Biblical and Classical Myths: The Mythological Framework of Western Culture

Thomas M.F. Gerry is chair of the English Department at Laurentian
University and the editor of Arachne, Laurentian University’s
bilingual interdisciplinary journal of language and literature.

While we await the publication of all 33 volumes of the Collected Works
of Northrop Frye, the University of Toronto Press has provided an
auspicious preview by publishing in paperback Frye’s Victoria College
lectures on the Bible. The 24 lectures were delivered in 1981–82 and
transcribed from videotapes. In 1973–74, Frye had been joined by Jay
Macpherson, his former M.A. and Ph.D. student, in teaching his
long-standing course on the English Bible. Having published a popular
textbook, Four Ages of Man: The Classical Myths (1962), and also being
an accomplished poet, Macpherson transformed the course by lecturing on
classical mythology, resulting in the course’s title and emphasis
being changed to The Mythological Framework of Western Culture. This
book, together with the transcriptions of Frye’s lectures and the
reprinting of Macpherson’s Four Ages of Man, presents the two
components of what must have been a marvellous course.

Frye, the hugely influential scholar, critic, theorist, teacher, and
author, and Macpherson, the highly regarded poet, scholar, and teacher
(of Margaret Atwood, among many others), share much and also differ
significantly. Frye’s treatment of the Bible proceeds inductively,
leading the reader to build connections in an architecture of awareness,
much as the Bible itself constructs its revelations. Macpherson retells
the classical myths chronologically—“creation and the coming of the
gods; pastoral life and the ordering of the seasons; the adventures and
the labours of the heroes; war, tragic tales, and decline into
history.” She participates in the ongoing metamorphosis of the
stories. Rather than erecting analytical scaffolding to heighten her
readers’ vision, Macpherson inserts into her relations of the
classical stories pictures derived from Grecian pottery and lines from
English poems. These convergences of Macpherson’s narration with
poetry and art on the same subjects create a profoundly felt recognition
of the myths’ power.

This book offers its readers the chance to experience the stimulation
and growth that the fortunate students in Frye and Macpherson’s
classes had.