The Educated Imagination

Bob with his wife, Rachel

Today is Bob Denham’s birthday.

We do not have to say much about Bob’s extensive work as a scholar because anyone who knows him knows about it. However, we do have much to say about Bob’s contribution here. Bob, more than anyone else, has made this website what it is. It was easy enough to set it up in its present form: a daily blog, a library of resources, and a journal of articles about Frye. But all of these would have been shells without Bob’s extraordinarily generous contribution. This generosity is worth detailing.

Bob has so far submitted more than 200 posts to the daily blog portion of the site in the two years since we first went online, which is a remarkable effort in itself. The blog is put together daily on the fly, and Bob’s posts provide the best that can be accomplished on such short notice; and they are, not surprisingly, the most widely read. As a very modest birthday present to him, we have designated a new Bob Denham category, which means that anyone wanting to search out and read his archived posts can now do so without having to scroll through the daily entries looking for them.

Bob has also kindly archived six articles in our journal, including papers he delivered at three Frye Festivals in Moncton.

His greatest contribution, however, that makes this site a significant scholarly resource, is his patronage of the library we established under his name, and which currently holds more than 100 items, virtually every one of them bequeathed to us by Bob. These include:

* An archive of all ten volumes of Bob’s Northrop Frye Newsletter, which he published between 1988 and 2007.

* Several “Previously Unpublished” items, including two notebooks, and a number of letters, among other treasures.

* Ten sets of class notes, as well as some exams, from a number of Frye’s courses between 1947 and 1955. This is a singular resource to provide insights to Frye as a teacher.

* All nine of the introductions to the editions of the Collected Works Bob has edited, which make up a third of the Collected Works as a whole.

* Four lectures.

* A large sampling of reviews of a number of Frye’s works.

* Thirteen “Miscellaneous Compilations” on various subjects, including chess, Islam and the Koran, and movies Frye had seen and refers to throughout the Collected Works.

If it ended here, this would constitute an exceptional contribution to the Frye scholarship to be found here. But it does not, of course, end here. Bob has also allowed us to post in their entirety two books: his first comprehensive study, Northrop Frye and Critical Method, as well as his latest collection, Essays on Northrop Frye, which includes seven new essays on Frye’s relation to a number of thinkers and writers, from Aristotle to Lewis Carroll.

It is not just a courtesy to say that without him this site would not be much more than a hobby shop of Frye enthusiasm. We therefore offer our warmest thanks, and wish him a very happy birthday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhrwmJcsfT0

Former Florida congressman Alan Grayson pushes back against self-described “Republican reptile” P.J. O’Rourke on last week’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Here is a quote from Frye cited in Bob Denham’s essay, “Frye and Soren Kierkegaard,” in his new collection Essays on Northrop Frye, posted in our library this week. The quote is particularly relevant to the rise in the last few weeks of what is now an international “Occupy” movement.

The basis of all tolerance in society, the condition in which a plurality of concerns can coexist, is the recognition of the tension between concern and freedom. . . . Concern and  freedom both occupy the whole of the same universe: they interpenetrate, and it is no good  trying to set up boundary stones. Some, of course, meet the collision of concern and freedom from the opposite side, with a naive rationalism which expects that before long all myths of concern will be outgrown and only the appeal to reason and evidence and experiment will be  taken seriously. . . . I consider such a view entirely impossible. The growth of non-mythical  knowledge tends to eliminate the incredible from belief, and helps to shape the myth of concern according to the outlines of what experience finds possible and vision desirable. But the growth of knowledge cannot in itself provide us with the social vision which will suggest what we should do with our knowledge. (233)

We are delighted to be able to link you at last to Bob Denham’s new collection, Essays on Northrop Frye, the latest addition to our library. They are posted in PDF, making them paginated and searchable and more accessible to students, teachers, and scholars..

We will not be posting again till next week. With twenty-two essays from Bob available to you, you don’t need to hear from us for a while. Enjoy.

Update: The ebook is still a relatively new thing, but like the scholarly texts of old, it is still prone to errata. We’ve picked up a couple of typos, and they will be corrected shortly. We wanted to have this wonderful book up for the holiday long weekend, and, like anything squeezed in on a tight deadline, one or two slipped past the goalie.

We are just applying the final touches before posting Bob Denham’s latest collection of essays on Frye, including eight new titles: “Frye and Aristotle,” “Frye and Giordano Bruno,” “Frye and Henry Reynolds,” “Frye and Robert Burton,” “Frye and Soren Kierkegaard,” “Frye and Mallarmé,” “Frye and Joachim de Floris,” and “Frye and Lewis Carroll.”

I think we can safely say that this is an event. And it should (fingers crossed) occur by Friday.

Until then, be sure to check out Bob’s other work in our library. It’s a remarkable collection, including all ten volumes of his Northrop Frye Newsletter; his classic Northrop Frye and Critical Method (in its entirety, we are very pleased to say: that’s an earlier print edition pictured above); all nine introductions to the volumes of the Collected Works he edited; four previously unpublished lectures; a number of indispensable compilations of Frye on topics like chess, Islam and the Koran; some miscellaneous Frygiana, and a remarkable collection of all of the movies that Frye saw up until at least 1955.

Let’s put it this way: the library collection is comprised almost completely of bequests from Bob, which is only one reason that we call it the Robert D. Denham Library. The other is that he is and always will be one of the greatest Frye scholars we can ever hope to see. So go in and browse. There’s treasure in there. We promise that you will find something you’ve never seen before.

And, as long as you’re browsing, maybe peek in on our journal as well.

Bob Denham has compiled a second collection of Frye quotes on Islam and the Koran, which we have posted in the Library here. (The first set can also be found in the Library here.)