 | The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society First published in 1970, this collection is made up of a selection of essays composed between 1962 and 1968, written by distinguished humanist and literary critic Northrop Frye. The book is divided into two parts: one deals largely with the contexts of literary criticism; the other offers more specific studies of literary works in roughly historical sequence. One of the essays is Frye's own elucidation of the development of his critical premises out of his early concern with the poetry of William Blake. Taken together, the essays offer a continuous and coherent argument, making a whole that is entirely equal to the sum of its parts. Herman Northrop Frye was born in 1912 in Quebec, Canada. His mother educated him at home until the fourth grade. After graduating from the University of Toronto, he studied theology at Emmanuel College for several years and actually worked as a pastor before deciding he preferred the academic life. He eventually obtained his master's degree from Oxford, and taught English at the University of Toronto for more than four decades. Frye's first two books, Fearful Symmetry (1947) and Anatomy of Criticism (1957) set forth the influential literary principles upon which he continued to elaborate in his numerous later works. These include Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology, The Well-Tempered Critic, and The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Frye died in 1991. (Bowker Author Biography) |
