Northrop Frye’s Student Essays

VOLUME 3

Edited by Robert D. Denham

‘Frye was a person of uncommon gifts, and very little that came from his pen is without interest.’ So writes Robert Denham in his introduction to this unique collection of twenty-two papers written by Northrop Frye during his student years. Made public only after Frye’s death in 1991, all but one of the essays are published here for the first time.

The majority of these papers were written for courses at Emmanuel College, the theology school of Victoria College at the University of Toronto. Essays such as ‘The Concept of Sacrifice,’ ‘The Fertility Cults,’ and ‘The Jewish Background of the New Testament’ reveal the links between Frye’s early research in theology and the form and content of his later criticism. It is clear that, even as a theology student, Frye’s first impulse was always that of the cultural critic. The papers on Calvin, Eliot, Chaucer, Wyndham Lewis, and on the forms of prose fiction show Frye as precociously witty, rigorous, and incisive—a gifted writer who clearly found his voice before his last undergraduate year.

David Lodge wrote in the New Statesman: ‘There are not many critics whose twenty-year-old book reviews one can read with pleasure and instruction, but Frye is an exception to most rules.’ Northrop Frye’s student essays provide pleasure and instruction through their comments on the Augustinian view of history, on beauty, truth, and goodness, and on literary symbolism and tradition.

ROBERT D. DENHAM is John P. Fishwick Professor of English at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. He is author and editor of several books on Northrop Frye, the most recent being The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939; The Legacy of Northrop Frye (co-edited with Alvin Lee), and The Eternal Act of Creation: Essays on Northrop Frye, 1979–1990.

The Collected Edition of the Works of Northrop Frye has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee under the aegis of Victoria University, through its Northrop Frye Centre. The purpose of the edition is to make available authoritative texts of both published and unpublished works, based on analysis and comparison of all available materials, and supported by scholarly apparatus, including annotation and introductions. The Northrop Frye Centre gratefully acknowledges financial support, through McMaster University, from the Michael G. DeGroote family.

Editorial Committee

General Editor

Alvin A. Lee

Assistant Editor

Jean O’Grady

Editors

Joseph Adamson

Robert D. Denham

Michael Dolzani

A.C. Hamilton

David Staines

Advisers

Robert Brandeis

Eleanor Cook

J.R. de J. Jackson

Eva Kushner

Jane Millgate

Roseann Runte

Ron Schoeffel

Clara Thomas

Jane Widdicombe