Owen Barfield

Barfield discusses poetry's meaning in terms of both his personal experience and objective standards of criticism. Poetic Diction, first published in 1928, begins by asking why we call a given grouping of words "poetry" and why these arouse "aesthetic imagination" and produce pleasure in a receptive reader. Returning always to this personal experience of poetry, Owen Barfield at the same time seeks objective standards of criticism and a theory of poetic diction in broader philosophical considerations on the relation of world and thought. His profound musings explore concerns fundamental to the understanding and appreciation of poetry, including the nature of metaphor, poetic effect, the difference between verse and prose, and the essence of meaning. CONTRIBUTOR: Howard Nemerov.

A Study in Meaning

Poetic Diction

Reprint. Originally published: London: Faber & Faber, 1957.

A Study in Idolatry

Saving the Appearances

Barfield explores the biographies of many common words.

History in English Words

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner examines the effects of scientists' failure to examine thinking itself since the beginning of the so-called scientific revolution. This has led to a materialistic attitude in human culture that generates what Steiner calls "the karma of materialism." He explains that there is a lack of harmony between the human intellect, which involves the physical body and life forces, and the sense of morality, which involves the most recent aspect of our human constitution--our individuality, or I-being. Contents: Foreword by Owen Barfield Forgotten Aspects of Cultural Life False Analogies Rhythm in Breathing and Cognition Spiritual Courage versus Indolence Christ and the Present Reflections on the Times Luther (two lectures) Spiritual Science and Insight

Nine Lectures Given in Berlin Between July 31 and September 25, 1917

The Karma of Materialism

Unancestral Voice

"In the great English tradition of the lay specialist, Barfield, a lawyer, modernizes the Platonic dialogue format to focus on the philosophic problems of reality and ways of knowing.. This is the solvent mind at its best-distinguished exchanges giving provocative, open-ended results at every point. Highly recommended. of permanent value." -Choice: Books for College Libraries Owen Barfield, who died in 1997 shortly after entering his hundredth year, was one of the seminal minds of the twentieth century, of whom C. S. Lewis wrote "he towers above us all." His books have won respect from many writers other than Lewis, among them T. S. Eliot, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Saul Bellows, and John Lukacs. He was born in North London in 1898 and received his B.A. with first-class honors from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1921. He also earned B.C.L., M.A., and B.Litt. degrees from Oxford and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He served as a solicitor for twenty-eight years until his retirement from legal practice in 1959. Barfield was a visiting professor at Brandeis and Drew Universities, Hamilton College, the University of Missouri at Columbia, UCLA, SUNY-Stony Brook, and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His books include seven others published by The Barfield Press: Romanticism Comes of Age, Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s, Unancestral Voice, Speaker's Meaning, What Coleridge Thought, The Rediscovery of Meaning, and History, Guilt and Habit.

A Dialogue of the 1960's

Worlds Apart

Princess Violetta and Princess Gambetta were so alike in every way that no one can tell them apart until the arrival of Prince Courtesy, whose silver trumpet reveals their true differences.

The Silver Trumpet

'The Rediscovery of Meaning' is a collection of essays about language, imagination, the human being, society and God. In each, Barfield points to solutions to the modern-day experience of meaningless fragmentation. This book includes some of Barfield's most brilliant, most readable, and most profound pieces. Among them are 'Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction', 'The Harp and the Camera', 'Matter, Imagination and Spirit', and 'Philology and the Incarnation'.

The Rediscovery of Meaning, and Other Essays

Speaker's Meaning

Unancestral Voice is the story of a modern-day spiritual quest. Step by step, Barfield explores the power of the creative imagination to meet the great challenges of our time. "This book has a remarkable unity; it is a well-sustained defence of a very consistent theme - that of the 'evolution of consciousness' " - Frontier "The voice of each one's mind speaking from the depths within himself" - Owen Barfield "A clear, powerful thinker, and a subtle one." Saul Bellow Owen Barfield is one of the twentieth century's most significant writers and philosophers. Widely renowned for his insight and literary artistry, Barfield addresses key concerns of the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and arts in our time. His fellow Inklings, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, are among the leading figures influenced by Barfield's work.

A young academic is drawn towards activism when she is increasingly troubled by the growing threat of biocides. Through Virginia Brooke, Barfield charts the mental and spiritual journey of a thinking person - and, by extension, of all thinking persons - faced with "the need for action and the obligation to take it". From environmental thriller to Iron Age settlement, domestic estrangement and the alienation of Man from Nature, Barfield's last work of fiction will continue to delight admirers and provoke a fresh generation of thinkers. Owen Barfield is one of the twentieth century's most significant philosophers. He is widely known for his explorations of human consciousness, the history of language, the origins of poetic effect, and cross-disciplinary thought. A member of the Inklings, an Oxford group of scholars, Barfield's thinking informed the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, among others. Eager Spring is Barfield's 'eco-novella', written when the author was almost 90.

