Northrop Frye and the Bible: A Review Symposium

Northrop Frye and the Bible: A Review Symposium Northrop Frye. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature Toronto: Academic Press Canada 1982. 261. $19.50 The publication of The Great Code, the first volume of Northrop Frye's longawaited study ofthe Bible, seemed to demand aspecial response on the partof the University ofToronto Quarterly. Professor Frye has of course been a distinguished member oftheUniversityofToronto for many years; he hasalsobeenagoodfriend to this journal. For ten years, between 1950and 1959, he wrote the 'Poetry' section of 'Letters in Canada,' these columns subsequently being reprinted in The Bush Garden (1971), and he has made other contributions to the Quarterly, the most recent being an article specially written for our fiftieth anniversary issue, The Arts in Canada (Fall 19Bo). Moreover, until a few months ago (when it was derided to revise the administrative arrangements of the journal), he served diligently and conscientiously on the Honorary Advisory Board. We decided that the best way to pay tribute to Professor Frye at this time was to offer not a bland eulogy but a considered and many-sided critical symposium. With the generous co-operation of his Canadian publishers, Academic Press Canada, we have been able to invite no less than four writers and scholars with different interests and approaches to review the book from their respective viewpoints. These are (in the alphabetical order in which their contributions appear below) Louis Dudek, poet. critic, and Professor of English at McGill University; David L. Jeffrey, Professor of English at the UniversityofOttawa, who has made a special study of the relation between literature and the Bible; Emero Stiegman, Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Mary's University, who until recently wrote the 'Religion' section for 'Letters in Canada'; and George Woodcock, writer, critic, rust editor of Canadian Literature, and one of this country's leading men of letters. Each contributor was invited to offer a frank response to The Great Code and its implications. The result, we believe, is an unusually comprehensive discussion of a climactic work by Canada's most influential literary critic. (WJK) ...