Spring/Summer 2005 - University of Toronto Press Publishing

LITERARY STUDIESNorthrop Frye onMilton and BlakeEdited by Angela EsterhammerCOLLECTED WORKS OF NORTHROP FRYE, VOLUME 16The writings of John Milton and William Blakewere central to Northrop Frye’s concept of theimaginative structure of Western literature andthought. He considered them the two most importantpoet-prophets in the English tradition.This volume brings together all of Frye’s writingson Milton and Blake from 1947 to 1987 –published and unpublished essays, reviews, commentaries,and public lectures – with the exceptionof Fearful Symmetry (published as Volume 14 of theCollected Works of Northrop Frye). During thistime, Frye’s engagement with Milton moved outwardfrom the university into conferences, publications,and public lectures. His engagement withBlake, meanwhile, was a personal, intellectual, andspiritual quest, leading him to become the worldauthority on Blake in the mid-twentieth century.Angela Esterhammer, a student of Frye’s in the1980s, has provided annotation and an introductionthat demonstrates the poets’ importance forFrye’s literary and cultural criticism and provides atwenty-first-century perspective on the legacy of hiswork. This key volume of the Collected Works willbe important to scholars interested in Frye as well asthose of Milton and Blake.Angela Esterhammer is a professor in theDepartment of English and the Program inComparative Literature at the University ofWestern Ontario.Northrop Frye’s Writingson the Eighteenth andNineteenth CenturiesEdited by Imre SalusinszkyCOLLECTED WORKS OF NORTHROP FRYE, VOLUME 17Highlighting aspects of his scholarship seldomgiven sufficient emphasis, this new volume of theCollected Works of Northrop Frye documentsFrye’s writings on the literature of the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries (apart from those onWilliam Blake, which are featured in Volumes 14and 16 of the Collected Works).The volume includes Frye’s seminal 1956 essay“Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility” and thehighly influential 1968 book A Study of EnglishRomanticism. With these pieces and the other publishedand unpublished works contained in the volume,Frye changed the way the transition from themajor Augustan figures to the Romantics wasviewed. These works are a central part of Frye’s longand radical rethinking of the relation of romanceand Romanticism and, through them, he emergesas a meticulous textual critic, teasing out the finebrushstroke effects in writers as varied as Boswelland Beddoes, Dickens and Dickinson.Imre Salusinszky’s introduction and annotationilluminates Frye’s writing and guides the readeralong the path of Frye’s five-decade developmentof thought on Romanticism. This volume is aninvaluable contribution to studies on Frye, as wellas to Romantic and Victorian literature.Imre Salusinszky is an editorial writer with thenational daily newspaper The Australian.Approx. 530 pp / 6 1 /8 x 9 1 /4 / May 2005Cloth ISBN 0-8020-3919-7 £55.00 $85.00 EApprox. 515 pp / 6 1 /8 x 9 1 /4 / May 2005Cloth ISBN 0-8020-3824-7 £55.00 $85.00 E24