and movements which are different, even contradictory, but unified by the rejection of tradition and rules; expression of the innovative, original, experimental spirit; search for new methods of expression to make the text difficult and disturbing, eventually “writerly” (as for Barthes); the concern with remote past, myths and archetypes instead of actual periods; search for stronger values and grounds, while revealing a challenge to the modern reliance on reason, mind, science, the possibility of truthful representation of reality. . . .” Golban, Tatiana. “The Apocalypse Myth in Louis de Bernières’ Novel Birds without Wings: Rustem Bey and an Individual Apocalyptic Experience in the Kierkegaardian Frame.” Analele Universităţii Ovidius din Constanţa. Seria Filologie 1 (2015): 44–52. According to Northrop Frye, the vocabulary of dramatic assumptions is likely to be found in the cycle of the great processes of nature. The mythical basis of comedy is the natural movement of its forces towards rebirth and renewal. Gold, Joseph. “Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature.” English Studies in Canada 9, no. 4 (December 1983): 487–98. Goldberg, Homer. “Center and Periphery: Implications of Frye’s ‘Order of Words.’” Paper read at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, Chicago, 27 December 1971. 12 pp. Photoduplicated. Defines some underlying premises Frye shares with a broad strain of modern criticism and explores the consequences of these premises for the way we view his theory. Sees Frye as continuing the tradition of the New Critics because of his dialectical opposition of two orders of language: discursive and poetic discourse. Comments on the set of values that is implicit in Frye’s bias toward the mythic and paradigmatic. Goldberg, Michael. “Searching for the Jesus of History.” Judaism 45, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 368. On Frye’s contention that “there is practically no real evidence for the life of Jesus outside the New Testament, all the evidence . . . being hermetically sealed within it.” Golden, Leon. “Aristotle, Frye, and the Theory of Tragedy.” Comparative Literature 27 (Winter 1975): 47– 58. Assesses our current understanding of the nature of tragedy based on the contributions of Aristotle and Frye, and then suggests a method by which their theoretical statements can lead to a fuller understanding of the potentialities and boundaries of tragedy. Draws from both the First and Third Essays of Anatomy of Criticism
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(theory of modes and theory of myths) in analysing Frye’s theory of tragedy. Goldie, Terry. “Louis Dudek.” Canadian Writers and Their Works (Poetry Series, vol. 5), ed. Robert Lecker et al. Toronto: ECW Press, 1985. 73–139 [118–20]. Traces Dudek’s negative reaction, throughout a series of his essays, to Frye’s view of literature and the imagination. Goldman, Marlene. “A History of Forgetting: Cognitive Decline and Historical Cycles of Degeneration.” In Forgotten: Narratives of Age-Related Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in Canada. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Pres, 2017. “In Caroline Adderson’s A History of Forgetting, “The biting of Malcolm’s cheek, a gesture that fuses animal rage with the consumption of human flesh, recalls Northrop Frye’s analysis of the relationship between the Eucharist symbolism and its demonic parody. According to Frye, in the demonic apocalyptic world we often ‘find the cannibal feast, the serving up of a child or lover as food.” – “Introduction: Literature, Imagination, Ethics.” University of Toronto Quarterly 76, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 809–20. “Two distinct yet related moments in Canadian cultural history underscore the differences between philosophical and literary modes of thought and analysis. These moments are Northrop Frye’s Massey Lecture The Educated Imagination, delivered in 1963, and Margaret Somerville’s Massey Lecture of 2006, The Ethical Imagination. Separated by about 40 years, these talks shed light on the distinct conceptions of the relationship of ethics to imagination and literature held by Frye, a formative literary theorist, and Somerville, one of Canada’s leading moral philosophers. The comparison between the vision of a literary critic and an ethicist highlights the difficulties associated with the marriage between literary theory and ethics and also isolates specific tensions between literature and ethics.” Goldsmith, Steven. “William Blake and the Future of Enthusiasm.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 63, no. 4 (March 2009): 439–60. “If, according to Alexander Pope, Longinus became what he beheld when he wrote his criticism on the Homeric sublime ‘with a Poet’s Fire,’ then something similar might be said of Blake’s critics: they often express the enthusiasm they set out to describe. Finding themselves caught up in Northrop Frye’s ‘fiery understanding,’ early reviewers of his Fearful Symmetry admired the author’s ‘unflagging energy’ and ‘great enthusiasm’ for his subject.” Golgonooza (Blogger’s “name”). “Blake and the Spiritual Body, by Northrop Frye.” https://thehumandivine.org/2016/03/27/
blake-and-the-spiritual-body-by-northrop-frye/. An extensive and illustrated anthology of passages from Frye’s Fearful Symmetry about the conception of body in Blake’s work. Gómez, David Amezcua. “El lugar de la crítica literaria de Northrop Frye en la literatura (canadiense)” [The Place of Northrop Frye’s Literary Criticism in (Canadian) Literature]. Castilla: Estudios de Literatura 4 (2013): 282–97. In Spanish. Begins with a tribute by Margaret Atwood to Northrop Frye after his death. Atwood stated: ‘Because [of] its style, flexibility, and a formal elegance, its broad range and systematic structure, Frye’s literary criticism takes place within the body of literature itself.” Gomez analyses aspects of Frye’s criticism that reinforce and boost its literary merit. – “Northrop Frye en el centenario de su nacimiento, 1912–2012” [Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth, 1912–2012]. Tonos Digital 23 (July 2012). http:// www.tonosdigital.es/ojs/index.php/tonos/article/ viewFile/810/543. “This article presents some axial lines underlying Northrop Frye’s literary theory. Moreover, the article is presented as a reappraisal of his critical and theoretical proposals from a contemporary point of view. We are taking into account, as well, the fact that 2012 is a significant year due to the celebration of