A Barfield Reader

by Barfield, Owen

• ISBN13: 9780819563613
• ISBN10: 0819563617
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

A representative selection from the major writings of the man C. S. Lewis called "the wisest & best of my unofficial teachers."

Author Biography

OWEN BARFIELD was one of the most original and stimulating thinkers of the twentieth century, the man whose writings have won praise from figures as diverse as T.S. Eliot and Saul Bellow, Walter de la Mare and Howard Nemeroc, W. H. Auden and Marshall McLuhan. This comprehensive overview supplements major selections with numerous short supporting passages from the whole corpus of his writings and provides a glossary of Barfieldian terms and useful primary and secondary bibliographies.
A respected philosopher, jurist, and student of the nature of language and human consciousness, Owen Barfield's many books published by Wesleyan include Saving the Appearances (1988), Poetic Diction (1984), and Worlds Apart (1971). He lived in East Sussex, England, at the time of his death in 1997 at the age of 99. Barfield was a writer who gained a discriminating and dedicated readership on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially in the United States.

Table of Contents

Preface
Owen Barfield: A Life in Thought
The Forgetive Mind
A Barfield Glossary
A Barfield Chronology
Bibliography
Language and Literature	p. 1
Metaphor	p. 5
Language and Poetry	p. 14
The Making of Meaning	p. 19
Verse and Prose	p. 29
Imagination	p. 33
The Harp and the Camera	p. 45
Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction	p. 56
The Soul of the Past	p. 76
The English Language	p. 77
The Poet	p. 77
A Felt Change of Consciousness	p. 78
Poetic Imagination	p. 79
Language and Meaning	p. 80
The Spirit of Poetry	p. 81
Philosophy and Meaning	p. 83
The Rainbow	p. 87
Collective Representations	p. 89
Figuration and Thinking	p. 91
Original Participation	p. 94
The Texture of Medieval Thought	p. 98
Before and After the Scientific Revolution	p. 103
The Development of Meaning	p. 106
The Origin of Language	p. 110
Symptoms of Iconoclasm	p. 112
Final Participation	p. 117
Saving the Appearances	p. 123
History of Ideas: Evolution of Consciousness	p. 127
Thinking and Thought	p. 139
Concerning the Nature of Spiritual Perception	p. 151
Nature and Imagination	p. 152
Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata	p. 153
Instinct	p. 153
Dashboard Knowledge	p. 154
The Universe as Motor-Car	p. 154
The Darwinian Hypothesis	p. 155
Evolution of Consciousness	p. 156
Mere Perception	p. 156
Threefold Organism	p. 158
A Literature of His Own	p. 159
The Wedding	p. 163
Orpheus's Lament (Act II, scene ii)	p. 168
Tabula in Naufragio	p. 172
Discourse by Sanderson	p. 177
Flume's Lecture	p. 182
Day	p. 188
Fifty-Three	p. 190
Owen Barfield	p. 190
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