Published in 1947, "Fearful Symmetry" was Northrop Frye's first book and the product of over a decade of intense labour. Drawing readers into th... read full description
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Sep 10, 2008
Josh
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Well... this book is alternately fascinating and frustrating, a long, discursive summary of "Blake's thought" as Frye sees it. Because of how labrynthine and involuted Blake's writing was - especially in the prophetic books - there are necessarily quite a few 25-30 page sections of pure summary, things like "Urothria is the son of Spooptapulus, wife of Borg, which means that the artistic imagination reigns supreme in the third dyad, blah blah blah." I just made those names up
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Nov 29, 2008
James
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One of the two seminal works on Blake in the twentieth century, the second being Erdman's Prophet Against Empire. Frye's study of Blake led to his Anatomy of Criticism, a defining work within literary criticism in English. Frye's work is a study of Blake's symbols, approaching Blake's work as myth (as opposed to Erdman's, who reads Blake's work historically). It's still an excellent work for someone first venturing in to Blake's labyrinthine prophet works.
Sep 10, 2010
Zachary
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An excellent book about Blake's theories and concerns. If your thinking about trying to make sense of his intense poetic visions, this is a good place to start.
Feb 13, 2010
Steven
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Frye offers up a compelling interpretation of the entire corpus of Blake's work. If you love Blake, you will love Fearful Symmetry.
May 27, 2009
Don't let anyone tell you that you'll never read one of the books that has sat for decades on your shelves unread. I'm now reading Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry, a study of William Blake's poerty, the very same copy that I bought about 40 years ago, and have been lugging about for just as long in the clear and unremitting anticipation that one day I would actually read it. And so I am. I'll report later whether it was worth the wait.
Jan 12, 2008
Peter
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This is a profound work of criticism, the subject being the life work of William Blake. It's very unusual in its poetic and visionary content. This is a very far out book, which altered my conceptions of Blake, as well as the Bible, and world history.
Aug 02, 2008
Gabriel
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Northrop Frye is one of those amazing literary critics no one's ever heard of. I first discovered him when handed a collection of lectures he gave on canadian radio. This is a very astute reading of Blake.
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