Words With Power: Being a Second Study of "the Bible and Literature"

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant deeply spiritual work
Review: I read Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism many years ago as a graduate student in English at the University of Texas, did not read The Great Code when it was published, but found this second study of the Bible and literature after I had myself been on an extended spiritual journey which included some study of various meditation practices. I would put Word with Power on a two-book shelf with Alan Watts' The Way of Zen as a work that confirms one's deepest intuitions without for one moment moralizing or lapsing into idolatry. It is also an exhiliarating, if sometimes difficult read. The chapter on Spirit and Symbol is in itself an education. For about a year I went around passing out copies of the chapter for anyone who seemed likely to read it.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not as good as _The Great Code_...
Review: This is Frye's second book on the Bible and literature. The *and* is important-- he's not (as Robert Alter does) writing
about the Bible *as* literature-- rather he's writing about how the Bible, its motifs, images, stories, and archetypes have served, and continue to serve, as an animating force of western Literature-- even literature that is not particularly relgious in subject.

Like all of Frye's books, _Words with Power_ begins with a restatement and refinement of Frye's 'general theory' of language and literature, examining what we mean (and what he means) by words like "literature", "myth", "metaphor", "symbol", etc. This 'introductory' section occupies the first third of the book-- which might frustrate some readers, eager to jump into the main subject matter. However, it serves as an essential contextualization for the observations that Frye makes later on. Also, what Frye has to say here is not just repetition of points he's made before (although many points will be familiar to those who've read his other works), but he expands upon certain points, clarifies others, and introduces some new observations.

Of particular interest here, I think, is is his discussion of what he calls the rhetorical or ideological mode of language, which exists in contradistiction to the demotic/descriptive mode of language and the conceptual/dialectical mode, as well as the imaginative/poetic mode. Frye has not generally spent much time in previous works discussing the social/political functions of language-- and it's interesting to see him devote a good deal of discussion to the subject. He also discusses at some length the idea of *kyrigma*, or *ephipany*, which takes place when language seems to operate at an almost mystical level(previously, he had called this the 'anagogic' level of language). Unfortunately, this is one of the weak spots of the book (I regard the chapter on "Symbol and Spirit" as the book's nadir)-- as I think Frye starts to take on the role of an instructor on how to obtain mystical experience through reading, and forget that he's supposed to be a scholarly analyzing various modes of language. (I'm reminded of Joseph Campbell's later works, where he starts to act more like a prophet of a mythic message-- i.e. "Follow your bliss", and less like a scholar of comparative mythology.)

After this lengthy introduction, Frye gets into the 'meat' of his subject, which is an analysis of how four central motifs
of the bible are also archetypal touchstones throughout western literature. Those four motifs are: the mountain, the garden, the cave, and the furnace. As always, Frye notes that these motifs tend to be situated within a mythically opposed 'higher world' (associated with the divine and representative of human desire) and a 'lower world' (associated with the demonic and representative of human anxiety), and consequently touch on matters of cosmology as well as morality. This kind of archetypal analysis is what Frye does best, and his chapter on the mountain (which is to be associated with mythic themes of human ascent to a higher world and divine descent to the world of human experience)is the book's strongest. He also discusses other images/motifs that serve the same function in the bible and other literature-- including ladders, towers, trees, etc.
As one might imagine, the chapter on the cave discusses motifs of human (or divine descent) to a lower world and then reemergence from it. The chapter on the garden discusses motifs of nature, while that of the furnace, those of human technology. Frye has touched on all of these ideas before, of course, but his thoughts on them are outlined very clear and precisely here, and he shows very well the persistence of these biblical/mythical motifs in western literature.

When all's said and done, this is a worthy read for those who like Frye's approach to literature-- especially those who appreciated _The Great Code_, his first work on the Bible. Nevertheless, I can't honestly say it's his best book-- or even his most insightful. I also don't think I'd recommend it as an introduction to Frye's approach to literary theory-- I'd say one should start with _An Anatomy of Criticism_ or _The Great Code_ instead (or, for much more popularizing approach, _The Educated Imagination_).