Ward McBurney

6 TRIBUTE TO H. NORTHROP FRYE JOAN FOLEY The career of Northrop Frye is an inspiration to his colleagues throughout theuniversitybecause ofhis dedication to bothscholarshipand undergraduate teaching. Rather than say more about what the university thought of him, which I believe is obvious, I thought that it would be appropriate for me to remind you of what he had to say about the university by reading excerpts from his address to the convocation at the University of Windsor in 1970: Most of us never outgrow the childish notion of freedom as freedom of will, as something to be opposed to the external constraints that other people, starting with our parents, put on us. Freedom, we think, must still be for us what it was at the age 01 lour, freedom to do as we like, without realizing that what we like to do may be as compulsive as anything that the most obsessed parent could think up to prevent it. ... Meanwhile, the university keeps talking abouta different kind 01freedom. We notice that, as soon as we enter the world of intellect and imagination, the whole notion of an opposition between freedom and authority disappears. One is free to reason only when one follows the inner laws of reason; if an artist is painting a picture, what he wants to do and what he must do are the same thing. The authority 01 the logical argument, the repeatable experiment, the compelling imagination, is thefinal authority in society, and it is an authority that demands no submission, no subordinating.. no lessening of dignity. As this authority is the same thing as freedom, the university is also the only place in society where Ireedom is defined. ... We cannot struggle to achieve a better society without a vision of what such a society might be, and it is only the arts and sciences, the forms that the human intellect and imagination have achieved, that can provide such a vision. But freedom exists in the vision itself, not in the means of reaching it, because the goal to be attained in the future is, in the intellect and imagination, already there. In this neolascist age there are many people who hate the very thought 01 freedom, and it is a sound if vicious instinct in them to attack the university. Naturally they encourage us to think 01 academic freedom, which is really the freedom to live in the world of intelligence, as an outmoded concept. But apart from the purely negative Ireedom 01 being out 01 jail, human society is not capable of any freedom except academic freedom and what is derived from it. Nothing short 01 that is really human life at all. WARD MCBURNEY If we learn anything about a person by thinking of their favourite literary figures, Northrop Frye seems to have had three that would come up with TRIBUTE TO H. NORTHROP FRYE 7 particular relevance when he was teaching undergraduates: Falstaff (or the Shakespearean jester), the Teacher ofthe Book ofEcclesiastes, and Socrates. I don't think the self-deprecatingfool sideof Dr Frye should beforgotten, the person who is aware of more than are most of the people around him, and who jokes about it not only to stay sane but to let those hear who have ears to hear. Most of the academic world I've stumbled across regards Dr Frye as a kind of magisterial mystic; if they never met him, they certainly don't read him. It seems to me that Dr Frye had it in for the magistrates, overturning critical self-mystification with uncommon sense. Frye's characterization of the Teacher of the Book of Ecclesiastes also strikes home. With a minor alteration, I would like to read it to you: Those who have unconsciously identified a religious attitude either with illusion or with mental indolence are not safe guides to this man, although their tradition is a long one.... He is 'disillusioned' only in the sense that he has realized that an illusion is a self-conshucted prison. He is not a weary pessimist tired of life: he ' is a vigorous realist determined to smash his way through every locked door of repression in the mind...