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Words With Power: Being a Second Study of 'The Bible and Literature': Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature (Collected Works of Northrop Frye Book 26) by [Northrop Frye, Michael Dolzani]

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Northrop Frye

Words With Power: Being a Second Study of 'The Bible and Literature': Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature (Collected Works of Northrop Frye Book 26) Kindle Edition

by Northrop Frye (Author), Michael Dolzani (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition

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Part of: Collected Works of Northrop Frye (27 books)

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Words with Power is the crowning achievement of the latter half of Northrop Frye's career. Portions of the work can be found in Frye's notebooks as far back as the mid-1960s when he had just finished Anatomy of Criticism, and he completed the book shortly before his death in 1991. Beyond summing up his ideas about the relation of the Bible to Western culture, Words with Power boldly confronts a host of questions ranging from the relationship between literature and ideology to the real meaning of words like 'spirit' and 'faith.'

The first half of the 'double mirror' structure looks at the language in which the Bible is written, arguing that it is identical to that of myth and metaphor. Frye suggests, therefore, that given this characteristic, the Bible should be read imaginatively rather than historically or doctrinally. However, he is also careful to point out the ways in which the Bible is more than a conventional work of fiction. The second half is an astonishing tour de force in which Frye demonstrates how both the Bible and literature revolve around four primary concerns of human life.

This edition goes beyond the original in its documentation of Frye's dazzlingly encyclopedic range of reference. Profound and searching, Words with Power is perhaps the most daring book of Frye's career and one of the most exciting.

ISBN-13

978-0802092939
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

University of Toronto Press
Publication date

Aug. 9 2008
Part of series

Collected Works of Northrop Frye
Language

English
File size

1969 KB
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Product description

From Amazon

For celebrated literary critic Northrop Frye, the Bible is the seminal work of the Western literary tradition. Words with Power, his last major book and the long-promised sequel to The Great Code, completes his look at this sacred text with a critical inquiry into its poetic and mythological structure. Writing only months before his death in January 1991, Frye characterized Words with Power as "a summing up and restatement of my critical views," especially those set out in his 1957 masterwork Anatomy of Criticism. Frye is at pains to connect with as broad an audience as possible: "The reader who has had difficulty with my earlier books—and … there has been a great deal of misunderstanding of them--may find it easier to get his bearings in this one." Indeed, Frye's prose has a kind of briskness and purposefulness here that seems less pronounced in his earlier work. "While my critical approach has been said to be deficient in rigour," Frye says, addressing his critics, "this does not matter so much to me as long as it is also deficient in rigor mortis." In his effort to lay bare his complex claims about Western literature, and the Bible's central role in it, Frye argues that the Bible is written in the literary language of myth and metaphor and that it stands as the mythical universe and imaginative framework in which Western literature has operated to the present day. Such ideas acquire a heady significance in light of his further assertion that "mythological thinking forms the framework and context for all thinking." The intellectual integrity, engagement, and ambition of this book surely satisfy the requirement Frye himself imposes, in his Introduction, that "the success of a book that takes no risks is hardly worth achieving." --Russell Prather --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The Bible is saturated with myth and metaphor, writes Frye. In this sequel to The Great Code: The Bible and Literature , the eminent critic places biblical imagery and narrative structure within the framework of Western literature. He traces Jacob's dream of the ladder (Genesis 28) back to ancient Near Eastern religions, and forward to T. S. Eliot. He reads Moby Dick as a modern reworking of the Bible's leviathan symbolism. He interprets the Tower of Babel as "a cyclical symbol, an example of the rising and falling of great kingdoms," with parallels in Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The first half of this tremendously rich study lays a theoretical groundwork that will interest mainly specialists; the second half delves deeply into biblical stories and metaphors, illuminating their meanings for our time and catching their echoes in Shakespeare, Dante, Shelley, Yeats, Spenser, Eliot and Verlaine.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00551IPTW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Toronto Press (Aug. 9 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1969 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 401 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #848,727 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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28 ratings

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4.3 out of 5

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Jane W. Elioseff

A brilliant deeply spiritual work

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 19, 2000

I read Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism many years ago as a graduate student in English at the University of Texas, did not read The Great Code when it was published, but found this second study of the Bible and literature after I had myself been on an extended spiritual journey which included some study of various meditation practices. I would put Word with Power on a two-book shelf with Alan Watts' The Way of Zen as a work that confirms one's deepest intuitions without for one moment moralizing or lapsing into idolatry. It is also an exhiliarating, if sometimes difficult read. The chapter on Spirit and Symbol is in itself an education. For about a year I went around passing out copies of the chapter for anyone who seemed likely to read it.

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Anne McG

Stimulating

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

Just re read this and remains stimulating

Vito Vespucci

A Gift to Humanity

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 2, 2019

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The most important book I’ve ever read. If Christianity has a future as something other than a political ideology, Frye is illumining its path. Words With Power presents the imagination with a way of reading the Bible that culminates in its wedding of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is more than literature, Frye says, but to participate in the more we must speak the language of myth and metaphor—the language which the literary arts recreate.

5 people found this helpful

Caballero

The Lost Perspective

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 27, 2010

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Quiet and sustained literary revelation is how I would describe my experience on reading this book, Words with Power: all of a sudden there is the magic again, in reading and in "why" I should keep reading. The picture is complete, and professor Frye reminds us that it was there all the time, like Poe's The Purloined Letter.

How refreshing it is to listen (this is what reading Frye feels like) to a top specialist explaining why, after all, literature is all about us, people, and why no jargon or scholarly pirouettes should obscure that fact. Being myself a specialist in another field this is downright inspiring and encouraging. The Bible is at the top of a golden chain that William Blake saw and Frye secures, we are the chain, the living words of a book that lives, not in the paper, but in every spark of genius and down to the shyest creative labor.

We possess the key to the door, the richness of the kingdom: I owe to Frye to remind me where I had left the keys.

16 people found this helpful

nonpareil

the best literary theorist of the twentieth century

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 21, 2016

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Northrop Frye is indispensable, the best literary theorist of the twentieth century. He built on a core of insights, which he developed into a coherent system, throughout his entire career. This book needs to be read in the context of his body of works, starting with Fearful Symmetry, his study of Blake's mythology, and the magnum opus, An Anatomy of Criticism. His short book about T.S. Eliot is essential as well.

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Words With Power: Being a Second Study of 'The Bible and Literature': Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature (Collected Works of Northrop Frye Book 26) Kindle Edition

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