Northrop Frye
1912-1991

H. (“Norrie”) Northrop Frye CC, BA, MA, LLD, DD, DLitt, D de l’U, LHD, DCL, FRSC was born on 14 July 1912 in Sherbrooke, Quebec.  In 1919, the Frye family moved to Moncton, New Brunswick.  Frye’s early formal education included Victoria School and later at Aberdeen High. Frye graduated from Aberdeen High School in 1927.  He had a scholarship to Moncton’s Success Business College. In September 1929, he enrolled at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College in an undergraduate liberal arts program and graduated with honours in Philosophy and English. Frye next studied theology for three years at Emmanuel College (an adjunct of Victoria College) and was ordained in the United Church of Canada in 1936. In 1938, Frye set off for Oxford where he earned an MA at Merton College in 1940 (his thesis was on William Blake). He joined the Department of English at Victoria College in 1939 where he remained for the rest of his professional life. He published Fearful Symmetry in 1947 and Anatomy of Criticism in 1957. Other works include Anatomy, Spiritus Mundi (1976), The Great Code (1982), Words With Power (1990), and The Double Vision (1991). He delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1974–1975. His lectures were published as The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Frye returned to Moncton during the city’s Centennial Year in 1990. He lectured at l’Université de Moncton and was made an honorary citizen. The annual Frye Festival has brought several thousand scholars, academics, and writers to Moncton. He died 23 January 1991.

Source

Bentley, Allen. "Herman Northrop Frye." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, Fall 2010. Accessed 6 July 2023.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Moncton, Newcastle

Archival Material

  • Location
    Victoria University Library at the University of Toronto
    Retrieval Number
    Fonds number 11
    Date Range of Material
    1906-2001
    Extent

    18.5325 m of textual records
    556 photographs: b&w
    229 photographs: col.
    141 photographs: 35 mm b&w negatives
    1 photograph: 4x5 inch b&w negative
    8 photographs: 35 mm col. negatives
    62 sound cassettes
    13 sound tape reels
    4 film reels
    13 video cassettes
    15 artifacts
    4 postcards
    1 watercolour painting
    34 academic hoods
    1 drawing: pencil and black ink

    Scope and Content Note

    The fonds consists of Northrop Frye’s records pertaining to his academic career and to his personal life. The fonds is arranged in the following series:

        Series 1: Correspondence files
        Series 2: Literary files
        Series 3: Personal files
        Series 4: Professional files
        Series 5: Audio-visual records
        Series 6: Publications by Northrop Frye
        Series 7: Files about Northrop Frye
        Series 8: Artifacts
        Series 9: Miscellaneous printed files
        Series 10: Files relating to the estate of Northrop Frye
        Series 11: Collected Northrop Frye records

Headshot of Northrop Frye
Picture Caption

Northrop Frye

Credit

"Encaenial exercises." Courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, UNB Libraries, UA PC 16, item no. 18, May 1960.  Accessed 6 July 2023.

See the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia entry.

Bibliography Items

Displaying 1 - 1 of 1
Frye, Northrop. The educated imagination. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1964, 159 pp. [ book ]