The Secular Scripture And Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991

by Adamson, Joseph; Wilson, Jean

• ISBN13: 9780802039453
• ISBN10: 0802039456
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-06-27
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

Northrop Frye'sThe Secular Scripturewas 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 Scripturetogether 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 perspective on popular fiction and culture and shows how romance forms have, by their very structural and conventional features, an ability to address both specific social concerns and deep and fundamental human concerns that span time and place. In distinguishing popular from elite culture, Frye insists that they are both ultimately two aspects of the same "human compulsion to create in the face of chaos." The additional late writings reflect Frye's sense at the time that he was working "toward some kind of final statement," which eventually saw the light of day, only months before his death, as Words with Power(1990).

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Credits and Sources	xv
Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction	xxi
1 The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance	3	(122)
I The Word and World of Man	5	(20)
II The Context of Romance	25	(19)
III Our Lady of Pain: Heroes and Heroines of Romance	44	(19)
IV The Bottomless Dream: Themes of Descent	63	(21)
V Quis Hic Locus? Themes of Ascent	84	(20)
VI The Recovery of Myth	104	(21)
2 Romance as Masque	125	(27)
3 Letter to the Editor of Parabola	152	(1)
4 The Responsibilities of the Critic	153	(17)
5 Comment on Peter Hughes's Essay	170	(2)
6 Literature, History, and Language	172	(8)
7 On Translation	180	(2)
8 Extracts from The Practical Imagination: Stories, Poems, Plays	182	(31)
9 Vision and Cosmos	213	(17)
10 Literature as a Critique of Pure Reason	230	(15)
11 Approaching the Lyric	245	(7)
12 The Survival of Eros in Poetry	252	(35)
13 The Ouroboros	287	(3)
14 Literary and Linguistic Scholarship in a Postliterate World	290	(9)
15 The End of History	299	(1)
16 Myth as the Matrix of Literature	300	(12)
17 The Koine of Myth: Myth as a Universally Intelligible Language	312	(15)
18 The Symbol as a Medium of Exchange	327	(15)
19 The Expanding World of Metaphor	342	(15)
20 Extracts from The Harper Handbook to Literature	357	(33)
21 Letter to the Editor of PMLA	390	(2)
22 Lacan and the Full Word	392	(4)
23 Literature and the Visual Arts	396	(12)
24 The Journey as Metaphor	408	(15)
25 Framework and Assumption	423	(13)
26 Maps and Territories	436	(6)
27 Epilogo	442	(2)
28 Auguries of Experience	444	(7)
29 Literary and Mechanical Models	451	(12)
30 Literature as Therapy	463	(14)
31 Response to Papers on "Northrop Frye and Eighteenth-Century Literature"	477	(8)
Notes	485	(50)
Emendations	535	(2)
Index	537