the centenary of Frye’s birth. We have paid a special attention to three major works, which are the Anatomy of Criticism (1957), The Secular Scripture (1976) and The Great Code (1982). On the other hand, it is suggested that Northrop Frye’s critical work constitutes a sort of typological unity, which is modeled on the unity that Frye finds between the so-called Secular Scripture and the Scriptures (Bible). We also suggest a literary side as well as a rhetorical basis in Frye’s work, which lead us to consider his criticism as a sort of creative criticism. Finally, it is suggested that Frye’s poetics seem to go along critical paths other than the ones we have traditionally and conventionally assumed in the past. In this sense, we suggest and encourage new approaches to his criticism that may enrich our perception of Frye’s work.” (author’s abstract) Gómez, Leila. Review of Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine in Twentieth-Century Tropical Narratives, by Charlotte Rogers. Modernism/Modernity 20, no. 1 (January 2013): 141–3. “Following Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell, Rogers analyses the hero’s journey in terms of a reverse quest romance; the hero that departs from home does not overcome his obstacles and adventures and does not return triumphant over adversity. Instead of narrating the hero’s successful return, these novels [Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
André Malraux’s La voie royale, and José Eustasio Rivera’s La vorágine] are accounts of the antihero’s failure, and they debunk the very foundation of ‘quest romance’ as a genre. Rogers also argues that these novels question not only the genre but also the allegedly rational superiority of the west. These narratives reveal a transition from romanticism to modernism in that they incorporate the language of medicine and psychiatry to explain the madness that possesses the tropical hero and his inevitable mental decline and failure. For Rogers, ‘[w]hile eighteenth- and nineteenth-century adventures extol the virtues of empire and rationality embodied in their heroes, their twentieth century counterparts . . . contain dark subtexts that reflect the authors’ growing ambivalence toward Europe’s colonization of large swaths of the globe.’” Gomis Van Heteren, Annette. “Utopia, Genre and Nineteen Eighty-Four.” In Dreams and Realities: Versions of Utopia in English Fiction from Dickens to Byatt, ed. Annette Gomis Van Heteren and Miguel Martínez López. Almería: Universidad de Almería, Servicio de Publicaciones, 1997. Provides an exposition of the debate about the genre of Nineteen EightyFour by Frye and others. Gonçalves, Adelto. “Graciliano Ramos: Visões do Inferno” [Graciliano Ramos: Visions of Hell]. Minas Gerais, Suplemento Literário 26, no. 1177 (26 September 1992): 12–16. In Portuguese. Gonçalves, Aquinaldo José. “Dom Casmurro: Mímesis das categorias narrativas” [Dom Casmurro: Mimesis of the Narrative Categories]. Revista de letras 29 (1989): 1–10. In Portuguese. Establishes the relationship between Frye’s theory of myths and the four narrative categories in Machado de Assis’s novel, Dom Casmurro. González, Francisco Colom. “The Nation as Narration: The Narrative Structure of National Imagination.” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 28, no. 82 (2013): 107–18. In Portuguese. “To follow a story is not only to include surprises or discoveries in it, but also to understand the episodes already known as steps leading to a later end. The role of the plot is fundamental in this task. Through it the events narrated integrate chronologically into the configuration of a story, but unlike the chronicle, perceived as a series of random incidents and isolated actions, a plot presents itself as a totality endowed with meaning. Following Northrop Frye and his theory on the archetypal forms of the narrative, [Hayden] White recognized in nineteenth-century European historiography the traits of the romantic drama of redemption, of satire about human impotence, of the
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ironic reconciliation between the world of the social and the natural and resignation tragic to the destination.” González Pascual, Alberto. El pensamiento político de Fredric Jameson: Discurso utópico para la transformación de la sociedad y la defensa del débil [The Political Thought of Fredric Jameson: Utopian Discourse for the Transformation of Society and the Defence of the Weak]. Madrid: Librería Dykinson, S.L., 2016. In Spanish. Devotes substantial attention to Frye’s influence on Jameson and the differences between them, especially Frye’s emphasis on the personal vision at the expense of the communal. González Torres, Elizabeth. “Una mirada desde la psicocrítica a ‘El Horla’ de Guy de Maupassant” [A Look from Psychocritics to ‘’El Horla’’ by Guy de Maupassant]. Fuentes Humanísticas 54 (2017): 29–46. In Spanish. Notes the connections between Frye’s work, among that of other critics, and psychoanalytic theory. González-Treviño, Ana Elena. Female Spaces and the Gothic Imagination in The Book of Thel and Visions of the Daughters of Albion in William Blake’s Gothic Imagination. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, pub. online 2018. “Northrop Frye has described them [Blake’s two poems] as a tragedy of a will and a tragedy of feeling, respectively. By construing them as tragedies, Frye is highlighting the unsatisfactory note on which both works end, while conceding that these two rather unusual long poems may at first appear to belong to the light pastoral genre actually have a tragic dimension.” Gong, Shi Xue and Liping Wang. “Archetypal Meaning of ‘Tian’ in Chinese Myth.” Journal of Shayang Teachers College 3 (2004). In Chinese. Good, Edwin M. “Apocalyptic as Comedy: The Book of Daniel.” Semeia 32 (1984): 41–70. Sees the Book of Daniel as a comedy in Frye’s sense of the mythos. Good, Graham. “Northrop Frye and Liberal Humanism.” Canadian Literature 148 (September 1996): 75–91. Rpt. as “The Liberal Humanist Vision: Frye and Culture as Freedom” in Good’s Humanism Betrayed: Theory, Ideology, and Culture in the Contemporary University. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. 89–102. Argues that liberal humanism is central to Frye’s enterprise throughout his career. While liberal humanism has its limitations, it nevertheless shows the way to establish “a truly inclusive civilization,” unlike the carceral vision of present theory and cultural studies, which denies “human liberty, creativity, and progress.”
