Ted Chamberlin

TRlBlTfE TO H. NORTHROP FRYE 9 Criticism in 1957 that he became a literary theorist of international renown. From that time onward, almost every literary critic took note of Frye, often as a master to be extolled, occasionally as a heretic to be assessed. Frye's international fame never weakened his loyalties to his college and university. The farther from home he went, the more he was attached to it. I should like to say a few things about what I might call the do.mestic side of Frye. I never heard Frye as a teacher in the classroom. 1regret that when I was a young lecturer at University College, 1never walked across the campus to hear one of his famous undergraduate lectures on the Bible, about which generations ofstudents have spoken and written with delight and with awe at the dazzling fluency. Like many of you, I heard him many times on university ceremonial occasions when he was the public speaker rather than the formal lecturer. This gave him the chance to show the wit, often sardonic, with which his friends were acquainted. For instance, he began his installation speech as Principal of Victoria College in this way: 'I am a little startled to find myself being installed; I would have thought that an honour reserved for more massive piecesofequipment, like presidents and refrigerators: The attachment to college and university broadened naturally into attachment to his country and its literature. I remind you of some of his activities in this field. In the 1950S he wrote an annual review of Canadian poetry in which the sensitive textual critic predominated. He was not the professor passing judgment, but the lover of poetry joining the poet in his quest. He was one of the editors of the first comprehensive and systematic history of Canadian literature, and 1can assure you that his editorship was not a deferential sinecure. The three volumes bear the mark of his constant editorial concern, and, in the two summarizing essays he wrote, the mark of his royal style and explosive ideas. He will continue, through his books and in our memories, to please, to startle, and to enlighten. I am honoured to playa small part in his memorial service, really a celebration of his life - a celebration that will continue for generations to come. TED CHAMBERLIN Northrop Frye returned theory to its birthright, which was in the Simplest sense visionary, a way of seeing. He saw with remarkable clarity; and he was good at plain-speaking, with a gift for raising us up to new perceptions by bringing us down to earth. He brought together the realities of the everyday with the possibilities of the imagination, to illuminate the central astonishments both of literature and of life. He mapped the territory of myth, by chronicling the governments of the tongue, the powers and the 10 TRIBUTE TO H. NORTIiROP FRYE sounds of words. And of silences too. His shyness made silence comfortable , and I don't just mean for those privileged to spend time in his company. For ultimately, his great genius as a theorist was that he did not do all the talking. He left room for others, and for literature. He read texts from an extraordinarily wide range of cultures, in a spirit of generosity and understanding. He knew that washing a guest's feet was as sacred as having a meal with the gods. And, he would probably have added with a twinkle, much more interesting. He showed how literature gives meaning and value to the experiences of life, and how different lives create different literatures. He provided both inspiration and organization for the establishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature here at the University of Toronto, remaining one of its strongest advocates; while the Centre in its turn celebrated his contributions with a Chair in his honour, bringing to the university scholars representing the challenging range ofhis interests. William Wordsworth once said that he was fostered alike by beauty and by fear; and when Northrop Frye titled his first book Fearful Symmetry, he confirmed his abiding belief in the paradox of wonder, without which we understand neither life, nor death, nor literature. For...