The Frye Festival

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The Frye Festival, formerly known as the Northrop Frye International Literary Festival, is a bilingual (French and English) literary festival held in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada in April of each year. The Festival began in 2000 and is the only festival in the world to honour noted literary critic Herman Northrop Frye (1912 – 1991) who, though born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, spent his formative years in Moncton, graduating from Aberdeen High School.

Invited participants of the Frye Festival include not only noted Frye scholars, such as Robert D. Denham, Alvin Lee, Michael Dolzani, Jean O'Grady, and Caterina Nella Cotrupi, but also top literary talent from around the world, as well as regional talent. Russell Banks, Marie-Claire Blais, Neil Bissoondath, Robert Bly, Patrick Chamoiseau, Catherine Cusset, John Dufresne, Richard Ford, Nikki Gemmell, Douglas Glover, Ursula Hegi, Nancy Huston, Witi Ihimaera, Dennis Lee, Alberto Manguel, Yann Martel, Nino Ricci, David Adams Richards, and Bernhard Schlink are among the authors to have appeared during the Festival.

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[edit] The Frye Symposium Lecture and The Antonine Maillet - Northrop Frye Lecture

Two separate series of lectures take place during the Frye Festival. The Antonine Maillet - Northrop Frye Lecture began in 2006 with Neil Bissoondath, and has since been followed by David Adams Richards in 2007 and Alberto Manguel in 2008.

The Frye Symposium Lecture began during the first Festival and continues today. In 2000 David Staines delivered the lecture, followed by Branko Gorjup in 2001, Caterina Nella Cotrupi in 2002. In 2003 there were two Frye Symposium Lectures, one in English by Robert Denham and one in French by Naim Kattan. In 2004 there were also two lectures, both in English, one by John Ayre and one by Michael Dolzani. In 2005 there were two lectures, one by Alvin Lee and one by B. W. Powe. In 2006, the first year of the Maillet-Frye series, the was no Frye Symposium Lecture, but the lecture returned in 2007 when there were again two Frye Symposium Lectures, one by Jean O'Grady and one by Robert Denham. In 2008 there was one lecture, by Glenna Sloan.

The two lecture series are quite separate, with one featuring a well-known writer/thinker, and the other featuring a noted Frye scholar.

[edit] A Brief History of the Frye Festival

In 1999 Paulette Thériault gathered a team of volunteers within the literary community. Additionally, through the support of David Hawkins (formerly of Hawk Communications) and Ron Gaudet (formerly of the Greater Moncton Economic Commission), the Festival became a reality.

In its first year more than 3,000 people attended the Festival. In 2006 more than 10,000 people attended. The Frye Festival has become one of the major literary events in Canada, and continues to grow every year. Award-winning authors from every continent and recipients of several major international literary prizes have attended the Festival.

The Frye Festival was the recipient of the 2005 Lieutenant-Governor’s Dialogue Award.

[edit] Northrop Frye and Moncton

Herman Northrop Frye was born July 14, 1912 in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Frye's father owned a business In Sherbrooke, but in 1919 this business failed and the family was without income or savings. In the fall of 1919 his father relocated his family to Moncton, where he worked as a commercial traveller. Northrop was seven years old. He attended Victoria School, and was quickly approved for grade 4 because of his advanced reading ability. He graduated from Aberdeen High School in 1928 near the top of his class, not quite 16 years of age. His two main interests while in Moncton were his studies and piano. He studied piano with a very fine teacher, George Ross, and at one time thought of a career in music. But eventually his love of literature prevailed. In 1929 he left Moncton to study at the University of Toronto. His mother and father remained in Moncton. His mother died in 1941 and is buried in Moncton’s Elmwood Cemetery.

Other Frye facts:

  • He famously described his early formal education as "a form of penal servitude" presided over by "a rabble of screaming and strapping spinsters."
  • His first romantic adventure was with a Moncton girl, Evelyn Rogers.
  • He loved bicycling the countryside around Moncton.
  • He was a champion typist.
  • His mother was often depressed because of the family financial difficulties and because her oldest child, Howard, had been killed in the war. To her Moncton was like an "exile."

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