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Goode, Mike. “The Joy of Looking: What Blake’s Pictures Want.” Representations 119, no. 1 (June 2012): 1–36. “What William Blake’s pictures want from us may not be clear, but what scholars want from them has been apparent for some time now. Ever since Northrop Frye, Jean Hagstrum, and W.J.T. Mitchell insisted that we should regard Blake’s intricately wrought picture-poems, or illuminated books, as verbal-visual ‘composites,’ critics of literature and art alike have sought to locate their greatest political, intellectual, and aesthetic significance in their compositeness.” Goodheart, Eugene. “The Failure of Criticism.” New Literary History 7 (Winter 1976): 377–92 [384–6]. Rpt. in Goodheart, The Failure of Criticism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. 17–20. Examines Frye’s work in relation to the humanist tradition and concludes that despite Frye’s talk in The Critical Path about the myths of concern and belief, his critical system is too detached and too impersonal. Frye removes “the problem of humanism from the area of will and choice,” and thus avoids “the question of the impact of culture on society.” Maintains that Frye’s commitment is not to literature but to system-building. Goodman, Ralph. “Problematics of Utopian Discourse: The Trim Garden and the Untidy Wilderness.” English Studies in Africa 46, no. 1 (2003): 1–13. “As long ago as 1966, Northrop Frye maintained that Utopia ‘cannot return to the old-style spatial Utopias. New Utopias would have to derive their form from the shifting and dissolving movements of society that is gradually replacing the fixed locations of life.’” Goodman, Russell B. “Emerson, Romanticism, and Classical American Pragmatism.” In The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy, ed. Cheryl Kisak. Oxford University Press, 2008. “Romanticism is too complex a phenomenon to be defined adequately in a few pages, let alone a few paragraphs, but we can think of it as a long process that began in late eighteenth-century Europe and that we are still engaged in: of casting off what Northrop Frye calls ‘an encyclopaedic myth, derived mainly from the Bible,’ according to which God is the origin of all creation. In the new romantic myth, human creativity assumes a central place.” “A Good Place to Start on the Study of Ethics.” The Australian (14 February 2020): 15. “One person who took the philosophy of classical comedy seriously was Northrop Frye, a mid-20th-century literary critic. For Frye, comedy was the dramatic form in which the Greeks and Romans imagined how flawed humans could be reconciled with the demands of ethical norms and virtues. He located comedy’s essence in a famous line
from The Self-Tormentor: ‘Nothing human is alien to me.’ This is actually Chremes’s justification for butting into Menedemus’s business, but Frye and others have taken it more broadly, as a battle-cry for humanist ethics.” Goodman-Thau, Eveline. Memory and Morality after Auschwitz. Nordhausen: Verlad T. Bautz GmbH, 2017. Quotes Frye at length on the difference between scholarly indifference and detachment. See also Goodman-Thau’s “Shoah and Tekuma—Jewish Memory and Morality between History and Redemption.” Lingua: Language and Culture 1 (2010): 13–31. Goosey, Veronica. “Building a Vision of Paradise: The Imaginative Hero in Northrop Frye’s ‘The Archetypes of Literature.’” Paper presented at the 20th Annual National Undergraduate Literature Conference, Weber State University, Ogden, UT, 2 April 2005. Gorak, Jan. “From Escape to Irony: Frye’s ‘The Argument of Comedy.’” In O’Grady and Wang, Northrop Frye, 69–81, and in Wang and O’Grady, New Directions, 153–72. On the intellectual context of the development of Frye’s theory of comedy (Bergson, Freud, Edmund Wilson, H.L. Mencken) and on the difference between Frye and his forebears: his vision alone stresses society’s ability to renew itself. In the final analysis, however, Frye steps back from the utopian dream of comedy in favour of an ironic and sceptical attitude towards the authority of visionary truths. – “Frye and the Comedy of Humors.” Paper presented at Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth. University of Toronto, 4–6 October 2013. – “Frye and the Instruments of Mental Production.” https://macblog.mcmaster.ca/fryeblog/page/171/. Reflections on rereading Frye’s “The Instruments of Mental Production.” “What is the relationship between the international Frye and the Frye of the 40s and 50s, who wrote for The Canadian Forum? How did he adjust his discourse to the different conditions of his utterances at that time?” – “Frye and the Legacy of Communication.” In Lee and Denham, Legacy, 304–15. Opposes Frye’s view of communication, derived from literature as a means of human liberation, to the coercive communication of contemporary media—rhetorical or dialectical communication. In his late writings Frye is eager to explore the interactions between the two.
Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books
– “Introduction.” In Northrop Frye on Modern Culture, ed. Jan Gorak. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, vol. 11. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. xix–xlix. – The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Examines Frye’s concept of the canon and its relation to conceptions of the canon in the work of Sir Ernst Gombrich, Frank Kermode, and Edward Said. Argues that Frye sees every literary work as canonical “because he sees each work as an episode in the imagination’s coherent creative world.” Frye’s view of the canon moves away from institutionalizing the status quo and towards destabilizing secular culture. It emphasizes the primitive and the universal, relies on structural patterns to unify it, is visionary and romantic, and is rooted in the redemptive myth of Christianity. Gorak believes the religious base of Frye’s post-Anatomy criticism has moved it in the direction of a kind of dogma that “steers dangerously close to false prophecy,” but it remains a powerful narrative of alienation and renewal. – “Process or Paralysis? Revisiting the Contemporary Art Canon.” Journal of Art Historiography 17 (December 2017): 1–16. “A canonical debate narrowly focused on the question ‘Who’s in? Who’s out?’ is the logical outcome of a system where art is viewed in terms of the market. It is a long time since Northrop Frye railed against ‘All lists of the “best” novels or poems or writers, whether their particular virtue is exclusiveness or inclusiveness. . . . all the literary chit-chat which makes the reputations of poets boom and crash in an imaginary stock exchange.’ For Frye this was purposeless activity, ‘the sonorous nonsense’ of a cultural marketplace as alienated as the larger marketplace it somehow served. With the arrival of ‘a systematic structure of knowledge’ about art, the presses could slow down and serious questions could be posed.” Goranowski, Rickard. “Forensics of a Straw Man Pharmakos in Northrop Frye’s ‘Theory of Modes.’” International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management 10, no. 3 (December 2010): 133–44. Author’s abstract: “Jacques Derrida in 1981, in ‘Plato’s Pharmacy,’ confronted the inveterate Northrop Frye over the 1971 Critical Path as a ‘pharmakos’ or ‘rascal traducer’: Frye’s ‘straw man’ misprision of the Sidney-Peacock-Shelley controversy belittling Peacock and Shelley was obliquely identified by Derrida, in Pharmacy’s first paragraphs, prosecuting Frye’s undue influence on university publishing and tenure management.” Gordon, Jan B. “The ‘Janus Interface’: A Meditation on the Cosmology of Peter Whitehead.” Framework: The
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Journal of Cinema and Media 52, no. 2 (2011): 836–64. “The closer criticism comes to becoming literature (for me, as in Harold Bloom on Macbeth as the analysis of the growth of a serial killer or the late Northrop Frye on Blake’s cosmology), the more it displaces that on which it comments. Frye is more interesting on Blake than is Blake, with whom Frye’s commentary is often confused, precisely because the best literary criticism often displaces the literature that is the object of the critique. If the walls between literature and literary criticism are another porous transparency, then the host (literature) needs the parasite (literary criticism) in order to be propagated to a wider audience (students, the general public) in the same way that we parasitic critics need a ‘body’ of literature upon which to feed.” Gordon, W. Terrence. “By a Commodius Vicus: From Cliché to Archetype to Cliché.” Journal of Visual Culture 13, no. 1 (2014): 48–51. “The discovery of the interplay of cliché and archetype led to the further discovery of the interplay of figure and ground. The concept of archetypes also gave McLuhan a take on structuralism, in which he identified the paradigms of European structuralists as a set of archetypes. His decision to develop a complete book around the term archetype might have been motivated in the first place by a desire to appropriate it from Northrop Frye. There are five references to Frye in the book, including a Frygean Anatomy of a Metamorphosis for Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano and an extensive quotation from a commentary by William Wimsatt criticizing Frye for failing to maintain his own distinction between value and criticism in Anatomy of Criticism.” Gorin, Andrew. “Lyric Noise: Lisa Robertson, Claudia Rankine, and the Phatic Subject of Poetry in the Mass Public Sphere.” Criticism 61, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 97–132. “Phatic address can . . . be contrasted to the norm of ‘apostrophe’ that Jonathan Culler has set up, to borrow the language from Northrop Frye that Culler also invokes, as lyric’s ‘radical of presentation.’” Goring, Paul, et al. “Northrop Frye.” Studying Literature: The Essential Companion. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. 226–7. An introduction to Frye for undergraduates. Gorjup, Branko. “Introduction: Incorporating Legacies: Decolonizing the Garrison.” In Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence, ed. Branko Gorjup. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. 3–28. An overview of the essays in the book. – “Introduction.” Reflections on the Canadian Literary Imagination: A Selection of Essays by Northrop Frye, ed.
