We mean, the guy who wrote Anatomy of Criticism? The only threat he posed was to critics who thought poorly of William Blake.
The RCMP spied on world-renowned literary professor Northrop Frye for 12 years to monitor his ties to anti-Vietnam War and anti-Apartheid movements. Canadian Press uncovered the 142-page file on Frye, a University of Toronto professor widely regarded as Canada’s premier literary critic, which was built up between 1960 and 1972 on reports filed by an unnamed informant close to Frye. The documents say Frye’s association with various protest-movements-du-jour in the ’60s led to the Mounties’ interest in him, partly because he was such an influential academic around the world and they feared his views might undermine the Canadian government’s positions on Vietnam, China, and the like. While the RCMP might always get their man, they couldn’t, however, find out what the ‘H’ stood for in H. Northrop Frye (Herman, as it turns out).
