Explores the value and uses of literature in our time. Dr. Frye offers ideas for the teaching of literature at lower school levels, designed both to promote an early interest and to lead the student to the knowledge and experience found in the study of literature.

Reassesses the tradition and individual works of Western romance, from ancient Greece to the present, as constituting an imaginative universe in which man, moving between the idyllic and demonic, functions as a scriptural hero.

First published in 1970, this collection is made up of a selection of essays composed between 1962 and 1968, written by distinguished humanist and literary critic Northrop Frye. The book is divided into two parts: one deals largely with the contexts of literary criticism; the other offers more specific studies of literary works in roughly historical sequence. One of the essays is Frye’s own elucidation of the development of his critical premises out of his early concern with the poetry of William Blake. Taken together, the essays offer a continuous and coherent argument, making a whole that is entirely equal to the sum of its parts.

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.

This book finds a way through often impenetrable recent theories, exploring key concepts of ideology, subjectivity and representation in the various forms put forward by different 'schools' of theorists.