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Branko Gorjup. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1991. 9–24. Looks at each of the essays in this collection from the point of view of Frye’s understanding of the Canadian context. – “New Arrivals, Further Departures—the EuroImmigrant Experience in Canada.” In Ethnic Literature and Culture in the U.S.A., Canada and Australia, ed. Igor Maver. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996. – “Northrop Frye and His Canadian Critics.” In Verticals of Frye/Les Verticales de Frye, ed. Ed Lemond. Moncton, NB: Elbow Press, 2005. 6–15. Also available at http:// www.frye.ca/english/northrop-frye/symposialectures/01-gorjup.html. On the readings of Frye’s Canadian criticism by Rosemary Sullivan, George Bowering, David Jackel, Frank Davey, Eleanor Cook, Eli Mandel, Linda Hutcheon, and others. – “Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood and the Formation of the English-Canadian Literary Canon.” In The Canadian Vision/La vision canadienne, ed. Alessandro Anastasi et al. Villa San Giovanni: Edizioni Officina Grafica, 1996. 301–10. – “Pogovor” [“Epilogue”]. In Anatomija kritike: Četiri eseja, trans. Giga Garčan. Zagreb: Golden Marketing, 2000. 421–31. In Bosnian. Gorlier, Claudio. “Vecchie e nuove frontiere: La critica letteraria negli Stati Uniti” [Old and New Frontiers: Literary Criticism in the United States]. L’Approdo letterario [Rome-Turin] (April–June 1964). In Italian. – “Una, due (o nessuna) solitudine” [One, Two (or No) Solitude]. Letterature d’America 2, no. 7 (Spring 1971). In Italian. Gorodeisky, Keren. “19th-Century Romantic Aesthetics. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/fall2016/entries/aesthetics-19th-romantic. “Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism.” Nevertheless, Gorodeisky endorses Frye’s view that “Romanticism . . . is the first major phase in an imaginative revolution which has carried on until our own day, and has by no means completed itself yet.” Gottfried, Roy. Review of Joyce und Menippos: “A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Dog,” by Dieter Fuchs. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 16, no. 1 (March 2009): 149–52. “Fuchs is at pains to stress the ways in which Menippean satire roots itself in various forms and consequences, in contrast to the more general and restrictive descriptions of Bakhtin, who
argued for only the carnivalesque, or of Northrop Frye, who argued that the term Menippean is misleading and only described the anatomy. Fuchs argues for the ‘Klassifizierung der Menippea als flexible Form und nicht als geschlossene Gattung’ [classification of the Menippea as a flexible form rather than a closed genre]. It is this flexibility, perhaps most of all that makes the genre a most useful and informative means of examining Joyce’s manifold and protean works.” Gottfried, Rudolf B. “Edmund Spenser and the NCTE.” College English 33 (October 1971): 76–9. A rebuttal to an article by Carol Ohmann, “Northrop Frye and the MLA.” Seeks to defend his views about Frye’s interpretation of Spenser, which he had set forth in “Our New Poet: Archetypal Criticism and The Faerie Queene” and which had been criticized by Ohmann. – “Our New Poet: Archetypal Criticism and The Faerie Queene.” PMLA 83 (October 1968): 1362–77 [1362–9, 1377]. A critique of archetypal interpretations of Spenser’s work by Frye and A.C. Hamilton. Argues that when the principles of Anatomy of Criticism are applied to The Faerie Queene they dangerously misrepresent its structure and meaning. Frye’s description of the poem as a romance in six books, covering many of the six phases that make up the archetypal plot of that genre, is arbitrary. Archetypal criticism overlooks Spenser’s intention and, thus, reduces his work to something it is not. Gottwald, Herwig. “Typologische Literaturgeschichte der Mythologie” [Typological Literary History of Mythology]. In Spuren des Mythos in moderner deutschsprachiger. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 2007. 47–9. In German. Gou-Kun. “Frye’s Theory of Myth and Archetype.” Anhui Literature 12 (2007). In Chinese. Gould, Allan. Canned Lit. Toronto: Stoddart, 1990. Satirical jabs at Frye, among many others. Gould, Eric. “The Gap between Myth and Literature.” Dalhousie Review 58 (Winter 1978–9): 723–36 [723–6]. Notes the “accuracy for literary scholarship” in the relationships Frye has discovered between literature and the myths of human experience. Says, however, that Frye “mistakes for form religious content and has few suggestions as to how mythic thought itself . . . actually operates.” – Mythical Intentions in Modern Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. 25–8, 31. Sees Frye’s theories of myth and archetype as “applied Jungianism.” Is dubious about Frye’s claim that criticism is an
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“objective totality” and that the appeal of myth is to a “total form.” Understands Frye’s theory of myth to be basically an allegorical one: Frye locates archetypes “with a certain authoritarian, even if, at times, a highly subtle flair for allegorical commentary.” Believes Frye’s theory is “suggestive” but that it does not adequately confront the problems of interpretation. Gould, Rebecca. “Adam Bede’s Dutch Realism and the Novelist’s Point of View.” Philosophy and Literature 36, no. 2 (October 2012): 404–23. Notes the influence of the romance on the early George Eliot and the influence of the anatomy in the later Eliot, as Frye understands the two forms of fiction. Gould, Timothy. “Comedy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, ed. Richard Eldridge. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. “Among modern critics, I have made use of Northrop Frye’s A Natural Perspective and Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness, centered on what he characterizes as the Hollywood comedy of remarriage, along with W.K. Wimsatt’s introduction and conclusion to his collection of documents on comedy.” – “Pursuing the Popular.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 119–35. Shows, among other things, how eminent critics who evince some admiration for the popular, such as Walter Benjamin, Frye, and Stanley Cavell, reveal how the popular is perceived from a distance. Govender, K. “Address to Commemorate the 2013 Martin Luther King Day at the Law Faculty, University of Michigan: Oratio.” Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal 16, no. 3 (2013): 1–21. “King, Gandhi and Mandela have all acquired what has been referred to in literature as a high mimetic quality. Herman Northrop Frye, the Canadian literary theorist, draws a distinction between ‘high mimetic’ and ‘low mimetic’ figures. High mimetic persons are mythically and socially superior to ordinary people, whereas low mimetic figures are perceived as being at the same level as the rest of human kind. Both high mimetic and low mimetic figures inspire us at different levels.” Gowrie, Katie. “Frye Festival Throws 100th Birthday Bash for Northrop Frye.” Quill & Quire (9 July 2012). https:// quillandquire.com/events/2012/07/09/frye-festivalthrows-100th-birthday-bash-for-northrop-frye/. Grabias-Zurek, Magdalena. Songs of Innocence and Experience: Romance in the Cinema of Frank Capra. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Demonstrates how, in the light of the theory of literary romance as presented by Frye in his seminal
