This collection of a dozen major essays is vintage Frye - the fine distillation of a lifetime of originative thinking about literature and its context. The essays in Spiritus Mundi are arranged in th
This collection of a dozen major essays is vintage Frye - the fine distillation of a lifetime of originative thinking about literature and its context. The essays in Spiritus Mundi are arranged in three groups of four essays each.
The first are about the "contexts of literature", the second are about the "mythological universe", and the last are studies of four of the great visionary or myth-making poets who have been enduring sources of interest for Frye: Milton, Blake, Yeats, and Wallace Stevens.
"A virtuoso performance in the 'variation form'."
- English Language Notes
"Northrop Frye never ceases to remind us that he is one of the most civilized and delightful Scholar-teachers publishing today...[Spiritus Mundi...an essential purchase for the literary scholar."
- Book Forum
"Frye's rare qualities - ease and grace of expression, an inclusive rather than an exclusive view of literature...make all his work worth reading, but general readers may find short essays such as these most accessible and illuminating."
-- Library Journal
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Northrop Frye (1912-1991) was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and educated at the University of Toronto and Oxford University. He joined the University of Toronto in 1939, which began one of the most distinguished careers in the history of literary criticism. Over his lifetime Frye was awarded 30 honorary degrees world-wide, was a recipient of the Order of Canada, The Royal Society's Molson and Lorne Pierce Prizes, the Canada Council Medal, among others. His many publications include The Great Code,
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