With the authority that comes from both great erudition and knowledge of life, and with his inimitable wit, Northrop Frye shows how simple, primitive elements of myth have over the centuries given our literature its themes and structures. In Words with Power, his second study of the Bible and literature, Canada's preeminent literary theroist maps out the complex landscape of the imagination.
Frye continues his exploration, begun in The Great Code, of the influence of Biblical themes and forms of expression on Western literature, with discussions of authors ranging from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Yeats and Eliot. Frye identifies four key elements found in the Bible-the mountain, the garden, the cave, and the furnace-and describes how they recur in later secular writings. Indices.