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Literary Criticism Gothic & Romance

Northrop Frye's Notebooks on Romance

by (author) Estate of Northrop Frye

edited by Michael Dolzani

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Dec 2004
Category
Gothic & Romance, Canadian
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802039477
    Publish Date
    Dec 2004
    List Price
    $149.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442677890
    Publish Date
    Dec 2004
    List Price
    $146.00

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Description

Romance was a theme that ran through much of Northrop Frye's corpus, and his notebooks and typed notes on the subject are plentiful. This unpublished material, written between 1944 and 1989, traces a remarkable re-evaluation in his thinking over the course of time. As a young scholar, Frye insisted that romance was an expression of cultural decadence; however, in his later years, he thought of it as "the structural core of all fiction."

The unpublished material Michael Dolzani has gathered for Northrop Frye's Notebooks on Romance shows how the pattern and conventions of romance inform the writing of history, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology. While Frye is best known for his writing on myth and biblical scholarship, he himself eventually conceived of romance as the true and equal contrary to myth and scripture, a "secular scripture" whose message is de te fabula, "this story is about you." Given the current popular revival of romance in fiction and film, the appearance of Frye's unpublished work on romance is of profound importance.

About the authors

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) was one of the twentieth century's most influential English scholars and literary critics. Northrop Frye was a professor in the Department of English at Victoria University in the University of Toronto from 1939 until his death. His works include Words with Power and Anatomy of Criticism.

Estate of Northrop Frye's profile page

Michael Dolzani is professor in the Department of English at Baldwin Wallace University.

Michael Dolzani's profile page