The poetic Frye (Northrop Frye, Canadian literature)

This essay surveys the major achievements and world-wide acclaim that give substance to Northrop Frye's reputation as one of the most influential Canadians of the twentieth century. It points out, however, that Frye did not succeed in his project to establish criticism as a discipline with its own accepted axioms based on an acknowledgement of the unity of literature. Rather than concluding that the more theoretical works have been superseded, however, the essay argues that they may now be read as imaginative creations approaching poetry, embodying an insight nourished by literature but focussed on the human condition itself.