Northrop Frye on Modern Culture

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Hitherto, volumes in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye have been
arranged chronologically, but this one is different. It begins with a
reprint of The Modern Century, the text of the Whidden Lectures at
McMaster University delivered in 1967. There follow two sections of
shorter pieces devoted to modern culture, each arranged chronologically:
“The Arts,” extending from 1935 to 1986, and “Politics, History
and Society,” from 1933 to 1981.

By 1967 Frye was already established as a cultural guru, though these
lectures extend the range of his inquiries. “Inquiries,” however, is
not quite the right word. We are immediately aware of an ex-cathedra
tone. This is not the voice of a man exploring his subject. Rather, Frye
knows, and is here revealing truth. His wisdom is not in question, and
his wit is welcome, but the lack of argument can become oppressive. He
delivers statements that are not to be questioned. Here, one feels, is a
thinking-machine operating relentlessly in an intellectual stratosphere.
It is all highly impressive, yet it invites resistance.

When we turn to the shorter writings, we find the same tone, the same
confidence, even in the mid-1930s when Frye was still a student writing
for a student magazine. The inscrutable mask is already in place. We
know from the published volumes of letters and diaries that the private
Frye had doubts and insecurities, but they never show here.

Reading this material now, 70 years after the first piece was written,
we are still awed by Frye’s erudition. But our world is so different
from his that, as someone who knew Frye as a senior colleague, I am
shocked to find myself regarding him no longer as a contemporary but as
a voice from the past. No one can be as confident now as Frye was then.
He is now an established classic, but no longer a guide.

This book conforms to the editorial principles employed in the previous
10 volumes; although I found the annotations a little less consistent
than usual, the high standards of scholarship and textual editing are
maintained.