Spiritus Mundi: Essays on Literature, Myth, and Society

Abstract

This collection of a dozen major essays written in recent year is vintage Frye-the fine distillation of a lifetime of originative thinking about literature and its context. essays in Spiritus Mundi-the title comes from one of Yeat's best known poems, The Second Coming, and refers to book that was supposedly source of Yeat's apocalyptic vision of a beast, slouching toward Bethlehem-are arranges in three groups of four essays each. first four are about contexts of literature, second are about universe, and last are studies of four of great visionary or myth-making poets who have been enduring sources of interest for Frye: Milton, Blake, Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. volume is full of agreeable surprises: a delightful piece on charms and riddles is followed by an illuminating essay on Shakespearean romance. Like most of other essays in book, these two are compressed and elegant expositions of ideas that in hands of a lesser writer would have required a book. In another selection Frye rescues Spengler from neglect and argues for inclusion of Decline of West among major imaginative books produced by Western world. Elsewhere he advances case for placing Copernicus in a pantheon composed primarily of literary figures. OF particular interest are several essays in which Frye comments personally and reflectively on influence he has had on study of literature and reactions elicited by his work. In The Renaissance of Books he dissents from opinion of McLuhanites that written word is showing signs of obsolescence and argues that books are the technological instrument that makes democracy possible. As dozen essays collected here amply attest, Northrop Frye continues to be most perceptive and most persuasive exponent of power of mythological imagination-or as he himself calls it, the mythological habit of mind-written in English.

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