Northrop Frye

Presented here is a selection from the professional and personal correspondence of Northrop Frye, one of the preeminent literary critics of the last century. With frank and accessible appraisals, the letters reveal Frye’s attitudes toward scores of topics: the value of James Bond thrillers, the gap between faith and reason, surrealism, hippies, Milton’s imagery, comparative literature, political hysteria in the U.S., the nature of the educated imagination, anarchism, the teaching of religion in the university, the Proteus myth, the distinction between subjects and themes, the connection between Nietzsche and Yeats, the difference between cliché and aphorism, the fussy rules of copy editors, and scores of other issues.

Robert D. Denham is John P. Fishwick Professor of English Emeritus at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. He has also taught at Emory & Henry College, after which he served as Director of English Programs and Director of the Association of Departments of English for the Modern Language Association. He has written and edited more than twenty-five volumes on Frye.

Northrop Frye
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 346
Bibliographic Info: notes, index
Copyright Date: 2009
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4362-8
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii

Preface      1

Abbreviations and Shortened Forms Used in the Head Notes and End Notes      5

THE CORRESPONDENCE

1930s      9

1940s      28

1950s      41

1960s      60

1970s      112

1980s      221

1990s      294

Notes      301

Index      329