The "Third Book" Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964-1972: The Critical Comedy

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.

After he had written Fearful Symmetry, his book on William Blake (1947),
and his Anatomy of Criticism (1957), Northrop Frye intended to write a
third book which, in the editor’s words, “was supposed to be a
complete guide to the symbolic universe.” In addition, he had for
several years been contemplating an ambitious series of eight works
which he called his “ogdoad.” The “third book” was never
written, and various subjects proposed in the ogdoad were worked into
separate but unconnected books.

This series of notebooks, then, represents plans on Frye’s part that
were never realized in their original form. We see him, in fact,
thrashing around, trying to clarify his thoughts and to relate them to
his earlier plans. It is a process fascinating for those interested in
the workings of Frye’s mind, but frustrating for those primarily
concerned with his properly formulated ideas and subject matter. We
receive numerous individual insights, but, in the absence of a completed
book, it is not always easy to get a sense of a coherent argument.

Blake once wrote: “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another
man’s.” I cannot help feeling that Frye almost gets enslaved by his
own system. As if the third book and his ogdoad were not enough, he
inserts an intricate diagram which he christens “the Great Doodle,”
and which appears in different forms to explain (or possibly to
complicate) his various schemes. The intellectual air is decidedly
rarefied.

Frye claimed with some justice that all his published books were
written for intelligent general readers, but these notebooks, not
intended for publication—not, at least, in this form—can prove heavy
going. This ninth volume of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye
maintains the standards of impeccable editorship established in the
earlier books, and explains all allusions concisely and clearly.
Nonetheless, it is fair to say that this is the first book in the series
designed primarily for specialists.