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works concerning the subject, the films of Frank Capra fit into the genre of romance. Grace, Sherrill E. Canada and the Idea of North. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002. In part 1 Frye’s views of the Canadian North as a hostile and malevolent “bush garden” are examined, along with those of other theorists of the North. Grady, Wayne. “The Educated Imagination of Northrop Frye.” Saturday Night 96 (October 1981): 19–24, 26, 28. A feature article occasioned by Frye’s completing The Great Code and framed by an account of his delivering the Tamblyn Lectures at the University of Western Ontario. Traces Frye’s career from his early years to his faculty appointment at Victoria College. Notes the chief intellectual influences on his work, his impact on Canadian culture, and the relation between The Great Code and his other books. Records several anecdotes from the lecture tour to Western Ontario. Graf, Susan Johnston. “Joyce’s Mythopoeic Vision: The Development of Stephen Dedalus in Portrait and Ulysses.” In-Between: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism 12, no. 1 (2003): 4–57. Graff, Gerald. Literature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. 81–5, 189–91. Argues that the values and meanings of culture “do not for Frye rest on any prior objective beliefs about the way things are.” Criticizes Frye’s theory of literature because he does not grant literature any mimetic relation to the world and so has no authoritative grounds for carrying out its functions of humanizing, ordering, and making sense of experience. – “Northrop Frye and the Visionary Imagination.” In Poetic Statement and Critical Dogma. Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1970. 73–8. An analysis of the disjunction in Frye’s work between fact and value, between the objective world and the world of myth, imagination, and desire. Maintains that “Frye’s writings reflect evidence of the vacillation, ambivalence, and evasiveness . . . found to be characteristic of antipropositional theorists in general. Frye wishes to emancipate the imagination from all empirical and objective considerations, yet he also aims at what he calls ‘the educated imagination,’ and he insists that literature ‘refine our sensibilities.’ But the concept of ‘refinement’ is meaningless apart from some sort of appeal to reality and the reality principle.” Graham, Brian Russell. “The Anti-Elitist Nature of Northrop Frye’s Conceptions of Highbrow and Popular Literature.” Philologie im Netz 84 (2018): 1–18. “A
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critic’s construction of the cultural categories of high and low is quite obviously a political matter, and it is commonplace to flesh out the politics of any critic’s treatment of the two categories. This article deals with the politics of Northrop Frye’s discussion of highbrow and popular literature, and it advances the argument that Frye’s understanding of the opposition should be viewed as decidedly ‘anti-elitist.’” – “Chapter Six of Words with Power as Intervention into the Debate about the Metaphorical Identification of Women with Nature.” In Northrop Frye 100: A Danubian Perspective, ed. Sára Tóth, Tibor Fabiny, János Kenyeres, and Péter Pásztor. Budapest: KGRE– L’Harmattan, 2014. 174–80. Examines Frye’s view of the tradition in literature that symbolizes nature as a female figure. Frye argues that the metaphor is part of an image of a particular relationship between man and nature, as well as an image of possible relations between men and women. – “Frye and Hoggart on Film and TV: An Alternative to the Postmodernist Paradigm.” Hamilton Arts and Letters 7, no. 2 (Fall–Winter 2014–15). http://samizdatpress. typepad.com/halmagazine-issue-seven-2/frye-andhoggart-on-film-and-tv-by-brian-graham-1.html. – “Frye and the Opposition between Popular Literature and Bestsellers.” Akademisk kvarter 7 (December 2013): 93–104. “Frye’s view of ‘bestseller’ literature forms the focus of this article. The legacy of postmodernism entailed the demise of the division between high and low cultural products. However, this did not solve the problem concerning the value of a given work. Frye offers a different model. While he defends popular literature proper, he has general reservations about commercial bestsellers, and his choice of concepts represents an interesting contribution to the current discussion.” – “In Praise of Irrelevance: A Plea for Formalism.” Culture on the Offensive. http://www.cultureontheoffensive. com/in-praise-of-irrelevance-a-plea-for-formalism/. On Frye’s response to the issue of relevance. – “Inquiry and Ideology in the Battle of Ideas.” Quillette (28 March 2018). http://quillette.com/2018/03/28/ inquiry-ideology-battle-ideas/. Reviews Frye’s view of the fact/value dispute by considering the form that that dispute takes in his theory of the myths of freedom and concern in The Critical Path. – “Northrop Frye on Leisure as Activity.” Akademisk Kvarter 11 (2015): 35–46. “Argues that Frye’s theory of leisure as an activity (distinct from the leisure industry) represents an example of meliorist thought in relation
to culture. Clarifying this view involves contrasting this conclusion about Frye with the Bourdieuian perspective, which makes up the content of the second main section. Before turning to social class, this article considers Frye’s discussion of leisure and boredom, and his overall view of the values, activities, historic struggles and class association of three sectors: industry, politics and leisure.” (author’s abstract) – “Resistance to Recurrent Ideas in Critical Theory.” Anglofiles 180 (May 2016): 88–97. In a survey of the critical debates from the 1980s on, examines the role played by Frye’s four “primary concerns” as a means for getting behind the assumptions of identity politics. – “The Return of Irony to Myth.” Revista de Filología Hispánica 25, no. 1 (2009): 63–8. On the appeal of Frye’s contention in Anatomy of Criticism that the ironic literary mode turns back to the mythical one. Considers the controversial implications of this claim. Graham, J.E. Kenneth. Review of Milton and Questions of History: Essays by Canadians Past and Present, ed. Feisal G. Mohamed and Mary Nyquist. Modern Philology 112, no. 1 (August 2014): E77–81. Discusses a book that memorializes seven Canadian Miltonists—A.S.P. Woodhouse, Arthur