Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936-89

Drawn from previously unpublished essays, talks, reviews and papers, this volume of Northrop Frye’s collected works spans some fifty years of his long writing career. The earliest item is a paper on The Canterbury Tales dating from Frye’s student days at Oxford. The latest was written in 1989, on the occasion of his receiving his thirty-sixth honorary degree from the University of Bologna. The center-piece of the collection is Frye’s essay, Rencontre . Intended as an introduction to a never-published anthology of English literature, it is unique in Frye’s oeuvre, being the only example of a sustained, continuous encounter with an entire literary tradition. Other important essays include: Shakespeare and the Comedy of Humours , The Literary Meaning of ‘Archetype’ , and Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ .