SOURCE: "Myth Two," in The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982, pp. 169-98.

A Canadian critic and editor, Frye is the author of the highly influential and controversial Anatomy of Criticism (1957), in which he argued that literary criticism can be scientific in its method and results, and that judgments are not inherent in the critical process. Believing that literature is wholly structured by myth and symbol, Frye views the critic's task as the explication of a work's archetypal characteristics. In the following essay from his critical study The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981), he views The Book of Job as a "U-shaped narrative which incorporates elements of prophetic literature.'

We may take the Book of Job, perhaps, as the epitome of the narrative of the Bible, as the Book of Revelation is the epitome of its imagery. The order of Old Testament books...