Nortrop Frye differed from other theorists of myth in tracing all of the major literary genres--romance, comedy, satire, not just tragedy--to myth and ritual. This volume is the most thorough presentation of his thinking on the subject.

Eminent Frye scholar Robert D. Denham explores the connection between Frye and writers who influenced his thinking but about whom he never wrote anything extensive: Aristotle, Longinus, Joachim of Floris, Giordano Bruno, Henry Reynolds, Robert Burton, Kierkegaard, Lewis Carroll, Stéphane Mallarmé, Colin Still, Paul Tillich, and Frances A. Yates.

Offers fresh insights into ten of Shakespeare's most popular plays, relating each of these works to others and discussing many of the central elements of Shakespearean drama

"This volume brings together Northrop Frye's criticism on twentieth-century literature, a body of work produced over almost sixty years. Including Frye's incisive book on T.S. Eliot, as well as his discussions of writers such as James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, and George Orwell, the volume also contains a recently discovered review of C.G. Jung's book on the synchronicity principle and a previously unpublished introduction to an anthology of twentieth-century literature. Frye's insightful commentaries demonstrate that he was as astute a critic of the literature of his own time as he was of the literature of earlier periods." "Glen Robert Gill's introduction delineates the development of Frye's criticism on twentieth-century literature, puts it in historical and cultural context, and relates it to his overarching theory of literature. This definitive volume in the Collected Works will be a welcome addition to the libraries of Frye specialists and of scholars and students of twentieth-century literature in general."--BOOK JACKET.