Creation and Recreation

84 Pages·1980·3.135 MB·English

by  Northrop Frye

CREATION AND RECREATION
This page intentionally left blank
NORTHROP FRYE
Creation and
Recreation
University of Toronto Press
Toronto Buffalo London
© Northrop Frye 1980
Printed in Canada
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Frye, Northrop, 1912-
Creation and recreation
The Larkin-Stuart lectures, delivered under the
auspices of Trinity College, University of Toronto,
and St. Thomas Church, Jan. 30-31 and Feb. 1, 1980.
ISBN 0-8020-6422-1 pa.
1. Creation - Addresses, essays, lectures.
2. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) - Addresses,
essays, lectures. 3. Semantics (Philosophy) -
Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Theology -
Terminology - Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title.
BT695.F79 231.7'65 C80-094404-6
This book has been published with the assistance of the Canada
Council and the Ontario Arts Council under their block grant
programs
Preface
HESE ARE THE LARKIN-STUART LECTURES, delivered
T
under the auspices of Trinity College in the University of
Toronto and St Thomas Church, on 30, 31 January and 1
February 1980.1 am greatly obliged to Trinity College and St
Thomas Church for their hospitality and for the honour of
their invitation to give the lectures.
The lectures draw on earlier material of mine, some of it
now out of print, and, as the opening page suggests, they are
also connected with an ongoing project of greater length, a
study of the narrative and imagery of the Bible and its
influence on secular literature. They will doubtless be made
use of for the larger book, but form a unit which can be read
by itself.
NF
This page intentionally left blank
CREATION AND RECREATION
This page intentionally left blank
1
AM A LITERARY CRITIC, mainly concerned with English
i
literature, and I have recently developed a special interest
in the way that the Bible has affected the structure and imag-
ery of that literature. The first word to attract one's notice in
both fields is the word creation. Page one of the Bible says
that God created the world; page one of the critic's hand-
book, not yet written, tells him that what he is studying are
human creations. In this book I should like to look at cer-
tain aspects of the conception or metaphor of creation, as it
applies to both its divine and its human context, and, also, at
what effect the extending of the same word to cover these
two different areas has had on our habits of thought. I know
that many questions connected with the word 'creation' are
among the most hackneyed topics in both religious and
secular culture, and I shall try to keep clear of what seems to
me likely to have bored you already. On the other hand, I
chose the topic because it is hackneyed, and is therefore
easier to look at with a fresh eye. Through some closed-
circuiting mechanism in the human mind, certain themes
seem to get things said about them that are prescribed in