|
Hamilton Arts & Letters
Northrop Frye (1912-1991) is arguably the most important and influential intellectual Canada has produced and one of the most influential literary critics of the twentieth century. He was a professor of English at Victoria College at the University of Toronto from 1939 until his death in 1991. He became internationally known for his study of William Blake, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, (1947), Anatomy of Criticism (1957), The Great Code (1982), and Words with Power (1991). His Collected Works have been published by the University of Toronto in 30 volumes.
In 1967, the year of Canada’s centenary, Frye gave the Whidden lectures at McMaster University, a set of talks which was published in the same year under the title The Modern Century. In three lectures he discusses the modern ascendency of science and technology and the “anti-arts” of advertising and propaganda; the haunting sense in modern art and literature of a world beset by alienation, anxiety, and absurdity; and the particular role of art and education as the foundation of social vision in a world swept up by the accelerated pace of change and technological transformation.
To commemorate the book The Modern Century and its unique wisdom Hamilton Arts & Letters magazine, the McMaster Alumni Association, and McMaster University invited Professor Robert D. Denham to present a lecture on Northrop Frye’s views as a literary critic and how they relate to the different types of literary criticism that have dominated the field in the twentieth century.
What follows are the ideas Professor Denham presented for HA&L's 6th Anniversary in 2014, along with some documentation from the evening.
***
[Distillate © HA&L + Joseph Adamson I Robert D. Denham {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
|