Northrop Frye on Shakespeare

Front Cover
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1986 - Literary Criticism - 186 pages

Well-known as a critic, Northrop Frye is also a renowned educator. This book, for the first time, allows us access to his classroom. Here he discusses Shakespeare's comedies, histories and tragedies, and introduces us to a new category - Shakespeare's romances, those glittering, frightening, magical plays of the playwright's later years.

Dr. Frye presents lucid expositions of Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard II, Henry IV, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, relating each of these works to others in the Shakespeare canon so that by the end of the book new light has been shed on all of Shakespeare's plays. Within this framework, Frye discusses many of the central elements of Shakespearean drama - from the traditions of comedy and tragedy to the historical background of the plays, from imagery and patterning to characterization, from the use of myth, folklore, and the supernatural to the anthropological roots of Shakespeare's ideas.

Northrop Frye on Shakespeare will be invaluable to any student of literature, but its clarity and accessibility will also attract anyone with an interest in Shakespearean drama. It is as useful to the playgoer as it is to the academic, and proves that literary criticism can be as amusing as it is rewarding.

From inside the book

 

Contents

Section 1
1
Section 2
15
Section 3
34
Copyright

5 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Northrop Frye on Shakespeare
Northrop Frye
Limited preview - 1988
Northrop Frye on Shakespeare
Northrop Frye
No preview available - 2006

Common terms and phrases

action Angelo Antony and Cleopatra Antony's Ariel aspect audience beginning Bolingbroke Caesar Caliban called Capulet central characters Claudius comedy comes comic Cordelia course court death dramatic Duke earlier Edmund fact fairies Falstaff father feel feud Folio fool Friar Laurence Ghost goddess Goneril and Regan Gonzalo Hamlet hear Henry Hermione hero heroine Hippolyta Hotspur human Isabella John of Gaunt kill kind King Lear Laertes later Lear's Leontes look lovers magic marriage means Measure for Measure Mercutio Midsummer Night's Dream moral murder nature never night Oberon Ophelia Perdita perhaps poet Polonius Prince Prospero Puck Quarto Queen Quince Richard Richard II role romance Romeo and Juliet says seems sense Shake Shakespeare Shakespeare's play social someone speaks speech stage story symbolic tells Tempest theatre theme there's Theseus Theseus's things thou Titania tragedy tragic turn Tybalt vision wants Winter's Tale word

About the author (1986)

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.

Bibliographic information

TitleNorthrop Frye on Shakespeare
AuthorNorthrop Frye
EditorRobert Sandler
PublisherFitzhenry & Whiteside, 1986
Original fromthe University of Michigan
Digitized22 Jul 2011
ISBN0889027439, 9780889027435
Length186 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Literary Criticism / Shakespeare
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan