Northrop Frye for a New Century: Introduction

Abstract

This collection of papers is dedicated to the world's foremost Frye scholar Robert D. Denham and to the memory of Jay Macpherson (d. 21 March 2012). MARSHAL MCLUHAN HAD HIS CENTENNIAL in 2011. Now it is the turn of the other major Canadian intellectual of that period, Northrop Frye. Had he lived, he would be 100 this year. McLuhan is back, but is Frye? Revaluation of this titanic figure in Canadian intellectual life is on the agenda, nearly a generation since he died, and with the massive Collected Works project of the University of Toronto Press before us (funded significantly by a philanthropic source). This special issue of English Studies in Canada is a contribution to that revaluation. Frye was extraordinarily varied in his interests, and this special issue cannot hope to cover all of that variety. But the authors are certainly varied: they include graduate students and emeritus professors, Americans and Canadians and Europeans, journalists as well as professors, Frye specialists and Frye amateurs, conservative believers and those of no religion, some in English departments and some not. The emphasis is on new voices and approaches, and, not surprisingly, many contributors are graduate students. First, the collection explores the influence of Frye by way of personal reflections by John Ayre, Stan Garrod, Monika Hilder, William Koch, and Rick Salutin. What they make clear is that personal response can be just as illuminating, just as useful for understanding, as more traditional academic-style articles. They introduce a set of articles by Melissa Dalgleish (what exactly did Frye do to Can Lit?), Robert Denham (Frye was closer to Longinus than you might imagine), Tim DeJong (Frye, film, and Romantic imagination), Diane Dubois (absurd Frye), Duncan McFarlane (did satire make Frye nervous?), Paul Hawkins (Frye and Bloom--and Shakespeare), David Leeson (Frye the video game), Mark Ryan (what exactly is an archetype?), Sara Toth (is Northrop Frye a poststructuralist after all?). Each contribution raises the question: does Frye matter today? Frye was the critic in the 1960s and 1970s, but his influence was virtually wiped out by deconstruction/poststructuralism. His formalist interests--not to mention his interest in myth, whatever that is, and the Bible and the canon--are hardly valued by the approach that now dominates English studies, which is New Historicism (variants in gender/postcolonial/cultural studies). Is Frye's method relevant any more? Or is he someone like, say, I. A. Richards, of interest only to historians of literary criticism? Can we learn from him now? McLuhan is back, but is Frye? If we look at Frye from a New Historicist perspective, what stands out is his timing. His pre-Critical Path books spoke to their time, and the times were receptive. His publication history coincides closely with the economic expansion that followed World War ii. His two key books are baby boomers: Fearful Symmetry (1947) and Anatomy of Criticism (1957). Fearful Symmetry launched Frye's career and remains the most important single book on William Blake. The impact of Fearful Symmetry was enormous, especially for a scholarly book. Fearful Symmetry is still astounding, but it is hard to imagine a university press publishing a book like it today. It's too, well, visionary, too much a communication of Blake's revelation, so to speak. It is in fact anti-New Historicist. A decade after Fearful Symmetry came Anatomy of Criticism. Anatomy had an even greater impact, and marked Frye's period of influence, which lasted about twenty years. Then came deconstruction, and the Frye era was over. The peak period for Frye was the revolutionary 1960s and early 1970s, the period of radical innovation in every sphere: the time of Third World nationalism and decolonization, of Civil Rights struggles and of movements for women's rights, for First Nations, for gay liberation, for the rights of disabled people and other minority groups, including students; it was an era of social and sexual experimentation, of hippies and dropouts and draft-resisters; Vatican ii and then Liberation Theology shook traditional Christianity; the Quiet Revolution in Quebec stimulated nationalism in English Canada--and with it, Canadian literature, and Frye was a key part of that development. …