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Literary Criticism Canadian

Educating the Imagination

Northrop Frye, Past, Present, and Future

edited by Alan Bewell, Neil ten Kortenaar & Germaine Warkentin

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2015
Category
Canadian
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773545724
    Publish Date
    Dec 2015
    List Price
    $110.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773545731
    Publish Date
    Dec 2015
    List Price
    $43.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773597372
    Publish Date
    Oct 2015
    List Price
    $34.95

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Description

Northrop Frye's long career made him Canada's most creative public intellectual. A century after his birth, his many books demonstrate a powerful vision of the resources of the human imagination. Frye's critical theory sought the continuities linking human creation in all spheres of life, trusting in the idea of a single human community sharing myths, stories, and images that express shared visions and desires.

The essays in Educating the Imagination illustrate the extraordinary range of Frye's ideas. Robert Bringhurst examines how Frye mapped the mind, Ian Balfour considers what "belief" meant for Frye, and Gordon Teskey re-examines two of the critic's great subjects - Blake and Milton. Michael Dolzani and Thomas Willard discuss Frye's symbolism, and Robert Tally looks at his utopianism. A strong thread running through all the essays is Frye's interest in the Romantic era, as Mark Ittenson shows. Three essays pair Frye with other titans of the time: Fredric Jameson, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida. Troni Y. Grande examines a gender issue in Frye's theory of tragedy, and J. Edward Chamberlin concludes by relating Frye's writings to songs, ceremonies of belief, and the common ground that they represent across cultures.

Engaging with significant matters of contemporary concern, Educating the Imagination provides a renewed understanding of Northrop Frye and the fertility of his ideas about the imagination and society.

Contributors include Ian Balfour (York), Robert Bringhurst, Adam Carter (Lethbridge), J. Edward Chamberlin (Toronto), Alexander Dick (British Columbia), Michael Dolzani (Baldwin Wallace), Troni Y. Grande (Regina), Mark Ittensohn (Zurich), Garry Sherbert (Regina), Robert T. Tally, Jr., (Texas State), Gordon Teskey (Harvard), and Thomas Willard (Arizona).

About the authors

Alan Bewell is a professor and the chair of the Department of English at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Wordsworth and the Enlightenment: Nature, Man, and Society in the "Experimental" Poetry and Romanticism and Colonial Disease.

Alan Bewell's profile page

Neil ten Kortenaar is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Neil ten Kortenaar's profile page

Germaine Warkentin is a professor emerita of the Department of English at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

Germaine Warkentin's profile page

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