Barker, Ernest Sirluck, Douglas Bush, Northrop Frye, Balachandra Rajan, and Hugh MacCallum. “Three essays respond in whole or in part to Frye. Peter Herman points out the awkwardness for Milton studies of Frye’s rejection of historical criticism but, as he has done elsewhere, employs Thomas Kuhn’s theories to argue that Frye nevertheless shares the defining values of the Milton community. Herman then discovers that Frye’s criticism of Canadian literature is quite different from the work that made his reputation: here geography and politics ground literature, and even biography matters. Revisiting Frye’s classification of Paradise Lost as high mimesis, Feisal Mohamed probes Milton’s relation to the epic genre. He argues that Paradise Lost takes a partly satirical stance toward epic, subordinating its authority to that of the Word. Mohamed frames his essay as a response to the Woodhouse group’s Arnoldian wish to see Milton as an English embodiment of classical tradition. Such a universalizing tendency, he suggests, obscures Milton’s specific relationship to that tradition. Elizabeth Hodgson does something similar in her essay, which teases out the religious and gender implications of Milton’s brief allusions to a cloistered, melancholy Roman Catholicism in Areopagitica and Il Penseroso.” Grande, Troni Y. “The Interruption of Myth in Northrop Frye: Toward a Revision of the ‘Silent Beatrice.’” In Rampton, Northrop Frye, 247–73. On the ways that
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feminists can appropriate Frye’s work. Focuses on the image of Beatrice in Frye’s reading of Dante as the figure that comes to represent for him an absent presence. – “‘Our Lady of Pain’: Prolegomena to the Study of SheTragedy.” In Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, ed. Alan Bewell, Neil Ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. 185–205. “Adapts Frye’s ideas to gender theory, exploring the ways in which they can provide liberatory understanding of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth century ‘she tragedies,’ plays in which the tragic predicament is structured on the gender of the heroine.” (editors’ abstract) – “Shakespeare and the ‘Cultural Lag’ of Canadian Stratford in Alice Munro’s ‘Tricks.’” In Shakespeare and Canada: Remembrance of Ourselves, ed. Irena R. Makaryk and Kathryn Prince. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2017. “If Stratford, and the structure of Shakespearean comedy and romance, inform Munro’s own tricks as a storyteller, it is Northrop Frye, Canada’s ‘most distinguished Shakespearean’ who provides a heuristic key to unlock these historical, symbolic, and structural elements in ‘Tricks.’ Frye’s own presence at Stratford and on the Shakespeare scene during the earliest era depicted in ‘Tricks,’ and his influential theories of green-world comedy, open up Munro’s treatment of Stratford as a romantic symbol. Frye proves a wise guide to show how the romantic impulse in Munro turns ironic, rather than tragic, as Robin’s [Robin Phillips’s] quest to find what Stratford represents opens ultimately in a feminist direction, onto the vista of romance.” Traces Frye’s other comments on the Stratford Festival. Grande Rosales, María Ángeles. “Northrop Frye: La poética del mito” [Northrop Frye: The Poetry of Myth]. Campus (March 1991): 28–9. Granild, Lars. “Northrop Frye og de fiktive modaliteter— indkredsning af ambivalenser” [Northrop Frye and the Fictitious Modalities—Identifying Ambivalences]. In “Äta eller ätas! Det är frågan!” Antropologi og poetik i August Strindbergs selvbiografiske roman “En dåres försvarstal.” Odense: Syddansk University, 2006. In Danish. Applies Frye’s theory of fictional modes to Strindberg’s autobiographical novel, En dåres försvarstal. Grant, Don, Jeff Sallaz, and Cindy Cain. “Bridging Science and Religion: How Health-Care Workers as Storytellers Construct Spiritual Meanings.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 55, no. 3 (September 2016): 465–84.
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Notes that Robert Wuthrow has expanded on Frye’s distinction between centripetal and centrifugal meaning. Grant, John E. Review of Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, ed. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer. Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 22 (Spring 1989): 124–32. Observes that Frye’s contribution to this volume, “The Survival of Eros in Poetry,” covers some familiar territory (the four levels of imaginative reality). Notes that the current critical “opinion makers” are not much attracted to Frye’s kind of criticism with its Romantic and Arnoldian assumptions. Contrasts Frye’s position with that of the New Historicists, but maintains that Frye remains “a great reader of literary works as they are, from their own point of view.” Graves, Roger. Writing Instruction in Canadian Universities. Winnipeg: Inkshed, 1994. On the influence of Frye on writing instruction in Canada, as opposed to that of Daniel Fogarty. Gray, Bennison. The Phenomenon of Literature. The Hague: Mouton, 1975. 1–14, 431–49. On Frye’s theories of literature and interpretation. Gray refers to Frye’s work more than twenty-five times throughout. Greaney, Michael. Sleep and the Novel: Fictions of Somnolence from Jane Austen to the Present. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. “Dickens, as Northrop Frye observes, rarely intrudes on the ‘bedroom and bathroom world of ordinary privacy.’” Grebstein, Sheldon. “The Mythopoeic Critic.” Perspectives in Contemporary Criticism, ed. Sheldon Grebstein. New York: Harper & Row 1968. 311–20 [317–19]. A brief account of myth criticism, serving as an introduction to essays by five myth critics. Places Frye’s work in the context of myth criticism in general. The mythopoeic perspective has been most impressively represented by Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, which stands as the Poetics of the entire mythopoeic movement. Green, Daniel. “Inventing Literature.” In The Reading Experience (2013). http://noggs.typepad.com/tre/ page/10/. Originally published in American Book Review, 2000. “It is true that the urgently serious, at times even ponderous, approach to the ‘canon of great books’ and much of the critical lexicon of the midcentury academic literary establishment were filtered through the writings of such poet-critics as Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, and John Crowe Ransom, but by far the most significant development in the practice of literary criticism in the twentieth century was the investment of authority over literary matters in the figure of the academic critic, from such celebrated members of the order as Lionel Trilling, Cleanth Brooks,
