Northrop Frye

David Rampton, David Rampton

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780776618739
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

More than fifty years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye remains one of Canada's most influential intellectuals. This reappraisal reasserts the relevance of his work to the study of literature and illuminates its fruitful intersection with a variety of other fields, including film, cultural studies, linguistics, and feminism. Many of the contributors draw upon the early essays, correspondence, and diaries recently published as part of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series, in order to explore the development of his extraordinary intellectual range and the implications of his imaginative syntheses. They refute postmodernist arguments that Frye's literary criticism is obsolete and propose his wide-ranging and non-linear ways of thinking as a model for twenty-first century readers searching for innovative ways of understanding literature and its relevance to contiguous disciplines. The volume provides an in-depth examination of Frye's work on a range of literary questions, periods, and genres, as well as a consideration of his contributions to literary theory, philosophy, and theology. The portrait that emerges is that of a writer who still has much to offer those interested in literature and the ways it represents and transforms our world. The book's overall argument is that Frye's case for the centrality of the imagination has never been more important where understanding history, reconciling science and culture, or reconceptualizing social change is concerned.

FRYE’S LEGACY

PART I

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF NORTHROP FRYE

The Project and the Edition

Alvin Lee

THE INITIAL idea of a collected edition of Frye’s writings and speeches first surfaced on 2 May 1991, a little more than three months after Frye’s death. James Carscallen, a colleague and former student of Frye, made the suggestion in a conversation with Eva Kushner, President of Victoria University, who then asked him to put the case for such an undertaking in the form of a letter to her. Later that day Carscallen did so, in a two-page single-spaced letter in which he recognized something of the complexity of what he was proposing and the large body of Frye’s productions, including many repetitions, but made this comment: “… I’ve never read or heard anything from him that didn’t give me the feeling of newness—a sense that I had to open my mind in a way I’d never done before.”¹

The first two volumes, with the title The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp 1932–1939, edited by Robert D. Denham, appeared in late 1996, “in memory of John M. Robson.” A good deal had happened in the almost six intervening years. I shall tell that story briefly, concentrating on the defining points and the individuals and groups involved, and then move on to the more recent part of the narrative, bringing us to May 2008, at which time twenty-five volumes of a thirty-volume collected edition were in print. One is imminent, three are in press, and the final volume, a cumulative index, is building steadily. With the synoptic story of those thirty volumes before us, we can proceed to examine what it is that Frye has done and how his works might still be used.

Kushner readily saw the appropriateness of Carscallen’s suggestion that Victoria University should sponsor a scholarly edition of Frye’s works. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Frye had been the most influential thinker in Canada about human cultures and works of the human imagination. He had enjoyed a broad global impact. But he had chosen to stay at Victoria College in Toronto, in spite of numerous blandishments to move elsewhere. A reliable collected edition of his works would make it possible for him to become the object of serious scholarship.

Kushner’s respect for Frye’s achievements and her collegial relation with him had begun in 1965, when he went to Carleton University to help inaugurate the Comparative Literature program she was founding there. Frye and his wife, Helen, had also gone with Kushner to Islamabad to take part in an international conference on Comparative Literature. He had been chancellor of Victoria University during her time as president and vice-chancellor, and in that period she had established the Northrop Frye Centre (in 1988). Its purposes were to encourage and sustain research on the writings and thought of Frye as well as humanities research projects compatible with Frye’s intellectual and cultural achievement. For some years, extending a little after Kushner’s presidency (which ended in June 1994), the centre thrived, with a series of fellowships, visitors, and lectures, under the encouragement of an honorary board of prestigious individuals and a smaller management board. For the past decade, aside from a few visiting scholars, the only major activity in the centre has been the editorial project.

An additional responsibility shared by Frye and Kushner had been the University of Toronto Graduate Centre for Comparative Literature, in which she played a leading role and he had accepted appointment as the first chair, largely because the centre was having difficulty getting established in the midst of jurisdictional disagreements. The commitment of someone of Frye’s eminence let it happen.

The crucial first move now for Kushner in 1991 was to choose someone to help define the editorial project and start the administrative and scholarly process of putting it together. A year earlier, John M. Robson, a long-time faculty member at Victoria, had brought to a conclusion the editorial project The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, which had produced thirty-three volumes from the University of Toronto Press. That work had taken most of Robson’s professional life, thirty years, and he certainly would have been justified in asking his president to look elsewhere when she asked him to front the Frye project. The Mill edition had established levels of editorial excellence and scholarly production that will stand for a long time as one of Toronto’s major academic achievements.

In spite of the scope of this new large project, Robson did agree to take it on. By November 1992 he had produced for Kushner a set of proposals that would lead to the first definition of the work to be done and the kind of organization he thought desirable.² Robson recommended that the president appoint a ten-member editorial committee whose chair would be the general editor, someone from Victoria University. The general editor would have authority over all editorial decisions once a protocol covering editorial principles and practices had been agreed on. Several of the members, he suggested, should be from Victoria or the University of Toronto. Robson foresaw that in the first year the committee would be busy and meet frequently while working out details, but gradually would have “only a supervisory role except in special circumstances.” He asked that the Collected Works project be given a workroom in conjunction with the Frye Centre, which is on the second floor of the old Vic Library building on Charles Street West.

