Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye : : Apocalypse and Alchemy / / B.W. Powe.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press Pilot 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Powe, B.W.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2018]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (368 p.)

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."

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue: The Juncture of Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye in 1946 -- 1 Intentions and Overview: Apocalypse and Alchemy in McLuhan and Frye -- 2 Presences and Signatures: These Figures in Their Ground -- 3 The Critical Conflict between McLuhan and Frye -- 4 The Harmonies in Two Seers: Orchestrations and Complementarities -- 5 Alchemy: Synergy in the Thinking of McLuhan and Frye -- 6 The Lessons of Two Teachers: Guidance and Signs -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index