Words with Power: Being a Second Study of "The Bible and Literature"

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.

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.

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.

Very much appreciated A Customer's knowledge of Frye and his work, but I would like to supplement that review of Words with Power by saying that "Symbol and Spirit" so lifted my heart that fifteen years ago I typed out long sections of the chapter, then made copies for some twenty friends who practiced insight meditation. As I read them, Frye and Campbell are not trying to convert anyone, just reporting on or alluding to a certain kind of experience. Who would attempt to convert someone into a taste or a feeling? I know a woman who can walk into a store and match a color exactly without having a swatch or paint sample in her hand. I can't do that. I know another woman whose hearing is so acute, a quiet house is alive with sounds that I can't hear. This is not always pleasant for her. Frye communicated to me that he had had a glimpse of the ineffable.

Just re read this and remains stimulating