Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936-89

Drawn from previously unpublished essays, talks, reviews and papers, this volume of Northrop Frye's collected works spans some fifty years of his long writing career.

The earliest item is a paper on "The Canterbury Tales" dating from Frye's student days at Oxford.

The latest was written in 1989, on the occasion of his receiving his thirty-sixth honorary degree from the University of Bologna.;The center-piece of the collection is Frye's essay, "Rencontre".

Intended as an introduction to a never-published anthology of English literature, it is unique in Frye's oeuvre, being the only example of a sustained, continuous encounter with an entire literary tradition.

Other important essays include: "Shakespeare and the Comedy of Humours", "The Literary Meaning of 'Archetype'", and "Blake's 'Jerusalem'".