Roland Frye


Roland Mushat Frye was an American English literature scholar and theologian.

Career

Frye was born in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1943 he interrupted his studies to enlist in the United States Army and fought at the Battle of the Bulge, winning a Bronze Star.
After the war, Frye taught at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and joined Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. as a research professor in residence. He returned to teaching in 1965, accepting a professorship at Penn. He was Schelling Professor of English Literature University of Pennsylvania from 1965 until his retirement in 1983. In 1978, he co-founded the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent institution sponsored by the Princeton Theological Seminary.
Frye was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Medal for Distinguished Achievement in [the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences|Thomas Jefferson Award] by the American Philosophical Society. The American Philosophical Society also awarded him both the Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities in 1989 and the John [Frederick Lewis Award] in 1975. He was a Presbyterian elder.
Frye was an opponent of creationism. He was the editor of Is God a Creationist?: The Religious Case Against Creation-Science which was positively reviewed in The [Quarterly Review of Biology] as an "excellent refutation of the creationist's claim to speak for orthodox religion."

Publications

Milton's Imagery and the Visual Arts: Iconographic Tradition in the Epic PoemsIs God a Creationist?: The Religious Case Against Creation-ScienceGod, Man and Satan: Patterns of Christian Thought and Life in "Paradise Lost", "Pilgrim's Progress" and the Great TheologiansThe Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600Shakespeare: The Art of the DramatistShakespeare and Christian DoctrineThe Reader's Bible - a Narrative - Selections from The King James VersionShakespeare's Life and Times: A Pictorial RecordPerspective on Man - Literature and the Christian TraditionLanguage for God and Feminist Language: Problems and Principles
  • ''The Teachings of Classical Puritanism on Conjugal Love''