Creation and Recreation PDF
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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
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