The Eternal Act of Creation: Essays, 1979-1990

The tenth collection of Northrop Frye's essays, this volume brings together twelve addresses given by Frye during the last decade of his life, along with an introduction to the work of Harold Innis. The essays, four of which are published here for the first time, reveal one of the most extraordinary minds of our time engaging a wide range of literary, cultural, and religious issues. The essays are grouped into four general categories. Those in Part I address critical topics in which Frye considers the relation of his work to contemporary critical discussion and speculates on the therapeutic value of literature. Part II is devoted to biblical topics: the ladder metaphor in the Bible and subsequent literature, the "Book of Ruth", and Blake's biblical illustrations. In Part III Frye examines four literary subjects: Shakespeare's "The Tempest", lyric poetry, Henry James, and eighteenth-century literature. The final three essays focus on Canadian culture. While Frye returns to familiar heroes, such as Shakespeare and Blake, he also takes up writers (James and Innis) and topics (medicine in literature; criticism and the environment) he has not until now treated in a sustained way. But whatever the issue, these essays reveal one of our most distinguished critics speaking with wit and wisdom about the permanent forms of human civilization and engaging in the eternal act of creation.  more