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and Northrop Frye to current critics such as Stanley Fish and Helen Vendler, around whom is still draped some vestige of this authority, however ragged it has become. To the company of so eminent and formidable a group of ‘scholars’ as this, no mere literary journalist or, worse, lowly book reviewer need apply: criticism would no longer be in the hands of the ink-stained wretches, namely writers, but would become almost entirely transformed into the job description of a professional class of literary experts.” Green, Dominic. “Mr. Bellow’s Planet.” The New Criterion 37, no. 3 (November 2018): 13–16. Review of The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965–2005 by Zachary Leader. “Let us now praise the Canadians who have expressed American culture on behalf of the neighbors. Imagine post-war American culture without Oscar Peterson, Neil Young, The Band, Northrop Frye, Joni Mitchell, Marshall McLuhan, William Shatner, Leonard Cohen, Dan Aykroyd, Michael J. Fox, Celine Dion, Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Drake, Seth Rogen, Bryan Adams, Rachel McAdams, the one who played Chandler on Friends whose name I always forget, and, of course, Justin Bieber and Steven Pinker. The world’s most prominent animal rights activist is Pamela Anderson. The philosopher of the moment is Jordan Peterson. The engineer of our future is Elon Musk, whose mother is Canadian. And the supreme post-war novelist remains Saul Bellow.” Green, Matthew J.A. “‘He Who Has Suffered You to Impose on Him’: Blake, Derrida and the Question of Theory.” Literature Compass 4, no. 1 (2007): 150–71. Notes that Blake scholars have been particularly adept at spurring new developments in critical theory, as witnessed by the course of Frye’s progression from Fearful Symmetry to Anatomy of Criticism. Remarks on “the division in Blake studies between the ‘systematizers’ (whose prime representative is Frye) and the ‘historicizers’ (whose model is David Erdman).” Green, Michael. “Northrop Frye.” Critical Survey 3, no. 4 (Summer 1968): 209. Thinks Frye’s views have been misrepresented. Anatomy of Criticism is unable to carry all the authority with which it has been invested. It is “better read as the most joyous, most wide-ranging, least rationally constrained of a series of works on the problems of literary education.” This series includes The Well-Tempered Critic, The Educated Imagination, Fables of Identity, T.S. Eliot, and his books on Blake, Milton, and Shakespearean comedy. In these works Frye has struggled again and again to answer key questions about English as a subject.
Greenberg, Jonathan. The Cambridge Introduction to Satire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Discusses Frye’s view of Menippean satire. Greene, Logan Dale. “‘What Does a Woman Want?’ Embracing the Goddess in Medieval Romance” [O que a mulher deseja? – Abraçando a deusa no romance medieval]. Literatura em Debate 2, no. 3 (2008). file:///C:/Users/Robert%20Denham/Downloads/4422079-1-PB.pdf. In Portuguese. Uses myth in Frye’s sense to interpret Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale. Greenfield, Concetta Carestia. “Structuralism.” Review of Structuralism in Literature by Robert Scholes. Clio 4, no. 3 (1 June 1975): 411–16. Glances at Frye’s theory of modes (First Essay of Anatomy of Criticism), which is said to be held in high regard among the structuralists. Greenfield, Matthew. “Introduction: Spenser and the Theory of Culture.” In Edmund Spenser: Essays on Culture and Allegory, ed. Jennifer Klein Morrison and Matthew Greenfield. New York: Routledge, 2016; orig. pub. 2000. Introductory chapter begins with acknowledging Frye’s place in Spenser studies and notes Clifford Geertz’s drawing on Frye for his “interpretive anthropology.” Greenstein, Michael. “Beyond the Ghetto and the Garrison: Jewish-Canadian Boundaries.” Mosaic 14, no. 2 (Spring 1981): 121–30. Uses Frye’s idea of the “garrison mentality” in Canadian literature to help characterize two ideas of the ghetto—one in the literature of the Jewish writers of Montreal and the other in Jewish writers as a whole. Gregg, Richard A. “A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Unity and Shape of The Tales of Belkin.” Slavic Review: American Quarterly of Soviet and East European Studies 30, no. 4 (December 1971): 748–61. “Shows how the hussar fits the stereotype of the storybook hero, while the stationmaster represents the direct opposite—a contemporary ‘counterhero.’ Gregg uses Frye’s method of myth-criticism to show how the story may fit into an ‘archetypal’ tragic pattern. He notes that the only outdoor scene in the story occurs in autumn, and that (in Frye’s archetypal system) autumn corresponds with tragedy.” Gregory, Daniel J. “The Pentathlon Preaching Principle Applied.” Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society (September 2018): 21–9. “Commenting on [the] relationship between literary and rhetorical criticism, Northrop Frye observes ‘That if the direct union of grammar and logic is characteristic of non-literary verbal structures, literature may be described as the rhetorical organization of grammar and logic. Most
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of the features characteristic of literary form, such as rhyme, alliteration, metre, antithetical balance, the use of example, are also rhetorical schemata.’” Grenander, M.E. “Science, Scientism, and Literary Theory.” Annals of Scholarship 2, no. 3 (1981): 65–84. Draws on Frye’s view of the social function of myth as elaborated in “The Bridge of Language,” as one of the ways that humanists can prevent their work from falling under the sway of scientism, the misapplication of science to fields where it is inappropriate. Grene, Clement. “More Popular Than Jesus? Jung, Freud, and Religion.” Religious Studies Project (27 November 2017). https://www.religiousstudiesproject. com/2013/11/27/more-popular-than-jesus-jung-freudand-religion-by-clement-grene/#_ftn1. Grigurcu, Gheoerghe. “Legende ironiei” [The Legend of Irony]. Romaniâ Literară 3 (2003). http://www.romlit. ro/legenda_ironiei. In Romanian. Sees Frye as following in the footsteps of Aristotle and other critics. – “Trei decenii de critică” [Three Decades of Criticism]. România literară 45 (2004). http://www.romlit.ro/trei_ decenii_de_critic. In Romanian. Grillo, Jennie. The Envelope and the Halo: Reading Susanna Allegorically.” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible & Theology 72, no. 4 (October 2018): 408–17. “Even the processes of cognition involved in attending to a text are visual as well as discursive, and often they fail to respect the proportions and sequential ordering of a text. Northrop Frye noted that ‘all arts possess both a temporal and a spatial aspect, whichever takes the lead when they are presented. . . .Works of literature also move in time like music and spread out in images like painting. The word narrative or mythos conveys the sense of movement caught by the ear, and the word meaning or dianoia conveys, or at least preserves, the sense of simultaneity caught by the eye.’ In other words, there is always a visual aspect to reading that makes simultaneous connections across temporal lines. . . . I suggest that the particular capacity of allegory to crystallize the visual modes of thinking and reading is most clearly seen in the specific christological typology of Susanna, with its iconic habit for making connections. Northrop Frye, again, notes how in allegory ‘ideas suddenly become sense experiences’ and ‘even continuous allegory is still a structure of images, not of disguised ideas.’” Grimaldi, Patrizia. “Sir Orfeo as Celtic Folk-Hero, Christian Pilgrim, and Medieval King.” In Allegory, Myth, and Symbol, ed. Morton W. Bloomfield. Harvard English Studies 9. Cambridge: Harvard University
