This volume, which collects Northrop Frye's writings on the theory of literary criticism from the middle period of his career, includes one of Frye's own favourites, The Critical Path (1971). A highly important marker of Frye's career, The Critical Path openly addresses topics that he had previously been reluctant to discuss as fully, including the importance of literature to society, the responsibilities of critics, and the deeper rationales for studying literature.

Filled with insightful texts that indicate his transition from literary critic to a theorist of...

Northrop Frye's The Secular Scripture was first published in 1976 and was soon recognized as one of his most influential works, reflecting an extensive development of Frye's thoughts about romance as a literary form. This new edition in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series brings The Secular Scripture together with thirty shorter pieces pertaining to literary theory and criticism from the last fifteen years of Frye's life.

Frye's study illuminates the enduring attraction and deep human significance of the romance genre in all its forms. He provides a unique...

This volume brings together Northrop Frye's criticism on twentieth-century literature, a body of work produced over almost sixty years. Including Frye's incisive book, T.S. Eliot, as well as his discussions of writers such as James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, and George Orwell, the volume also contains a recently discovered review of C.G. Jung's book on the synchronicity principle and a previously unpublished introduction to a twentieth-century literature anthology. Frye's insightful commentaries demonstrate definitively that he was as astute a critic of the literature of...

This final volume in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye realizes a remarkable feat: the completion of the most comprehensive, authoritative collection of writings by the celebrated literary critic, just in time for the centenary of his birth. An essential companion to the rest of the series, the index makes it easy to locate Frye's public and private views on particular subjects, writers, and critics within his published works, diaries, and notebooks.

The book is divided into two parts: the first contains all of Frye's substantial remarks on his own life, his writings, and his...

'Frye was a person of uncommon gifts, and very little that came from his pen is without interest.' So writes Robert Denham in his introduction to this unique collection of twenty-two papers written by Northrop Frye during his student years. Made public only after Frye's death in 1991, all but one of the essays are published here for the first time.

The majority of these papers were written for courses at Emmanuel College, the theology school of Victoria College at the University of Toronto. Essays such as 'The Concept of Sacrifice, ' 'The Fertility Cults, ' and 'The Jewish Background...