Fables Of Identity: Studies In Poetic Mythology
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology, one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary critics, Northrop Frye, presents a landmark collection of essays that maps the deep mythological structures underlying Western poetry — arguing that literature is not a collection of isolated works but a unified imaginative order governed by recurring archetypes, symbols, and narrative patterns. Frye chronicles the mythological underpinnings of poetry from Spenser and Shakespeare to Blake and Yeats, illuminating how each poet participates in a vast, inherited symbolic tradition that transcends individual authorship and historical period. Frye's prose is precise yet expansive, balancing scholarly rigour with an almost visionary breadth of insight, and Fables of Identity stands as a pivotal companion to his magnum opus, Anatomy of Criticism. His archetypal approach reshaped how a generation of scholars read and taught literature, establishing myth not as decorative ornament but as the very skeleton of poetic meaning. For anyone drawn to the intersection of imagination, symbol, and literary form, this collection poses a question that quietly demands an answer: if all poetry shares the same mythological grammar, what does that reveal about the nature of the human mind itself?
Author: Northrop Frye
Format: Paperback
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology, one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary critics, Northrop Frye, presents a landmark collection of essays that maps the deep mythological structures underlying Western poetry — arguing that literature is not a collection of isolated works but a unified imaginative order governed by recurring archetypes, symbols, and narrative patterns. Frye chronicles the mythological underpinnings of poetry from Spenser and Shakespeare to Blake and Yeats, illuminating how each poet participates in a vast, inherited symbolic tradition that transcends individual authorship and historical period. Frye's prose is precise yet expansive, balancing scholarly rigour with an almost visionary breadth of insight, and Fables of Identity stands as a pivotal companion to his magnum opus, Anatomy of Criticism. His archetypal approach reshaped how a generation of scholars read and taught literature, establishing myth not as decorative ornament but as the very skeleton of poetic meaning. For anyone drawn to the intersection of imagination, symbol, and literary form, this collection poses a question that quietly demands an answer: if all poetry shares the same mythological grammar, what does that reveal about the nature of the human mind itself?