A List of the Volumes of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye with the Contents of Each, along with a Notation of the Books by Frye in which the Separate Items Originally Appeared and an Alphabetical Title Index
Even those who are quite familiar with Frye’s work cannot always remember the general subject of a given volume in the Collected Works. The present list, the need for which was suggested to me by Michael Dolzani, provides a ready reference to the contents of each volume, like the list of books and their contents that one finds at the back of each volume of The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Twenty‑nine of the thirty volumes of Frye’s Collected Works are not available in paperback, which means that those who would like to have the complete published writings would have to lay out a large sum of money––more than $3300 if ordered from the University of Toronto Press. Readers of Frye, however, may have some or perhaps all of Frye’s separately published books, so the present list, along with the index, can assist them in finding the CW volume that contains the item they are looking for, as well as the book in which the item originally appeared. The present list consists of two parts. The first part gives the contents of each volume in the Collected Works, and for those items that were published in one of Frye’s books, the book title is given after the title of the article. For example, “Crime and Sin in the Bible” ● Myth and Metaphor, 255–69. The second part is an index of all of Frye’s titles, followed by the CW volume in which they can be found. For example, “Language as the Home of Human Life” ● CW 7: 577–90. This second list is similar to what can be found in Jean O’Grady’s stellar index for the Collected Works (CW 30), though I have not separated lectures and speeches (O’Grady’s section II.1) from published or completed works (her section II.5).
Many of Frye’s articles, reviews, and occasional pieces were never included in an edited collection. They, of course, will not be followed by the title of a book in part 1. I have not listed the titles of the one hundred eleven interviews in CW 24, Interviews with Northrop Frye. The list, along with the index, if copied and printed, can serve as a handy guide to the CW, or it may be copied and stored as a searchable electronic file. ––Robert Denham
Volumes 1 and 2
The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939. Ed. Robert D. Denham. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. xxxii + ix + 979 pp.
Volume 3
Northrop Frye’s Student Essays, 1932–1938. Ed. Robert D. Denham. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. xxix + 557 pp.
Contents:
“The Basis of Primitivism”
“Romanticism”
“Robert Browning: An Abstract Study”
“The Concept of Sacrifice”
“The Fertility Cults”
“The Jewish Background of the New Testament: An Essay in Historical Apocalyptic”
“The Age and Type of Christianity in the Epistle of James”
“Doctrine of Salvation in John, Paul, and James”
“St. Paul and Orphism”
“ The Augustinian Interpretation of History”
“The Life and Thought of Ramon Lull”
“Robert Cowton to Thomas Rondel, Lector at Balliol College, Oxford”
“Relative Importance of the Causes of the Reformation”
“Gains and Losses of the Reformation”
“A Study of the Impact of Cultural Movements upon the Church in England during the Nineteenth Century”
“The Relation of Religion to the Arts”
“The Relation of Religion to the Arts Forms of Music and Drama”
“An Inquiry into the Art Forms of Prose Fiction”
“The Importance of Calvin for Philosophy”
“T.S. Eliot and Other Observations”
“A Reconsideration of Chaucer”