Eager Spring

Romanticism Comes of Age

Set in a dystopian future, humanity has been driven underground by fears of terrorist attack. Dwelling in the sewers of an abandoned city, society is closed, crowded, obsessed with security and its own biological processes. In our post-9/11 world, Barfield's portrayal of the repressive, claustrophobic effects of anxiety on human communities is startlingly timely. Night Operation is a contemporary allegory on the fall and potential rise of humanity. Owen Barfield is one of the twentieth century's most significant philosophers. He is widely known for his explorations of human consciousness, the history of language, the origins of poetic effect, and cross-disciplinary thought. A member of the Inklings, an Oxford group of scholars, Barfield's thinking informed the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, among others. Night Operation is Barfield's only work of science fiction. His vision of society at an evolutionary turning point is original, daring and prophetic.

Night Operation

Owen Barfield is known primarily for his many publications on the evolution of consciousness and the essential reframing of cultural history that results from this theory. At the center of his philosophy is a deep analysis of mythology and poetics that draws from Coleridge, Steiner, and others to reveal the noetic role of the poetic principle and its salient shifts that map the evolution of conscious experience. A member of the Oxford Inklings group, Barfield’s first published book, The Silver Trumpet (1925), is the first märchen, or fantasy story, published by any of them. Despite the influence Barfield exerted on contemporary authors such as Howard Nemerov and Saul Bellow, the biggest gaps in the published corpus of the Philosopher of Poetry are most of the major poems and poetic dramas he wrote according to his theories that place poetics at the core of conscious experience itself. This current publication remedies this absence by presenting five striking literary pieces composed throughout Barfield’s lifetime. The Tower, an introspective narrative poem, is the ‘great work’ of Barfield’s youth; Medea, a mythopoeic drama, is seemingly his last major poetic and dramatic work. Between these two are the mythopoeic narrative poem Riders on Pegasus, a trilogy of Anthroposophical mystery plays Angels at Bay, and the light-hearted extended poem The Unicorn. Readers of Barfield’s philosophical works and Inklings enthusiasts will find much to admire and enjoy in this volume.

Major Poems and Plays

The Tower

'What Coleridge Thought' presents Coleridge's ideas in a coherent form, carefully organized to demonstrate precisely what his thoughts were and how his writings develop them. Coleridge's objective was to stimulate his readers into thinking for themselves - "to excite the germinal power that craves no knowledge but what it can take up into itself" (S. T. Coleridge). Barfield guides the reader towards this. Here will be found the heart of Coleridge's thinking.

What Coleridge Thought

A Poetic Drama

Orpheus

'Romanticism Comes of Age' centers on the question; What is the creative imagination and in what way is it true? Owen Barfield insightfully explores the role of imagination in Romantic philosophy and literature, particularly in the work of Coleridge and of Goethe. Barfield also traces the evolving nature of the creative imagination from primordial times to the present, drawing on a wide array of examples including the language of ancient Greece, Dante's 'Commedia', and Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. The book brilliantly demonstrates that the Romantic Movement's core elements and aspirations have "come of age" in anthroposophy, the spiritual science inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner.

'History, Guilt and Habit' is a collection of essays, based on lectures given by the author on the West Coast of North America. This brief, accessible book outlines Barfield's primary ideas: the distinction between the history of ideas and the evolution of human consciousness; the nature of morality, and the danger of mental passivity becoming habit. This new edition includes 'Evolution', Barfield's only essay on physical evolution and how it relates to the evolution of consciousness. "You can dig into the earth with a spade in order to get beneath the surface. The spade is itself a product of the earth, but that does not bother you. But if, by some mysterious dispensation, the spade were part of the very path of earth you were splitting up, you would be rather nonplussed, because you would destroy the instrument by using it. And that is the sort of difficulty you are up against when it is not the earth you are digging into, but consciousness; and when it is not a spade you are digging with, but language . . . However quickly you turn around, you can never see the back of your own head." (p. 13)

History, Guilt and Habit

'Owen Barfield on C.S. Lewis' is a collection of essays and lectures about the author, theologian, and literary scholar, C. S. Lewis. Barfield and Lewis were close friends for 44 years, from their Oxford days after WWI to Lewis's death in 1963. Barfield's reflections on their relationship ended only with his own passing, in his hundredth year. Barfield was instrumental in converting Lewis to theism. However, the two disagreed on many points, and it is that creative dialectic which defines and irradiates their friendship: "In an argument we always, both of us, were arguing for the truth, not for victory" (Owen Barfield). C.S. Lewis on Owen Barfield: "The wisest and best of my unofficial teachers." "Barfield towers above us all." To Walter Field: "You notice when Owen and I are talking metaphysics which you don't follow: you don't notice the times when you and Owen are talking economics which I can't follow. Owen is the only one who is never out of his depth."

Owen Barfield

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