It is often forgotten that Northrop Frye, a scholar known chiefly for his books and articles, was also a gifted speaker who was never reluctant to be interviewed. This collection of 111 interviews and discussions with the critic assembles all of those published or broadcast on radio or television. Also included among the interviews are a number of conversations not generally known, many of them transcribed from tapes gathered from personal collections. Interviews with Northrop Frye aims to provide another view of the famous literary critic, one that supplements that which is often obtained from reading his printed works. Ranging from the earliest interviews in 1948 to discussions that took place mere months before his death in 1991, this volume is a complete portrait of Frye the conversationalist, demonstrating that he was capable of expressing his thought just as lucidly in person as he could on paper. Among the topics included are Frye’s views on teaching, writing, and Canadian literature, his opinions on the state of criticism, and a fascinating exchange concerning contemporary religion. For anyone interested in the life and career of Northrop Frye, these interviews are an ideal way to gain greater insight into the man and his work.

Here is a specialized dictionary of quotations based on the thoughts and writings of a single person. It is evidence that there is a Canadian writer of whom it may be said that we as his readers can grow up inside his work "without ever being aware of a circumference."

This book brings together letters from 89 of Northrop Frye's students, friends, and acquaintances in which they record their recollections of him as a teacher and a person during the 1940s and 1950s. A number of the correspondents also provide their impressions of Victoria College at the time, where Frye taught for more than 50 years. The letters provide insights into Frye as a teacher that are not elsewhere available, and reveal a consistent portrait of an intellectually superlative, generous, and thoughtful man.

The Reception of Northrup Frye takes a thorough accounting of the presence of Frye in existing works and argues against Frye's diminishing status as an important critical voice.

Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye are two of Canada's central cultural figures, colleagues and rivals whose careers unfolded in curious harmony even as their intellectual engagement was antagonistic. Poet, novelist, essayist and philosopher B.W. Powe, who studied with both of these formidable and influential intellectuals, presents an exploration of their lives and work in Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy. Powe considers the existence of a unique visionary tradition of Canadian humanism and argues that McLuhan and Frye represent fraught but complementary approaches to the study of literature and to the broader engagement with culture. Examining their eloquent but often acid responses to each other, Powe exposes the scholarly controversies and personal conflicts that erupted between them, and notably the great commonalities in their writing and biographies. Using interviews, letters, notebooks, and their published texts, Powe offers a new alchemy of their thought, in which he combines the philosophical hallmarks of McLuhan's “The medium is the message” and Frye's “the great code.”

"The present volume includes talks Frye gave that were tape-recorded but for which there is no extant manuscript, taped interviews and responses to questions not included in the volume of interviews of the Collected Works; a previously undiscovered notebook and portions of others, including an extensive series of notes on romance (93,000 words); a brief in opposition to the Macpherson Report on undergraduate education at the University of Toronto; an address about the contribution of Victoria College to Canadian culture; reviews that were until recently unknown to me and the other editors of the Collected Works; a reply to a questionnaire from the American Scholar, and an early essay on poetic diction."--Page xiii

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

These miscellaneous writings offer further evidence of Frye's fertile mind, quick wit, expansive imagination, and eloquence.

This award-winning series systematically presents career biographies of writers from all eras and all genres through volumes dedicated to specific types of literature and time periods.