Work to be done in the short term included (a) the committee surveying all of Frye’s published works to determine which of them were still in print and which were not and where copyright lay (b) surveying all unpublished manuscript materials (including notebooks and letters) to determine which merited consideration for publication and what arrangements (tentative or otherwise) had been made about them, and on that basis (c) drawing up a tentative publication program. These tasks having been carried out, the committee should then approach a publisher and try to sign an advance contract for the series and for the first volumes, the editors of the volumes to be chosen from Canadian universities and elsewhere. And finally, at this last stage of the first phase of the Works of Frye editorial project, applications for funding should be made.

Robson’s proposals in November 1992 were the basis for action over the next three years, and in some respects for the project to this day, fifteen years later, but there were serious obstacles and progress was slow. By March 1993, he had assembled an editorial committee of fourteen people (larger than he had contemplated), with himself as chair. The inaugural meeting was held on 11 March 1993. The purpose of the project was sharpened, making clear that the goal was to produce a scholarly collected edition, not a complete works.

Beginning in November 1990, two months before Frye’s death, Robert Denham of Roanoke College and Michael Dolzani of Baldwin-Wallace College had agreed to work together on editing Frye correspondence, permission having been given for this through Jane Widdicombe, former secretary to Frye and executrix of the Frye estate. With the initial discovery in 1991 of the riches in the unpublished notebooks and diaries, the realization was growing that there was much more to the unknown story of Frye’s life and works than the letters. It was agreed at the 11 March 1993 meeting that the first volumes should include at least some of the unpublished papers. By 1992 Denham and Dolzani had obtained permission from the executors to edit and publish all the unpublished papers, though each of the contracts had to go through the executors for approval. Those at the meeting discussed the long time it might take to finish the project. Robson reported that he had applied to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) with a letter of intent under the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives Program and that the council’s response would be available shortly. The committee agreed the project would proceed regardless of the SSHRC decision, it being recognized that such first inquiries were frequently unsuccessful but still could be useful in later applications. By agreement between the general editor and the executors of the Frye estate, Widdicombe approached three presses—Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Princeton, and the University of Toronto—to ascertain possible interest in publishing the edition. Harcourt showed polite interest and asked to be kept advised of developments. Princeton was cautious, concerned that the project might reduce their profits from the sales of Fearful Symmetry and Anatomy of Criticism. The University of Toronto Press was enthusiastic.³

Assembling the materials of the Frye oeuvre and sorting them into lists of possible subject areas was the first major editorial challenge. Finances had to be seen to. An agreement had to be made with a publisher.

Kushner was strongly supportive, and committed space, equipment, and secretarial help in the Frye Centre. She undertook to help find funds from Victoria University’s Board of Regents and from external bodies, including not only SSHRC but also foundations. In the meantime the committee, through two sub-committees, one concerned with previously published works and the other with the unpublished materials, would formulate a publishing plan once Robson, Denham, and Widdicombe had done the preliminary sorting and arranging of materials.

The Frye estate, with Widdicombe, Denham, and Frye’s tax accountant Roger Ball as trustees, still had not been settled at this point, early in 1993. Until it was, the executors were responsible for all decisions about publication. It was known that all Frye’s books and papers, unpublished and published, were willed to Victoria University, along with a substantial cash legacy, but Victoria still did not have permission from the executors to publish.

The Northrop Frye Fonds at Victoria University Library had been started much earlier, during Canada’s centennial year 1967, with the acquisition of the typescripts of The Well-Tempered Critic and Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy. Later additions during the next twenty-five years included a partial typescript of a draft of the introduction and three chapters of Fearful Symmetry. There are typescripts, sometimes annotated with corrections, of most of Frye’s articles from the 1960s on, including those published in collections such as The Bush Garden, Divisions on a Ground, The Stubborn Structure, and so on. The additions in the early 1990s included a large body of writing not published during Frye’s lifetime. These are: eighty-five notebooks ranging in size from 2 to 270 pages and dating from 1942 to 1990, a total of about a million words; correspondence with Helen Kemp, whom he later married; diaries; essays written while a student; and something like 20,000 leaves of professional correspondence. The collection also includes the annotated volumes in Frye’s personal library (there is interesting sleuthing still to be done in these) and his published works. These last are extensive. At the time of Frye’s death in January 1991 he was the author of twenty-eight books, followed posthumously that year by The Double Vision. He had edited or co-edited thirteen books, been general editor of a series of Shakespeare’s plays, and served as supervisory editor of thirteen volumes of Literature: Uses of the Imagination. His essays and chapters appeared in more than sixty books. His separately published monographs, journal articles, introductions, and reviews are many. As well, along the way there were miscellaneous writings and a host of utterances in interviews, dialogues, radio talks, television programs, and film documentaries. Much of the work that was unpublished until the new collected edition is of prime intellectual and autobiographical interest. A good deal of the previously published work was out of print or scattered in relatively obscure places. All these intellectual products, published and unpublished, had to be brought together an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Volumes of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye and of Frye Studies
• Introduction
• Part I: Frye’s Legacy
• Part II: Frye & Canadian Literature
• Part III: Frye & the Sacred
• Part IV: New Directions from Old: Reconsiderations
• Part V: New Approaches
• Biographies
• Index