My friend Tamara Kamermans offers this term to describe scholars who display irrational hostility toward Frye: “Fryechosis.”
Neologism
Leave a reply
Category Archives: News
Frye Alert
Moncton mayor George LeBlanc chats with Northrop Frye at the site of the future public art display.
For those of you who’ve been voting daily for the proposed Frye sculpture, the proposal now sits in sixth (that’s 6th) place. Only the top two proposals will receive a $25,000 prize. So, of course, we’re encouraging everyone to be sure to vote daily.
Happily, Dawn Arnold has simplified the process by providing a direct link to the vote button here: http://www.refresheverything.ca/fryefestival For those of you who’ve already registered with the site and voted, just hit that link, sign in, and then hit the vote button at the bottom of the page. If you’ve not yet registered or voted, please do so as soon as you can.
And remember: you can vote every day. So be sure to bookmark that link.
From an article about the proposed sculpture in today’s Times & Transcript:
The city and Downtown Moncton Centre-Ville Inc. have been promoting the idea of more public art in the downtown area and Arnold says now is the time to celebrate Moncton’s most famous son. Arnold says a statue of Frye would feed the imaginations of others in the community, contribute to a more vibrant and visually rich community and celebrate the growing importance of literacy in our society.
The statue would also become a bit of a tourist attraction, a place where people could go to have their photo taken like the Bronze Fonz in Milwaukee, the statue of Winston Churchill in Halifax; or the statue of John Lennon in Havana, which portrays the famous Beatle sitting on a park bench, turning to his left as if in conversation with whomever happens to sit next to him.
Here once again is a direct link to the voting site: http://www.refresheverything.ca/fryefestival
So, go already!
Dawn Arnold: Frye Sculpture Update
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47PGGjiLd54
The Frye Festival needs your help to create a life-sized bronze sculpture of Northrop Frye, sitting on a park bench, reading a book, in front of the Moncton Public Library. We have entered a national contest hosted by Pepsi Canada that offers non-profit organizations the chance to win money for projects that have a positive impact on their community. But, we need your votes to win because winners are chosen exclusively by the number of votes they receive.
The contest runs until August 31 and participants can vote daily for their favourite project.
Visit www.frye.ca and click “Vote now!”. In the bottom left hand corner of your screen (www.refresheverything.ca/fryefestival) you will see “Welcome!” and then in yellow “Join Refresh Everything”. Once you have joined (this involves inputting your first and last name, your e-mail and choosing a personal password) you can then vote. Find the project in the “Arts and Culture” (blue) category and within the “$25,000” section.
Vote daily to do your part to help create a lasting legacy for Northrop Frye! The world needs more Frye, now more than ever! Tomorrow is Frye’s 98th birthday. Make this your gift that keeps on giving.
You can read more about the project in today’s Monction Times & Transcript here.
Harvey Pekar, 1939 – 2010
Harvey Pekar, author for 34 years of American Splendor, died today at the age of 70. Thanks to pioneers like Pekar, what were once comic books are now “graphic novels.”
A poignant little clip from the 2003 movie, American Splendor, after the jump.
Voting Starts Tomorrow!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47PGGjiLd54
VOTE DAILY HERE!! GIVE MONCTION THIS MUCH-DESERVED STATUE!!
Just a reminder that the Frye Festival needs your help to win $25,000 to create a bronze life-sized sculpture of Northrop Frye sitting on a park bench reading a book outside the Moncton Public Library. As part of a national competition presented by Pepsi Canada, the Festival has submitted a proposal to win the funds to create an enduring reminder of our community’s most famous son.
Vote to Refresh Moncton! Beginning on Thursday, July 1st and running until Tuesday, August 31, 2010, everyone is invited to visit the website www.refresheverything.ca daily and vote for “Feed your imagination” in the Arts and Culture section. The winner will be chosen exclusively on the number of votes it receives, so vote daily and get your friends and family to do the same!
Saving the Centre for Comparative Literature
As many readers of this blog know, Northrop Frye was the founder of the Centre for Comparative Literature. The Centre recently celebrated its fortieth anniversary, and today, a year later, we are mourning its demise. The University of Toronto has in effect decided that the Centre for Comparative Literature will be closed and the graduate program in Comparative Literature will be suspended, effective the end of the upcoming academic year. All students in the program will be permitted to finish their Comparative Literature degrees, but this will also mark the end of the road for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.
I provide here a paragraph from the “recommendation” (well, it is less a recommendation, it seems, and more an order) from the University of Toronto:
The Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) has recommended that the Departments of East Asian Studies, Germanic Languages & Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures and Spanish & Portuguese be incorporated into a proposed School of Languages and Literatures, a new unit designed to strengthen the profile of teaching and research in languages in the Faculty. The SPC has also recommended that the Centre for Comparative Literature be transferred to the proposed School and be redefined as a Collaborative Program. The School will have a single Director and centralized administrative services; individual language groups will retain responsibility for their undergraduate and graduate programs. The specific structure and operating principles of the School will be determined through a process of consultation with academic administrators, faculty members, and other stakeholders in the relevant units. The Dean will appoint an Advisory Committee to complete this process by December 2010.