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Press, 1981. 147–61. Grounds her argument on Frye’s definition of allegory, demonstrates the multiple levels of allegory (literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical) in Sir Orfeo which point to Celtic folklore, myth, Christianity and socio-political ethics. Grimes, Jodi. “Tree(s) of Knowledge in the Junius Manuscript.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112, no. 3 (2013): 311–39. Glances at Frye’s reading of the second creation myth in Genesis. Frye speculates that “a creation narrative older than the Old Testament account originally contrasted the Tree of Life with a Tree of Death. . . .” “Frye also believes that the knowledge gained by the fallen couple ‘has something to do with the discovery of sex as we know it, because as soon as the knowledge was acquired, Adam and Eve knew that they were naked and looked around for clothing.’” Grindal, Gracia. “Living by the Word.” Christian Century 119, no. 19 (11–24 September 2002): 20–1. “In The Educated Imagination Northrop Frye comments that when he hears people wishing they could have been at Bethlehem so they could have seen the star, the angels singing, the shepherds, the babe, he realizes that he wouldn’t have seen it, because he doesn’t see it now. Our piety and prejudices blur our vision.” Gring-Pemble, Lisa M., and Diane M. Blair. “Best-Selling Feminisms: The Rhetorical Production of Popular Press Feminists’ Romantic Quest.” Communication Quarterly 48, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 360–79. The authors argue that the texts of Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, and Christina Hoff Sommers derive their powerful appeal from assuming the form of an archetypal romantic quest narrative as defined by Frye. Grob, Alan. “The Uses of Northrop Frye: ‘Sunday Morning’ and the Romantic Topocosm.” Studies in Romanticism 22 (Winter 1983): 587–615. Applies Frye’s concept of topocosm (the four-tiered structure of poetic imagery) to several romantic poems and to Stevens’s “Sunday Morning” to illustrate the “functional unity” of the concept. Believes that the structures in this part of Frye’s system are less determinate than he thinks and are sometimes subverted in “Sunday Morning,” but still finds them to be useful tools for the “eclectic bricoleur.” Grolier, Claudio. “Frye, un piano regolatore per la foresta letteraria” [Frye, a Master Plan for the Literary Forest]. Tuttolibri (9 June 1979): 8. In Italian. Provides a profile of Frye’s work. Points to the importance of understanding how the word “anatomy” functions in his criticism. Surveys some of the key terms in his typology of literature, remarks on the difference between
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Frye’s view of archetypes and Jung’s, and observes that in Frye’s later work he tackles two great themes—the sacred and the secular scriptures. Notes that Frye’s work has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the verbal quality of individual works of literature, for the rigidity and lack of coherence in his theories, and (from the Marxists) for his failure to confront the social element of history. Groom, Nick. “Romanticism before 1789.” In The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, ed. David Duff. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. 13–29. Glances at Frye’s definition of the Age of Sensibility. Gross, Andrew S. “Liberalism and Lyricism, or Karl Shapiro’s Elegy for Identity.” Journal of Modern Literature 34, no. 3 (2011): 1–30. “Insufficient attention has been paid to the history of identity, a concept that revolutionized literary and cultural studies, and arguably politics, in the second half of the twentieth century. Identity tends to be associated with liberal and progressive causes today, but in the immediate aftermath of World War II it was seen as a threat to liberalism, classified as a ‘fable’ or ‘myth’ (in keeping with Northrop Frye’s usage in Fables of Identity) and approached primarily through the literary and psychological vocabularies of personification, prejudice and projection. The primary vehicle of post-war liberalism was not identity but individualism, and in fact identity was seen as a curtailment of individual freedom.” Gross, Lalia. “Frye.” In An Introduction to Literary Criticism, ed. Lalia Gross. New York: Capricorn Books, 1972. 324–6. A summary of Frye’s position, serving as an introduction to “The Archetypes of Literature,” which isreprinted in Gross’s anthology. Treats briefly the content of Anatomy of Criticism, Frye’s theory of archetypes, and his Aristotelian debt. Grossman, Marshall. “The Vicissitudes of the Subject in Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.” Texas Studies in Language and Literature 24 (Fall 1982): 313–27. Argues that Anatomy of Criticism reflects the issues of the subject and of the priority of language to the subject, even though Frye does not explicitly develop these issues. Sees thought as the mediating category in the Anatomy between self and other; literature, which imitates thought, is able to communicate certain intuitions and make them shareable, but it also mediates between subject and object. Observes that the social import of Frye’s work is embodied in his concept of civilization, which is the synthesis of desire (psychological subjectivity) and experience (thought turned toward the physical world).
Grujan, Simona Mărieş. “Pentru o dialectică a reprezentării” [For a Dialectic of Representation]. Postmodern Openings 1 (2010): 95–110. In Romanian. On the dialectic in Frye and Ricoeur of mythos and history, of dianoia and anagnorisis. – “Postmodern Prose and Fairy-Tale Resurrection— Mythical Morphologies in Romanian and European Fairy Tales.” Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies 1 (2011): 109–16. Gu, Hanyan. “On the Archetype in Joseph Conrad’s Novels.” Journal of Yancheng Teachers’ College 1 (1992). In Chinese. Gu, Mingdong. “Theory of Fiction: A Non-Western Narrative Tradition.” Narrative 14, no. 3 (October 2006): 311–38. On Frye’s theory of modes. – “The Universal Significance of Frye’s Theory of Fictional Modes.” In O’Grady and Wang