Joan Foley

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 ...