Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye , 1912-91, Canadian literary critic, b. Quebec. In 1936 he was ordained as a minister in the United Church of Canada. In 1948 he was appointed professor of English at Victoria College, of which he was later principal (1959-66). Fearful Symmetry (1947) is an authoritative study of William Blake's symbolism and religious mysticism. His most influential study, Anatomy of Criticism (1957), a synoptic overview of the principles and techniques of literary criticism, attempts to uncover and categorize the underlying myths and archetypes of world literature. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982) is a discourse on the narrative and stylistic devices of the Bible. His other major works include The Well-Tempered Critic (1963), as well as studies of Shakespeare, Milton, T. S. Eliot, and the English romantic poets.

Bibliography: See studies by D. Cook (1986) and I. Balfour (1988); bibliography by R. D. Denham (1987).

Frye, Northrop (1912–91), Canadian critic, born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, educated at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and at Merton College, Oxford. Returning to Toronto as a lecturer, he wrote Fearful Symmetry (1947), an influential defence of Blake's allegorical system. His most important book is The Anatomy of Criticism (1957), which redirected American literary theory away from the ‘close reading’ of New Criticism and towards the larger meanings of literary genres, modes, and archetypes. Rejecting critical evaluation in favour of a value-free literary science, Frye elaborates here a comprehensive map of the literary ‘universe’ in a boldly schematic series of classifications. His early work did much to redeem the genre of romance, the subject of his later book The Secular Scripture (1976). Among many other works, he wrote The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982). His emphasis on the deeper ‘codes’ or generic structures under the surface of literature foreshadowed the later turn to structuralism in literary studies.