Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy

by B.W. Powe

Overview

Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye are two of Canada’s central cultural figures, colleagues and rivals whose careers unfolded in curious harmony even as their intellectual engagement was antagonistic. Poet, novelist, essayist and philosopher B.W. Powe, who studied with both of these formidable and influential intellectuals, presents an exploration of their lives and work in Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy.

Powe considers the existence of a unique visionary tradition of Canadian humanism and argues that McLuhan and Frye represent fraught but complementary approaches to the study of literature and to the broader engagement with culture. Examining their eloquent but often acid responses to each other, Powe exposes the scholarly controversies and personal conflicts that erupted between them, and notably the great commonalities in their writing and biographies. Using interviews, letters, notebooks, and their published texts, Powe offers a new alchemy of their thought, in which he combines the philosophical hallmarks of McLuhan’s “The medium is the message” and Frye’s “the great code.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442669987
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	04/30/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

B.W. Powe is an associate professor and the Creative Writing Program coordinator in the Department of English at York University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue: The Juncture of Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye in 1946

Intentions and Overview, Apocalypse and Alchemy in McLuhan and Frye

Presences and Signatures: These Figures in their Ground

The Critical Conflict Between McLuhan and Frye

The Harmonies in Two Seers: Orchestrations and Complementarities

Alchemy, Synergy in the Thinking of McLuhan and Frye

The Lessons of Two Teachers: Guidance and Signs

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Barry Callaghan

“An entirely fresh view of McLuhan and Frye, the great Orator and the great Theorist, as exuberant visionaries who breached the future in tandem during their years teaching at the University of Toronto. Powe’s scholarship is marked by a distinctive ease and clarity of style rooted in a rigorous reading of all the pertinent texts.”

Lance Strate

“Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy is a powerful study in literary theory and philosophy, written by a scholar with intimate knowledge and understanding of these twin giants of the 20th century intellectual landscape. This highly original work provides us with a dialectic between systems of thought that leads to a synthesis of unequivocal significance, or perhaps more properly, a portrait of polar oppositions that is mediated in a manner that is not only balanced and harmonious, but altogether magical.”

Elena Lamberti

“Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye is the first book to thoroughly address the uncanny relation between these two great Canadian thinkers in a systematic way. B.W. Powe shows a deep knowledge of both McLuhan’s and Frye’s works, as well as of their critics.”

Editorial Reviews

Bruce Powe is a rare intellectual figure in the Canadian landscape. He has the sensibility and eloquence of a literary critic, and the power of persuasion of a cultural critic, definitely in the same league with the Canadian giants of the twentieth century.”—Francesco Guardiani, Dept. of Italian, University of Toronto
‘There will likely be many McLuhan and Frye commentaries in the future, and with any luck some will be brilliant, but no one will ever write with such passion as Powe’s on the vision of these two beleaguered spiritual explorers.’—Philip Marchand, National Post, June 27, 2014
‘Powe masterfully examines the theories of his teachers—Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye and finds coherence within the legendary conflict between the two, which ignited a synergy that is at once destructive and revealing.’—J.L. Aucoin, Choice vol 52:03:2014

“An entirely fresh view of McLuhan and Frye, the great Orator and the great Theorist, as exuberant visionaries who breached the future in tandem during their years teaching at the University of Toronto. Powe’s scholarship is marked by a distinctive ease and clarity of style rooted in a rigorous reading of all the pertinent texts.”

—Barry Callaghan, editor-in-chief, Exile: The Literary Quarterly

“Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy is a powerful study in literary theory and philosophy, written by a scholar with intimate knowledge and understanding of these twin giants of the 20th century intellectual landscape. This highly original work provides us with a dialectic between systems of thought that leads to a synthesis of unequivocal significance, or perhaps more properly, a portrait of polar oppositions that is mediated in a manner that is not only balanced and harmonious, but altogether magical.”

—Lance Strate, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University

“Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye is the first book to thoroughly address the uncanny relation between these two great Canadian thinkers in a systematic way. B.W. Powe shows a deep knowledge of both McLuhan’s and Frye’s works, as well as of their critics.”

—Elena Lamberti, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Bologna

From the Publisher

‘Powe masterfully examines the theories of his teachers—Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye and finds coherence within the legendary conflict between the two, which ignited a synergy that is at once destructive and revealing.’

Choice vol 52:03:2014 - J.L. Aucoin

‘There will likely be many McLuhan and Frye commentaries in the future, and with any luck some will be brilliant, but no one will ever write with such passion as Powe’s on the vision of these two beleaguered spiritual explorers.’

National Post, June 27, 2014 - Philip Marchand

Bruce Powe is a rare intellectual figure in the Canadian landscape. He has the sensibility and eloquence of a literary critic, and the power of persuasion of a cultural critic, definitely in the same league with the Canadian giants of the twentieth century.

Francesco Guardiani