All of our current faculty will be “returned” to their home departments despite the fact that the kind of teaching they do in Comparative Literature may very well not mesh with their home departments. For instance, I think here of Eva-Lynn Jagoe, about whom I blogged earlier this year, who will be returned to Spanish and Portuguese, and then, of course, to the School of Languages and Literatures.
We are all shocked by this “recommendation,” and students and faculty have responded with the creation of two Facebook Groups where information is being posted about the situation as it develops. The links for the groups are here:
Save Comp Lit at U of T: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Comp-Lit-at-U-of-T/128346170533811?ref=ts
Students Against the School of Languages and Literatures at U of T: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=122802167763519&ref=ts
It is a sad day when we witness the demise of Frye’s Centre for Comparative Literature, and yet we see the inspiring success of the Northrop Frye Festival in bringing Frye to the forefront and reminding Canadians (and the world) of just how influential and important Frye was as a public intellectual, writer, and teacher.
Northrop Frye School
Unveiling the construction of the new Northrop Frye School this morning
The good people at the Northrop Frye Festival these days seem to move with enviable confidence from success to success. As you can see, their lobbying has finally given us the Northrop Frye School, now under construction in Moncton. It will be a kindergarten to grade 8 school for 650 children. It will open in January 2011.
Congratulations to all concerned.
A picture of the school’s new principal and vice principal after the jump.
Northrop Frye Sculpture News Release
Vote to Give Northrop Frye a Permanent Presence in Our Downtown!
Mayor George LeBlanc chats with Northrop Frye at the site of the future public art display.
The Frye Festival needs your help to win $25,000 to create a bronze life-sized sculpture of Northrop Frye sitting on a park bench reading a book outside the Moncton Public Library. As part of a national competition presented by Pepsi Canada, the Festival has submitted a proposal to win the funds to create an enduring reminder of our community’s most famous son.
Vote to Refresh Moncton! Beginning on Thursday, July 1st and running until Tuesday, August 31, 2010, everyone is invited to visit the website www.refresheverything.ca daily and vote for “Feed your imagination” in the Arts and Culture section. The winner will be chosen exclusively on the number of votes it receives, so vote daily and get your friends and family to do the same!
Public art plays a vital role in creating a liveable and beautiful city and enhances the quality of life of all its citizens. That is why Mayor George LeBlanc is all over this project: “The City of Moncton believes whole-heartedly in the value and importance of public art. A sculpture like this one would celebrate our most famous son’s legacy while helping to create a more visually rich downtown core.”
The Frye Festival, Canada’s only bilingual international literary festival, exists to “feed the imaginations” of all members of our community. While public art is not usually something that the Festival is involved in, Chair Dawn Arnold is excited about the project. “We have often thought about how nice it would be to give Northrop Frye an enduring presence somewhere in our city, and what could be more perfect than outside the Moncton Public Library? When Northrop Frye lived in Moncton from 1919 to 1929, books were scarce. For me, paying tribute to this great thinker and giving him a place of honour in our community also raises awareness of the importance of literacy in our society today. What a great opportunity for all of us to be involved and engaged in creating a more beautiful downtown and celebrating imaginations. Vote every day — every vote counts!”
People from across Canada will be participating in the voting process and competition will be tight. By registering and logging on to the web site, each person can vote for “Feed your imagination” daily. The contest is being presented by Pepsi Canada, who will distribute $1,000,000 over one year.
If the Festival is successful in winning the money, they will mount a national competition to find a sculptor to create the art. The goal will be to have Margaret Atwood, Canada’s most famous living writer and a former student of Northrop Frye’s, unveil the sculpture during the 2011 Frye Festival (April 25-May 1, 2011).
For more information, please contact:
Danielle LeBlanc
Executive Director, Frye Festival
506-859-4389
Another photo after the jump.
Gay Pride Week
Today is the first day of Gay Pride Week.
This past month we’ve posted on Alan Turing who committed suicide in 1954. Bob Denham put together a post last fall on “Frye and Homosexuality” here.
Frye in his 1952 diary made the following entry; remember that this is at a time when homosexuality was illegal and could definitively end a career — and all too often a life:
I have never myself felt any physical basis to my affectionate feelings for other men, but there must be one, and it seems to me to be as pointless to speak of all male love as buggery as it would be to speak of all marriage as legalized whoring. When Marlowe said that the beloved disciple was Christ’s Alexis, he wasn’t just being a bad boy: the sense of his remark is that Christ’s love, being human, must have had a substantial quality in it. (CW 8, 465)
Northrop Frye Sculpture
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47PGGjiLd54
The good people at the Northrop Frye Festival are raising funds to cast a sculpture of Moncton’s favorite son.