Words with Power: Being a Second Study of The Bible and Literature

In Words With Power, literary critic and theorist Northrop Frye continues his exploration, begun in The Great Code, of the influence of Biblical themes and forms of expression on Western literature, with discussions of authors ranging from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Yeats and Eliot. Frye identifies four key elements found in the Bible—the mountain, the garden, the cave, and the furnace—and describes how they recur in later secular writings. 

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) was professor emeritus at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and the author of many books on literary theory and criticism.