This collection of a dozen major essays is vintage Frye - the fine distillation of a lifetime of originative thinking about literature and its context. The essays in Spiritus Mundi are arranged in three groups of four essays each.

The first are about the "contexts of literature", the second are about the "mythological universe", and the last are studies of four of the great visionary or myth-making poets who have been enduring sources of interest for Frye: Milton, Blake, Yeats, and Wallace Stevens.