John Fraser (critic)
Encyclopedia
John Fraser is a critic, literary theorist, and cultural analyst, who has been concerned in a variety of ways with relationships between energy and order.
After graduation, he taught at the Hebrew Reali School
in Haifa for two years, and then moved to the States, where he took the Barzun-Trilling seminar at Columbia, afterwards teaching for two years in Florida. In 1961 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota
, with a dissertation on George Sturt
, rural labouring life, and the rhetoric of sociological presentation, and a minor in Philosophy, including classes from Wilfred Sellars, and Alan Donagan.
That year, he and the Minnesota artist Carol Hoorn Fraser, whom he had married in 1956, moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia
, where he taught at Dalhousie University
, retiring as George Munro Professor of English.
During his academic career he published three books and numerous scholarly articles. At Minnesota he co-founded and co-edited with Thomas J. Roberts, George Levine, and others the quarterly journal GSE (The Graduate Student of English), 1957–60.
In 1990 he gave the Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto
, following in the footsteps of Northrop Frye
, Hugh Kenner
, and others. Subsequently he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
.
After Carol Fraser's death in 1991 he co-curated a show of her work, A Visionary Gaze (1993), and engaged in extensive archival work on her art and life.
In 1999 he started a website, Jottings.ca. It began as a venue for his writings about Carol but kept growing and now includes the equivalent of several print books.
A reviewer called America and the Patterns of Chivalry “a brilliant and utterly absorbing work” and said that “There are not many learned books which have the unputdownable quality of a thriller; this is one of them.” A reviewer of Violence in the Arts spoke of Fraser’s “extremely agile and incessantly active mind which illuminates almost every subject it touches.”
The series in which The Name of Action appeared was “established to publish in paperback for an individual readership the Press’s most outstanding monographs.” (from the inside-cover publisher's blurb)
Biographical Details
Fraser was born in Church End Finchley, North London, in 1928. In 1948, after two years of National Service as a clerk in the Royal Air Force, he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, as an Exhibitioner (junior scholar), where he read English.After graduation, he taught at the Hebrew Reali School
Hebrew Reali School
The Hebrew Reali School of Haifa , located in Haifa, Israel, is one of the country's oldest private schools.-History:...
in Haifa for two years, and then moved to the States, where he took the Barzun-Trilling seminar at Columbia, afterwards teaching for two years in Florida. In 1961 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
, with a dissertation on George Sturt
George Sturt
George Sturt , who also wrote under the pseudonym George Bourne, was an English writer on rural crafts and affairs. He was born and grew up in Farnham, Surrey....
, rural labouring life, and the rhetoric of sociological presentation, and a minor in Philosophy, including classes from Wilfred Sellars, and Alan Donagan.
That year, he and the Minnesota artist Carol Hoorn Fraser, whom he had married in 1956, moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
, where he taught at Dalhousie University
Dalhousie University
Dalhousie University is a public research university located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university comprises eleven faculties including Schulich School of Law and Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. It also includes the faculties of architecture, planning and engineering located at...
, retiring as George Munro Professor of English.
During his academic career he published three books and numerous scholarly articles. At Minnesota he co-founded and co-edited with Thomas J. Roberts, George Levine, and others the quarterly journal GSE (The Graduate Student of English), 1957–60.
In 1990 he gave the Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
, following in the footsteps of Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....
, Hugh Kenner
Hugh Kenner
William Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
, and others. Subsequently he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...
.
After Carol Fraser's death in 1991 he co-curated a show of her work, A Visionary Gaze (1993), and engaged in extensive archival work on her art and life.
In 1999 he started a website, Jottings.ca. It began as a venue for his writings about Carol but kept growing and now includes the equivalent of several print books.
A reviewer called America and the Patterns of Chivalry “a brilliant and utterly absorbing work” and said that “There are not many learned books which have the unputdownable quality of a thriller; this is one of them.” A reviewer of Violence in the Arts spoke of Fraser’s “extremely agile and incessantly active mind which illuminates almost every subject it touches.”
The series in which The Name of Action appeared was “established to publish in paperback for an individual readership the Press’s most outstanding monographs.” (from the inside-cover publisher's blurb)
Print Books
- Violence in the Arts (Cambridge, CUP, 1974); illustrated pb 1976 ISBN 0 521 20331 7 hc /ISBN 0 521 29029 5 pb
- America and the Patterns of Chivalry (NY, Cambridge UP, 1982) ISBN 0 521 24183 9
- The Name of Action: Critical Essays (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1984) ISBN 0 521 27745 0 pb [Shakespeare, Scott Fitzgerald, Twain, Emily Brontë, Stephen Crane, B. Traven, Pauline Réage, Yvor Winters, Northrop Frye, Swift, J.L. and Barbara Hammond, George Sturt, Eugène Atget, the organic community].
