Northrop Frye on the Bible and Literature

I've just learned about an amazing opportunity for writers. Next year is the centenary of the birth of Northrop Frye, and the University of Toronto is celebrating by putting online Northrop Frye on the Bible and Literature: videotaped lectures he gave in 1982-83, and that later became The Great Code and Words With Power.

I am making a fuss about this because Northrop Frye set me on my course as a writer: Reading his major work Anatomy of Criticism as a young grad student, I finally understood how literature works, how a story operates on us. Frye's students used to say that listening to his lectures produced the sensation that the tops of their heads were coming off; that was the sensation I had within a few pages of starting Anatomy, and recurrently in reading his books thereafter.

One of the points Frye made was that Western literature is almost unintelligible to anyone who doesn't know the Bible. Applying this insight to Charles Dickens's Bleak House, I was astounded to see how Dickens had assumed that his audience (even those who had to be read to because they were illiterate) was thoroughly conversant with the Bible.

We are still retelling Biblical stories whether we know it or not, and they're likely to be better stories if we do know it. So spend some time with Frye, both through this series and through his books.

Northrop Frye died in 1991; I cried when I heard the news, and I think of him all the time. Watching him on the 7-minute trailer for this series made me realize how much I've missed him.