Northrop Frye's Student Essays, 1932-1938

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.

With the exception of a few papers in which Frye cannily recycled
material presented elsewhere, this book, the third volume of the
Collected Works of Northrop Frye, publishes all his student essays that
remain extant—three from his undergraduate years at Victoria College,
15 from his theological studies at Emmanuel (several of these, however,
focusing on his literary as well as his religious interests), and four
that may have been written during his years at Oxford but in any event
belong to the 1930s.

Why print anyone’s student essays? The enterprise is admittedly a
little quixotic, but it has two useful results. The chief interest lies
in the light they shed on Frye’s development as a teacher and thinker.
In the earliest essays, we see him laying the firm foundation for his
subsequent impressive erudition; they are astonishing, given his age,
but they consist mainly of a skilful summary and organization of
material obtained through his wide reading. In the later ones, however,
we watch him beginning to think for himself. “An Enquiry into the Art
Forms of Prose Fiction,” for instance, shows him initiating the
categorizing investigations that will ultimately result in his Anatomy
of Criticism. Also noteworthy is the progression from a rather heavy
solemnity to the poised wit characteristic of his later work.

Another response to these essays is chastening, since they provide
evidence of the sad decline in university standards in the last 60
years. However exceptional Frye may have been (and undoubtedly was), his
papers attest to a standard of scholarly seriousness and intellectual
curiosity almost unthinkable in our own degenerate days. Hardly any
senior graduate students in the arts now possess the breadth and
maturity that Frye displayed in his undergraduate years.

For those with a deep interest in Frye’s thought, this book is
essential reading. However, unlike the earlier volumes of the series
that printed the fascinating correspondence between Frye and his future
wife, it has less to offer the general reader.