Northrop Frye Unbuttoned: Wit and Wisdom from the Notebooks and Diaries

Northrop Frye

House of Anansi Press, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 326 pages

Northrop Frye once wrote, "I've always wanted to write 'my own' book of pensees. The disadvantage of this project is that it can't be planned."Fulfilling Frye's own idea, Robert D. Denham has drawn from Frye's own notebooks and diaries a hugely entertaining collection of literary musings, thoughts on religion, and aphoristic speculations on a broad range of topics. We see Frye unbuttoning his suit jacket and revealing his vulnerable side Ñ idiosyncratic, cranky, irreverent, down-to-earth. The book also contains many personal and autobiographical passages such as the loving entries on the death of Frye's wife, Helen.

About the author

Herman Northrop Frye was born in 1912 in Quebec, Canada. His mother educated him at home until the fourth grade. After graduating from the University of Toronto, he studied theology at Emmanuel College for several years and actually worked as a pastor before deciding he preferred the academic life. He eventually obtained his master's degree from Oxford, and taught English at the University of Toronto for more than four decades. Frye's first two books, Fearful Symmetry (1947) and Anatomy of Criticism (1957) set forth the influential literary principles upon which he continued to elaborate in his numerous later works. These include Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology, The Well-Tempered Critic, and The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Frye died in 1991.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Northrop Frye Unbuttoned: Wit and Wisdom from the Notebooks and Diaries
• Author: Northrop Frye
• Contributor: Robert D. Denham
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press, 2004
• ISBN: 0887841856, 9780887841859
• Length: 326 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures; Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory