Northrop Frye’s Never Completed M R James Article
Archetypal theory has long occupied a problematic space within the canon of literary criticism. According to Abram’s
Archetypal literary criticism was given impetus by Maud Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry and flourished especially during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Some Archetypal critics dropped Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious as the deep source of these patterns; in the words of Northrop Frye, this theory is “an unnecessary hypothesis”, and the recurrent archetypes are simply there, “However they got there”[1]
As within the last twenty years of the twentieth century, there was more of an academic focus on critical postmodern perspectives with the result that archetypal theory lost its academic cachet. However, as one of archetypal criticism’s more robust defenders and, according to one author one of the twentieth century’s most oft quoted critic,[2] Frye, successfully built his academic oeuvre upon these mythic tropes.
Shortly before his death, in 1991, Frye was planning his own mythic interpretation of M R James with an article on Victorian ghost stories,
I’ve also been considering an article on the ghost stories of the 19th century occult (no other century produced ghost stories worth a damn) the main focus of interest would be Henry James. Curious that the only one who wrote better stories was also named James.[3]
Although Frye may have rejected the Jungian basis of Archetypal theory it is illuminating that he planned to study M R James’s Ghost Stories because, as befitting one of the foremost literary critics of his generation, he had identified the mythic elements of James’s stories; namely, that the structure of James’s stories has traditional underpinnings that hark back to the earliest tales iterated by man. These elemental building blocks for stories can be located in fairytales, Greek and Roman myths and Egyptian and Babylonian papyri. The myths consist of seven basic plots and characters: the heroes’ journey, the quest; the lovers parted and reunited the descent into the underworld, and the search for treasure.,
Frye’s article, unfortunately, was never completed. However the annotated copy of his own Collected Ghost Stories of Monty James, held in the archives of Toronto University, reveals the early research he was undertaking into the narrative mythology of James’s ghost stories.[4] The pages are marked with highlighted notations that denote Frye’s close reading of the stories, particularly revealing evidence grounding each story in a mythic reading. The story “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad” had Frye’s underlining illuminating the emphasis on the Old Testament, as he had undertaken a previous exhaustive study of the mythical underpinnings of biblical stories.[5]
“The Treasure of Abbot Thomas” reveals his particular emphasis on the feature of the staircase that the hero had to descend which is characteristic of many mythic tales as being indicative of the descent of the soul and its redemption. Frye also annotated “The Residence at Whitminster”, as worthy of particular attention the sentence that describes the characters’ first encounter with Saul’s Talisman.
The actual paragraph Frye underlined was,
What’s that book, now-the name of that book, I mean, that you had your head in all yesterday? The Talisman; uncle. Oh, if this should turn out to be a talisman, how enchanting it would be! Yes, The Talisman: ah, well, you’re welcome to it,
These sentences in the story are prophetic for the characters as it turns out that Saul had indeed been using a talisman to summon the spirits that always accompanied him when he was indulging in the mischief that in the end got him killed. James is also linking in his character Saul who has the power to summon spirits with the biblical figure of King Saul who was given this very power by God.
In many biblical accounts the séances that Saul conducted in the bible are seen as proof that people can exist in a spiritual form after death.[6] Indeed it would seem that Frye was searching James’s stories for indications or links between the bibles Old Testament and James’s stories as in “Oh Whistle”, he had underlined a sentence on page 139 in the Edward Arnold copy that indicated Parkin’s reading of the Old Testament,
In his opinion, the Saducees were the most sensible persons he had ever read of in the Old Testament; but, feeling some doubt as to whether much mention of them was ever found in that work[7]
Frye completed a large study of the archetypal basis of The Old Testament, which resulted in many of his books such as The Great Code and Words with Power.[8] As James often used many biblical references in his ghost stories there was much to interest Frye in his own study of archetypal forms.
The symbol of the Talisman resonates as another trope within Jungian literary theory – that of the search for treasure. The name of the child/villain Saul is again of particular interest as the name Saul is present as a redemptive mythic figure in the Bible’s Old Testament. Lastly he obviously enjoyed James’s “Two Doctors”, inscribing at the end of the story about one “of the buggers getting away scot free”, - indicating the amorphous nature of the villain in the story.
It is a shame that Northrop Frye never got around to writing his M R James article, and the photocopied papers that the lovely librarians at the University of Toronto Library, sent me, although small in size meant that the detective work that I undertook into his plans for this article, were certainly the most interesting of the research I have undertaken on James; (even if this did not make it into my PhD thesis).
[1] Maud Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry Psychological Studies of Imagination (London: Oxford University Press) 1934.
Abram’s & Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, Wadworth, U.S.A. 2012.
[2] Alec Scott, Frye’s Anatomy, The University Of Toronto Magazine, Spring 2013,
[3] Northrop Frye & Robert D Denham, Northrop Frye's late notebooks, 1982-1990: architecture of the spiritual world, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2000.p.68
[4] Archives of Toronto University, Northrop Frye Papers,
[5] Northrop Frye, The Great Code : The Bible and Literature, Harcourt Brace International, Orlando, Florida, 1983.
[6] (http://www.truthaboutdeath.com/q-and-a/id/1607/how-did-saul-speak-to-samuel-at-endor.aspx)
[7] M R James Collected Ghost Stories, (Hertfordshire, Wordsworth, 1992).
[8] Ibid,p.i
Northrop Frye, Words with Power : Being a Second Study of The Bible and Literature, (University of Toronto press, Canada, 2008).