The Secular Scripture by Northrop Frye
A Study of the Structure of Romance
This book offers a systematic study of the romance and its underlying mythic structures, arguing that secular literature preserves and transforms sacred archetypes into modern narrative forms. It traces how mythic patterns and symbolic frameworks—such as quest, return, and reintegration—shape genres and cultural imagination, and proposes an archetypal method of criticism that situates literary works within cyclical mythic contexts rather than purely historical or sociological readings. By analyzing texts across periods, the work contends that secularization repurposes religious symbols into literary forms, producing recurring motifs that continue to give meaning in an ostensibly disenchanted age, and it explores the implications of these structural patterns for literary theory and interpretation.
- Published
- 1976
- Nationality
- Canadian
- Length
- Unknown
- Pages
- Unknown
- Original Language
- English
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