The myth of deliverance
Subtitle: reflections on Shakespeare's problem comedies
By: Northrop Frye ; introduction by A.C. Hamilton.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 90
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Comedies.; Comedy.
Other titles: Problem comedies.
Description: In these essays Northrop Frye addresses a question which preoccupied him throughout his long and distinguished career – the conception of comedy, particularly Shakespearean comedy, and its relation to human experience.In most forms of comedy, and certainly in the New Comedy with which Shakespeare was concerned, the emphasis is on moving towards a climax in which the end incorporates the beginning. Such a climax is a vision of deliverance or expanded energy and freedom. Frye draws on the Aristotelian notion of reversal, or peripeteia, to analyse the three plays commonly known as the 'problem comedies': Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida, showing how they anticipate the romances of Shakespeare's final period.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. xx).
"Based on the Tamblyn lectures, given at the University of Western Ontario on 25, 26, and 27 March 1981"--Pref.