Northrop Frye: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources

Eleanor Morgan taught English and Canadian Studies at Woodsworth College, University of Toronto.

Robert D. Denham’s preface notes that “a recent study of 950 journals revealed that among the most frequently cited authors in the arts and humanities Frye ranked only [sic] behind Marx, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Lenin, Plato, Freud and Barthes.” Denham’s purpose here is to provide an aid to further study of Frye’s broad influence and international achievement that will also “stand as a testimony to the large space Frye occupies in the world of critical discourse.”

The Bibliography succeeds admirably as both tool and tribute. It is clear, comprehensive, and easy to use. It is divided into two main sections: Primary Sources include 844 of the more than 2,500 items, annotated, where possible, in Frye’s own words. Secondary Sources, in addition to books, essays, and reviews, include dissertations and theses (39 from five countries), bibliographies, and such miscellaneous items as news stories, biographical notices, letters, and anecdotes (172 items). There are both title and name and subject indexes directing the searcher to section, designated by letter, and to numbered item within it. An appendix gives a chronological list of entry numbers for books and essays about Frye’s criticism. The book is fastidiously produced, with few errors, though this must be the very first time Anatomy of Criticism has been described as “schematically over-ingenious” (p. 240).

Robert D. Denham has written a University of Chicago dissertation on Frye, later published as a book, edited Frye’s review essays, contributed nearly a dozen articles to journals, and prepared an earlier enumerative bibliography, with supplements and addenda.

This book will be of immediate use to teachers, students, and scholars, and should become a useful document for literary and cultural historians. Such elusive items as films and tapes (some of them excellent teaching aids), theses, and interviews are precisely identified; manuscripts are listed in detail and located, most at Victoria and Massey Colleges, University of Toronto. Scholars to come will bless Frye the expert typist. The second part of the book will be useful particularly to graduate students and to literary historians. Scholars will perhaps wish to do their own listing and annotating, but, judging from the samples checked, they will find Denham scrupulous in his summaries. If anything he may be too scrupulous: his note on Bruce W. Powe’s chapter on Frye in A Climate Charged, for instance, notes the concessions and criticisms but does not identify Powe as a committed McLuhanite whose flippancy is unfair to Frye.

Comprehensive as the Bibliography is, it is not definitive and does not claim to be. All but casual users would need to know the range of Denham’s searches, but there is no indication that he built up his list by any method more systematic than the capillary action created by sustained interest. Further, if one grants Frye’s claim for criticism as an autonomous creation, Anatomy of Criticism must be one of the great texts in the canon and everything about it will be of interest. Denham’s book provides an instant preliminary view of its reception and influence, but what of its genesis? Are Frye’s university essays, his sermons, his Oxford papers, his early lecture notes lurking somewhere?

Denham has gathered a wonderfully abundant first harvest whose store can be increased as Frye continues to write and to generate devotees and debate in the critical community. The preface suggests that this book is in part an act of devotion. It is a most welcome one, revealing the brilliant, shy, much-loved teacher, the resonant critic who, even for opponents, sheds light on everything he touches, the exemplary Canadian who has made the verbal universe his global village.