Web-books
(All are located at www.jottings.ca. Sections of each book are listed in square brackets after the title and date.)- Carol Hoorn Fraser (2001)
- Nihilism, Modernism, and Value (1990/2001) [Substantiality / Cold White Peaks / Being There Together] Alexander Lectures
- Language, Truth, and Consequences (2001) [In Defence of Language / Playing for Real: Discourse and Authority / Communication, Communion, Communality / Mind-Forged Manacles]
- Thrillers (2002) [The Best Thriller / A Philosophical Thriller / Writer at Work / Quickies / Reading Thrillers / Back-Ups]
- Voices in the Cave of Being (2004) [Preliminary / Poetry and the Headmaster’s Wife / Among the Monuments / Powers of Style / Personals / A New Book of Verse / Language and Being / Other Rooms / Resources]
- Found Pages; the Remarkable Harold Ernest Kelly (2006) [Introductory / BioBiblio / Violence, Inc. / Sidebars / Notes / Concluding / Supplementary / Backgrounds]
Selected articles
- “Descartes’ Discourse on Method; a Look at Its Rhetoric,” GSE, 2 (1959); Jottings>Language, Truth, and Consequences>Preface> III
- “Modern Poetics: Twentieth-Century American and British”, Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton NJ, Princeton UP, 1964)
- “The Name of Action: Nelly Dean and Wuthering Heights,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 20 (1965); in The Name of Action (NA)
- “A Dangerous Book?—The Story of O,” Western Humanities Review, 20 (1966); (NA )
- “In Defence of Culture: Huckleberry Finn,” Oxford Review (1967) (NA); tweaked and reformatted as “‘Civilization’ and Romance in Huckleberry Finn” (2008); Jottings>America and the Chivalric.
- “Northrop Frye and Evaluation,” Cambridge Quarterly, 11 (1967); (NA)
- “Prospero’s Book: The Tempest Revisited,” [secularity, power, and justice] Critical ReviewCritical ReviewCritical Review is a name shared by several publications, which are unrelated to each other by anything except their names:* The Critical Review was an English newspaper published from 1756 to 1817.* Critical Review...
(1968); (NA)
- “The Erotic and Censorship,” Oxford Review (1968)
- “Atget and the City,” Cambridge Quarterly, 3 (1968), Studio International (1971); Pnina R. Petruck, ed., The Camera Viewed: Writings on Twentieth-Century Photography (1979) [condensed]; (NA)
- “Winters’ Summa,” review-article on Yvor Winters’ Forms of Discovery, Southern ReviewSouthern ReviewThe Southern Review, a literary journal co-founded in 1935 by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks and located on the campus of Louisiana State University, publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, interviews, book reviews, and excerpts from novels in progress by established and emerging writers...
, 7 (1969)
- “Photography and the City,” Yale ReviewYale ReviewThe Yale Review is the self-proclaimed oldest literary quarterly in the United States. It is published by Yale University.It was founded originally in 1819 as The Christian Spectator. At its origin it was published to support Evangelicalism, but over time began to publish more on history and...
, 59 (1970)
- “Yvor Winters: the Perils of Mind,” Centennial Review, 14 (1970); (NA)
- “Leavis and Winters: Professional Manners,” Cambridge Quarterly, 5 (1970)
- “Stretches and Languages; a Contribution to Critical Theory,” College EnglishCollege EnglishCollege English is an official publication of the American National Council of Teachers of English and is aimed at college-level teachers and scholars of English...
, 32 (1971)
- “Evaluation and English Studies,” College English, 35 (1973)
- “Rereading Traven’s The Death Shio,” Southern Review, 9 (1973); (NA)
- “Reflections on the Organic Community,” Human World (1974); (NA)
- “Heroic Order in the Poetry of J.V. Cunningham,” Southern Review, 23 (1987)
- “Playing for Real; Discourse and Authority,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 56 (1987); Jottings>Language, Truth, and Consequences
- “Crane, Norris, and London,” American Literature, vol.9 of New Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed Boris Ford (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1988)
- “Borges and the Chivalric,” Selected Papers in Medievalism; Volumes I and II, 1986 and 1987, ed. Janet E. Goebel and Rebecca Cochran, Indiana PA, Indiana U of Pennsylvania, 1988
- “Jorge Luis Borges, Alive in His Labyrinth,” Criticism, 31 (1989)
- “In Defense of Language; If It Needs It,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 59 (1989); Jottings>Language, Truth, and Consequences
- “Mind-Forged Manacles; Reply to a Questionnaire,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 58 (1990); Jottings>Language, Truth, and Consequences
- “Watching Horror Movies,” University of Michigan Quarterly, 29 (1990)
- “A Philosophical Thriller: Charles Williams’ Dead Calm” (2002) Jottings>Thrillers
- “Vision and Analogy” (2003) Jottings>Voices in the Cave of Being>Other Rooms
- “Referentiality and Stanley Fish” (2004); Jottings>Saying Simply
- “Snooker, Pool, and Determinism” (2005); Jottings>Cogitations
- “Poetry and Knowledge—again…and again…and again” (2006); Jottings>Cogitations
- “America, Truth, and Honor” (chapter 11 and amplified notes, plus excerpts, from America and the Patterns of Chivalry) (2008); Jottings>America and the Chivalric
Miscellaneous
- Co-editor of GSE: The Graduate Student of English: a Quarterly Journal, 12 issues (1957–60)
- With Leighton Davis, A Visionary Gaze: In Memoriam Carol Hoorn Fraser 1930-1991 Halifax, NS, Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, 1993, exhibition catalogue, ISBN 1 89573 12 6
- “The New Prohibitionism,” brief submitted to federal Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1984
- A New Book of Verse (web anthology), 2003–2010
- Poetry Recordings (by students), 2004
- Moments: Photographs 1957–66, 1995–99 (2004); Jottings>Visuals
- “Alice in Web Land: Notes towards a Modest Fiction” (2005): Jottings>Scribblings