Customer Service 703-661-1594

Owen Barfield, Romanticism Come of Age

A Biography

Hardback
September 2006
9781902636771
More details
  • Publisher
    Temple Lodge Publishing
  • Published
    1st September 2006
  • ISBN 9781902636771
  • Language English
  • Pages 356 pp.
$45.00

“Barfield towers above us all...the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers." —C. S. Lewis

Owen Barfield, philosopher, author, poet, and critic, was a founding member of the Inklings group, a private Oxford society that included leading literary figures of the time: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Writing of their many heated debates, Lewis—who was greatly affected by Barfield during their long friendship—remarked, “I think he changed me a good deal more than I him.”

Blaxland de Lange’s biography (the first to be published on Owen Barfield) was written with the help of Barfield himself, who, before his death in 1997, participated in numerous interviews with the author. Barfield also lent him many of his papers and manuscripts. The fruit of their collaboration is a book that penetrates deeply into the life and thinking of one of a towering figure of the twentieth century.

Blaxland de Lange studies the influences on Barfield by the Romantic poet Coleridge and the philosopher Rudolf Steiner, while also focusing on Barfield’s profound personal connection with C.S. Lewis. The book also features a biographical sketch in Barfield’s own words and describes his strong relationship with North America as well as his dual profession as a lawyer and writer.

C O N T E N T S:

Foreword by Dr. Andrew Welburn
Preface
Introduction

PART ONE
1. Owen Barfield: A Biographical Sketch Based on His Own Words

PART TWO: ELUCIDATION AND RECOGNITION: THE LECTURER (1964–97)
2. Owen Barfield and America
3. Barfield and Coleridge
4. The Vancouver Lectures: Evolution of Consciousness
5. Positivism and Its Residues
6. The Effects of Idolatry
7. The Force of Imaginative Thinking
8. “Sir, I thank God for you...”

PART THREE: THE FORGING OF A KEY: THE MAN OF LETTERS (1919–64)
9. Owen Barfield and C. S. Lewis
10. Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner
11. English People
12. Language as a Key to the Past
13. Poetry, Drama, and Magic
14. Vision for a Future Social and Cultural Order
15. Bonds of Love and Friendship

Conclusion

Simon Blaxland-de Lange

Simon Blaxland de Lange has for many years worked as an educator for people with special needs. He is also a prolific writer and translator and an amateur musician and gardener. Blaxland de Lange helped establish Pericles Translations and Research, Pericles Training and Work (for adults with special needs), and the Pericles Theatre Company. Together with Dr Vivian Law, he cofounded the Humanities Research Group in 1997 and the British group of the Humanities Section of the School of Spiritual Science in 1998. He met Owen Barfield in 1979, and has been a student of his work for the past thirty years.