Frye and the Word: Religious Contexts in the Writings of Northrop Frye (Frye Studies)

The religious context of Northrop Frye's criticism is virtually inexhaustible in its reach and implication. "Frye and the Word" draws together leading scholars in the fields of literary studies and hermeneutics, religious studies, and philosophy to construe and debate the late thought and writings of Northrop Frye in their spiritual dimension. The volume provides the first full account and evaluation of the legacy of Frye's works on the Bible and literature, in relation to Frye's work as a whole and to current trends in literary criticism and religious studies. Frye's trilogy, "The Great Code," "Words with Power," and "The Double Vision," both showed him to be a radical Blakean visionary and carried him forward into an urgent engagement with the imaginative and spiritual dimension as expressed in language, myth and metaphor, tools of recognition, and revelation. Frye struggled to understand and articulate how the Bible enjoyed - for reasons still to be fully appreciated in their literary context - an apparently unequalled spiritual and cultural authority, and what this authority could tell us about our primary concerns as human beings and our still unrealized potential for fulfillment. This collection, then, is about Frye's own engagement with words and the Word, with secular and sacred scripture -- about a unifying principle that lies often unrecognized, if everywhere manifest, in the spiritual and imaginative dimensions of language. Contents 7 Acknowledgments 11 Abbreviations 13 Contributors 17 Introduction 21 A SPIRAL CURRICULUM 43 Sacred and Secular Scripture(s) in the Thought of Northrop Frye 43 ‘In the Climates of the Mind’: Frye's Career as a Spiral Curriculum 63 METAPHOR AND SPIRIT 79 Frye's Double Vision: Metaphor and the Two Sources of Religion 79 The Reality of the Created: From Deconstruction to Recreation 101 The Metaphysical Foundation of Frye's Monadology 117 Word, Flesh, Metaphor, and ‘Something’ of a Mystery in Words with Power 125 MYTH AND TYPOLOGY 143 The Flesh Made Word: Body and Spirit in the New Archetypology of Northrop Frye 143 Northrop Frye between Archetype and Typology 157 Northrop Frye: Typology and Gnosticism 171 A Note on Frye and Philo: Philosophy and the Revealed Word 184 THE CHURCH 195 Frye and the Church 195 Northrop Frye and Catholicism 207 APPLICATIONS 225 Crazy Love: Frye, Breton, and the Erotic Imagination 225 Toni Morrison: Re-Visionary Words with Power 255 Northrop Frye and the Poetry in Biblical Hermeneutics 271 Oscar Wilde's De Profundis: Prison Letter as Myth 285 The Seduction of Figaro: Gender and the Archetype of the ‘Tricky Servant’ 300 SPIRAL CURRICULA 313 Frye’s Fourth: ‘The Substance of Things Hoped For, The Evidence of Things Not Seen’ 313 The Ashes of Stars: Northrop Frye and the Trickster God 332 Northrop Frye’s ‘Kook Books’ and the Esoteric Tradition 349 Index of Works by Northrop Frye 377 Index of Biblical Passages 381 Index of Names and Subjects 383

The religious context of Northrop Frye's criticism is virtually inexhaustible in its reach and implication. Frye and the Word draws together leading scholars in the fields of literary studies and hermeneutics, religious studies, and philosophy to construe and debate the late thought and writings of Northrop Frye in their spiritual dimension. The volume provides the first full account and evaluation of the legacy of Frye's works on the Bible and literature, in relation to Frye's work as a whole and to current trends in literary criticism and religious studies.

Frye's trilogy, The Great Code, Words with Power, and The Double Vision, both showed him to be a radical Blakean visionary and carried him forward into an urgent engagement with the imaginative and spiritual dimension as expressed in language, myth and metaphor, tools of recognition, and revelation. Frye struggled to understand and articulate how the Bible enjoyed – for reasons still to be fully appreciated in their literary context – an apparently unequalled spiritual and cultural authority, and what this authority could tell us about our primary concerns as human beings and our still unrealized potential for fulfillment. This collection, then, is about Frye's own engagement with words and the Word, with secular and sacred scripture -- about a unifying principle that lies often unrecognized, if everywhere manifest, in the spiritual and imaginative dimensions of language.

The religious context of Northrop Frye's criticism is virtually inexhaustible in its reach and implication. 'Frye and the word' draws together leading scholars in the fields of literary studies and hermeneutics, religious studies, and philosophy to construe and debate the late thought and writings of Northrop Frye in their spiritual dimension. The volume provides the first full account and evaluation of the legacy of Frye's works on the Bible and literature, in relation to Frye's work as a whole and to current trends in literary criticism and religious studies. Frye's trilogy, The Great Code, Words with Power, and The Double Vision, both showed him to be a radical Blakean visionary and carried him forward into an urgent engagement with the imaginative and spiritual dimension as expressed in language, myth and metaphor, tools of recognition, and revelation. Frye struggled to understand and articulate how the Bible enjoyed - for reasons still to be fully appreciated in their literary context - an apparently unequalled spiritual and cultural authority, and what this authority could tell us about our primary concerns as human beings and our still unrealised potential for fulfilment. This collection, then, is about Frye's own engagement with words and the Word, with secular and sacred scripture - about a unifying principle that lies often unrecognized, if everywhere manifest, in the spiritual and imaginative dimensions of language