Published 26 May 1987
From “Northrop Frye: fate studiare la Bibbia,” Il Tempo, 26 May 1987, translated by Nella Cotrupi. While he was in Rome Frye was also interviewed by Donata Aphel, journalist with Il Tempo, an influential Rome morning daily of a conservative cast. The Great Code had recently been translated into Italian by Giovanni Rizzoni as Il Grande Codice: la Bibbia e la letteratura (Turin: Einaudi, 1986).
APHEL: With your book on the Bible, it may be the first time (at least in Italy) that the Old and New Testaments are linked to the study of narrative works. At the international level, what kind of a response has this work garnered?
FRYE: Let’s say that it was not a unanimous response; many critics had a feeling that this was a book on religion, and that is not so. Others thought that I was being anti-historical, but it is the Bible that is anti-historical. There have also been, however, positive, generous reactions. There are those who understood that the Bible is a unified whole, to be read precisely as a great code.
APHEL: In recent days Il Tempo launched a debate around the proposal to include the study of the Bible as an alternative to the teaching of Catholicism in schools.1 Do you agree with this proposal?
FRYE: It’s an initiative that could well be realized. I have taught a course on the Bible in which Jesuits and Communists have participated. My thinking is that the big book could be a guide for students of every persuasion: Jews, Protestants, Moslems …
APHEL: Excluding the theological aspect, what Biblical theme do you think is most compelling for students? The historical, metaphorical, poetic, imaginative?
FRYE: What my students find most compelling is the unified whole that the Bible represents; the fact that it incorporates the entire history of humanity. But perhaps what intrigues them most are my tables of imagery, the series of images that I trace graphically and which are also included in The Great Code.
APHEL: You speak of The Great Code: the Bible has provided a code of behaviour not only in the moral realm, but also in the public domain. In today’s world, should politics take more or less inspiration from religion? In Italy this is discussed widely in the context of the present electoral climate. As a student of Eliot—who raised this very issue in Murder in the Cathedral—what are your thoughts?
FRYE: More than anything, I would call it a code of understanding, not of behaviour. Whether politics should or should not take its inspiration from religion is one of the recurring problems in the realm of this “understanding.” Eliot presents it in one way and the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky in another.2 On this matter I have no opinion; otherwise I should have written a novel.
APHEL: Another illustrious Canadian scholar, Marshall McLuhan, has said that “the medium is the message.”3 The Bible has had the media of literature, music, painting, the cinema; now it will also have animated Japanese cartoons for TV. Do you believe that the Bible can be abused by these media?
FRYE: I would say “used” rather than “abused.” McLuhan’s statement is a highly constructed formulation; the message arrives via the medium and it is important that it should arrive. Thus the message of the Bible reaches us even through animated Japanese cartoons. This does not surprise me.