Northrop Frye’s The Secular Scripture was first published in 1976 and was soon recognized as one of his most influential works, reflecting an extensive development of Frye’s thoughts about romance as a literary form. This new edition in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series brings The Secular Scripture together with thirty shorter pieces pertaining to literary theory and criticism from the last fifteen years of Frye’s life. Frye’s study illuminates the enduring attraction and deep human significance of the romance genre in all its forms. He provides a unique perspective on popular fiction and culture and shows how romance forms have, by their very structural and conventional features, an ability to address both specific social concerns and deep and fundamental human concerns that span time and place. In distinguishing popular from elite culture, Frye insists that they are both ultimately two aspects of the same “human compulsion to create in the face of chaos.” The additional late writings reflect Frye’s sense at the time that he was working “toward some kind of final statement,” which eventually saw the light of day, only months before his death, as Words with Power (1990).

his new edition in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series brings The Secular Scripture together with thirty shorter pieces pertaining to literary theory and criticism from the last fifteen years of Frye's life.

Reassesses the tradition and individual works of Western romance, from ancient Greece to the present, as constituting an imaginative universe in which man, moving between the idyllic and demonic, functions as a scriptural hero.

Here is a specialized dictionary of quotations based on the thoughts and writings of a single person. It is evidence that there is a Canadian writer of whom it may be said that we as his readers can grow up inside his work "without ever being aware of a circumference."

This volume, which collects Northrop Frye's writings on the theory of literary criticism from the middle period of his career, includes one of Frye's own favourites, The Critical Path (1971). A highly important marker of Frye's career, The Critical Path openly addresses topics that he had previously been reluctant to discuss as fully, including the importance of literature to society, the responsibilities of critics, and the deeper rationales for studying literature. Filled with insightful texts that indicate his transition from literary critic to a theorist of language, myth, and human culture, this edition helps to illuminate many of the ideas and arguments that would appear later in The Great Code and Words with Power. Accompanied by the rigorous scholarship for which the series is renowned, this is another valuable contribution to literary criticism and theory.

Many works of fantasy literature feature a considerable number of embedded poems, some written by the authors themselves, some borrowed and transformed from other authors. Exploring the mechanisms of this mix and the interaction between individual poems and the overall narrative, this monograph analyses the various forms and functions of embedded poems in major works of fantasy literature. The choice of authors and texts shed light on the development of fantasy as a genre that frequently mixes prose and verse and thus continues the long tradition of prosimetric practices after the Romantic period. Not only does the analysis of the embedded poems allow for a new understanding of the individual works. It also promises insights into shared literary-historical roots, cross-influences between the authors and the role of the mix of poetry and prose for the imaginative and subversive potential of fantasy literature in general. Providing comprehensive case studies of the forms and functions of embedded poems in fantasy literature, this volume illuminates the emergence of modern fantasy and its impact on contemporary fantasy.