The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) - Softcover

Frye, Northrop

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674796764 ISBN 13: 9780674796768

Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 1978

Synopsis

Northrop Frye’s thinking has had a pervasive impact on contemporary interpretations of our literary and cultural heritage. In his Anatomy of Criticism, a landmark in the history of modern critical theory, he demonstrated his genius for mapping out the realm of imaginative creation. In The Secular Scripture he turns again to the task of establishing a broad theoretical framework, bringing to bear his extraordinary command of the whole range of literature from antiquity to the present.

Romance, a mode of literature trafficking in such plot elements as mistaken identity, shipwrecks, magic potions, the rescue of maidens in distress, has tended to be regarded as hardly deserving of serious consideration; critics praise other aspects of the Odyssey, The Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s last plays, and Scott’s Waverley novels, for example, while forgiving the authors’ indulgence in childishly romantic plots. Frye, however, discerns in the innumerable romantic narratives of the Western tradition an imaginative universe stretching from an idyllic world to a demonic one, and a pattern of action taking the form of a cyclical descent into and ascent out of the demonic realm. Romance as a whole is thus seen as forming an integrated vision of the world, a “secular scripture” whose hero is man, paralleling the sacred scripture whose hero is God.

The clarity of Northrop Frye’s perception, the scope and suggestiveness of his conceptualizing, the wit and grace of his style, have won him universal admiration.

About this title

Review

“Northrop Frye’s criticism is so richly textured, so dense with insight, and so wide-ranging in its references... The Secular Scripture is in fact the most sophisticated study of popular culture, considered on a world scale, that we have yet had.”―The New Republic

“His breadth of learning and his consistently penetrating insights lend engrossing substance to his thesis...provide the literary vehicle that enables what he calls ‘the secular scripture’ to encompass the spectrum of man’s experience from idyllic to demonic. Frye literally weaves an enchanting prose tapestry out of this concept.”―Publishers Weekly

Edition details

• Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 0674796764
• ISBN 13: 9780674796768
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 200