Northrop Frye

Presented here is a selection from the professional and personal correspondence of Northrop Frye, one of the preeminent literary critics of the last century. With frank and accessible appraisals, the letters reveal Frye's attitudes toward scores of topics: the value of James Bond thrillers, the gap between faith and reason, surrealism, hippies, Milton's imagery, comparative literature, political hysteria in the U.S., the nature of the educated imagination, anarchism, the teaching of religion in the university, the Proteus myth, the distinction between subjects and themes, the connection between Nietzsche and Yeats, the difference between cliche and aphorism, the fussy rules of copy editors, and scores of other issues.