New Releases by Northrop Frye

"... twelve essays in which this visionary literary critic speaks specifically to the eternal act of creation, addressing the incessant need for literary revisioning." --Studies in Religion These essays, four of which are published here for the first time, reveal one of the most extraordinary minds of our time engaging a wide range of literary, cultural, and religious issues. Frye gave these addresses during the last decade of his life, and they reveal this distinguished critic speaking with wit and wisdom about the permanent forms of human civilization and engaging in the eternal act of creation.

Northrop Frye discusses with David Cayley his life as a teacher and scholar, focusing on the university as "the engine room of society." This fascinating book concludes with Frye''s thoughts on religion and his writings on the Bible.

A World in a Grain of Sand is a collection of twenty-two interviews with Northrop Frye from the early 1960s through the 1980s. Frye responds to a wide range of questions about the media, education, religion, literary theory, language, music, and literature itself - from Plato and the Bible to Milton, Blake, Shelley, and Melville. Half of the interviews, transcribed from tape recordings, are published here for the first time. Throughout the collection the reader will discover a richly stored mind, often expressing itself in an ironic mode, arguing for the value of both the liberal tradition and the visionary imagination. What emerges finally from the interviews is Frye''s own broad vision of the social function of words.

Offers fresh insights into ten of Shakespeare''s most popular plays, relating each of these works to others and discussing many of the central elements of Shakespearean drama

Discusses the future of liberal education in an increasingly technological society.

Valiéndose de su gran erudición y capacidad interpretativa, Northrop Frye pone de relieve el carácter único de la Biblia y su diferencia con respecto a todas las demás epopeyas y libros sagrados. La Biblia, según la original investigación de Frye, permite

Revised to meet the changing literary interests and emphases of the twenty-first century, the second edition of The Harper Handbook to Literature adds, augments, and clarifies definitions. Arranged in alphabetical order, this Handbook aims to satisfy curiosity about terms such as syzygy or zeugma, concepts such as structuralism or phenomenology, and literary genres and movements such as Drama or Goliardic verse. Over 100 items are new to this edition, including Queer Theory, Reader-Response Theory, Cultural Studies, Anxiety of Influence, Logocentrism, Orientalism, and Saussurean Linguistics, to name only a few. Entries generally range from a few words to summary essays with bibliographies for further study, and cross-references lead from definitions to larger concepts. A practical "Chronology of Literature and World Events", at the end of the text presents a comprehensive timeline from the earliest cities of Mesopotamia to contemporary names and titles.

Perhaps the most influential critical thinker of our time, Northrop Frye has long commented upon the cultural life of his own country. The Bush Garden is now a standard work on Canadian writing and painting, and Divisions on a Ground continues Frye''s extraordinary enquiry into Canada''s literature, universities, social assumptions, and national character. In 13 essays and addresses, Fry covers a broad range of subject matter, from future shock to the meaning of Canada''s history; from student politics to the idea of the university; from regional verse to Marshall McLuhan and the age of television.Provocative, splendidly written and quite entertaining, Divisions on a Ground shows Northrop Frye at his most accessible: a book of prime importance for every North American.

"This book is an anthology. It covers the forms and varieties of fiction, poetry, and drama, moving from the simple elements to the more subtle and complex, with introductory principles and questions to guide the student''s progress ... "--Preface, page xix.

Presents a series of lectures on the theological and sociological aspects of creation doctrine.

Revision and expansion of essay originally published in Daedalus, spring 1970.

In the Alexander Lectures for 1965-66 at the University of Toronto, Dr. Frye describes the basis of the tragic vision as "being in time," in which death as "the essential event that gives shape and form to life ... defines the individual, and marks him off from the continuity of life that flows indefinitely between the past and the future." In Dr. Frye''s view, three general types can be distinguished in Shakespearean tragedy, the tragedy of order, the tragedy of passion, and the tragedy of isolation, in all of which a pattern of "being in time" shapes the action. In the first type, of which Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet are examples, a strong ruler is killed, replaced by a rebel-figure, and avenged by a nemesis-figure; in the second, represented by Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida, authority is split and the hero is destroyed by a conflict between social and personal loyalties; and in the third, Othello, King Lear, and Timon of Athens, the central figure is cut off from his world, largely as a result of his failure to comprehend the dynamics of that world. What all these plays show us, Dr. Frye maintains, is "the impact of heroic energy on the human situation" with the result that the "heroic is normally destroyed ... and the human situation goes on surviving." Fools of Time will be welcomed not only by many scholars who are familiar with Dr. Frye''s keen critical insight but also by undergraduates, graduates, high-school and university teachers who have long valued his work as a means toward a firmer grasp and deeper understanding of English literature.

"Papers read at the formal inauguration, on October 27, 1966, of the Society for the Humanities." The knowledge of good and evil, by N. Frye.--Commitment and imagination, by S. Hampshire.--Politics and the morality of scholarship, by C. Cruise O''Brien.

The resources of an exceptional mind are brought to bear on questions of prime importance in modern life in this brief and penetrating book by one of North America''s leading scholars and thinkers. Northrop Frye presents a brilliant array of ideas and observations on the mythology of our day and its central elements, alienation and progress; the effects of technology on the structure of society; characteristics commonly associated with "modern"; anti-social attitudes in modern culture; the role of the arts in forming the contemporary imagination; and finally, the way in which the creative arts are absorbed into society through education. Everyone concerned with the sates of mind and quality of life distinctive to the modern world -- "where power and success express themselves to much in stentorian lying, hypnotized leadership, and panic-stricken suppression of freedom and criticism" -- will be grateful for this lucid, sane, and original discussion. -- Publisher.