Great Code or great codex? Northop Frye, William Blake, and construals of the Bible
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Abstract
- This article reconsiders Northrop Frye’s classic study of the Bible and
literature, The Great Code (1982), in order to question whether his application of
that titular phrase might not significantly distort the meaning the phrase must
have borne for its coiner, William Blake. My contention is that Blake’s engraving
of the Laocoön, in which the “Great Code” aphorism appears, is itself a code
of sorts, but not in Frye’s sense of a key to be used to unlock the meanings of
works of art and literature – or to unlock anything else, for that matter. Nothing
in the Laocoön, or in any of Blake’s other works, suggests that this was what Blake
meant by “code.” Nor do any of the connotations the term bore in English usage
in Blake’s time suggest such a meaning. My suggestion is that, far from promoting
the Bible as a forward-functioning key by which to decipher the mythology of
post-biblical literature, Blake’s Laocoön is a work fixated upon its own complex,
synthesizing reception of the biblical and classical past, a tradition of strong creative
misprisions about whose all-powerful influence Frye’s own work betrays an
unmistakable anxiety in Harold Bloom’s sense of the phrase.
| Title | Great Code or great codex? Northop Frye, William Blake, and construals of the Bible |
|---|---|
| Creator | Ziolkowski, Eric Jozef |
| Publisher | Journal of the Bible and Its Reception |
| Academic Department | Religious Studies |
| Division | Humanities |
| Organization | Lafayette College |
| Date Issued | June 2014 |
| Date Available | 2015-09-02T17:48:12Z |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Keyword | literature |
| Christianity | |
| Northtop Frye | |
| Bible | |
| William Blake | |
| Bibliographic Citation | Ziolkowski, E. J. (2014 Jun) "Great Code or great codex? Northop Frye, William Blake, and construals of the Bible." Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1 (1): 3-28. |
| Standard Identifier | DOI 10.1515/jbr-2014-0002 |
| Handle 10385/2021 | |
| Permalink | http://hdl.handle.net/10385/2021 |
| Rights Statement |
In Copyright
|
| Rights Holders | Walter de Gruyter |
Contains
| File | Ziolkowski-JournaloftheBibleandItsReception-vol1-2014.pdf | Uploaded 2019-10-20 | Public | Download |
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