Owen Books

Romanticism Comes of Age was a very personal collection of essays for Owen Barfield, most originally directed to fellow Anthroposophists, an audience with whom he felt familiar and comfortable. Several of those essays were originally delivered in person. Also, in roughly three-quarters of these essays, Barfield covered ground and explicated what was dear and close to him: literature, specifically English literature. Shakespeare, Blake, Coleridge, and others comprise Barfield's materials. His self-professed specialty and special joy was English Romantic literature.

These essays are personal in another way. In the introduction to the 1966 edition -- of which this new Barfield Press edition is a reprint -- he answers the question, "What is my debt to Rudolf Steiner, and how did that come about?" In that introduction, he describes his own reading of Romantic literature, his contemporaneous introduction to Rudolf Steiner's work, the movement Steiner founded called Anthroposophy, and Barfield's discovery that anthroposophy was "nothing less than Romanticism grown up" (14).

This 1966 edition is an expansion -- and contraction -- of the original 1944 edition: several essays were removed, and the last five essays added. Almost exactly coincident with the chronological and editorial break is a shift in focus, from heavily literary to distinctly philosophical, separating the last four essays from the preceding ones. Those preceding essays take Romantic literature as the subject of analysis, together with some ideas from Romantic theory suggested by the Romantics themselves. These show that indeed those Romantics' insights were not carried further since their time -- until Rudolf Steiner's work, and Barfield's own studies expressed in Barfield's book Poetic Diction: A Study of Meaning, published in 1927.

So what was it that constituted the maturity of Romanticism? Barfield argued that the Romantics brought forward human imagination as a worthy and trustworthy organ of perception of reality, expressed most directly in the appreciation of nature. What the original Romantics did not and maybe could not work out in detail was just how imagination was true.

To make Romanticism into a self-sufficient organic being, able to stand on its own legs and face the rest of the world, there ought to have been added to the new concept, beauty, to the renewed conception of freedom, a new idea also of the nature of truth.... The point is that no satisfactory critique of Romance ever arose. (28)

In that essay, "From East to West," as an answer to the lack of critique of Romance, Barfield stated that his purpose was" to introduce you to this very thing, anthroposophy" (38).

Some who are interested in Romantic literature may not at all be interested in a critique of Romance. Maybe even fewer of those are interested in a new idea of the truth; but that was Barfield's concern. He claimed that imagination apprehended truth -- apprehended nature -- as well as did the senses, as well as did reason. Further, Barfield claimed that anthroposophy advanced the practice and theory of imagination to the level of science: that is, to the level of a mature epistemology.

In Romanticism Comes of Age, Barfield attempted to take his readers from here:

Imagination is still accepted, but it is accepted for the most part, as a kind of conscious make-believe or personal masquerade. (29)

to here:

The thinking on which our experience of nature depends, really is in -- objectively in -- nature -- and is not a kind of searchlight-beam proceeding from a magic-lantern in the human skull.... (227-228)

Through these essays, to argue his point, Barfield studied language very closely: its history, the mechanisms of change (contraction and expansion of meaning), specific structures (metaphor and myth), and what all this implied about human consciousness.

One interesting consequence of Barfield's beliefs and intentions is that he takes his subjects -- the Romantic poets and their work -- so seriously. He assumes, unless arguing it specifically, that William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Butler Yeats, Wolfgang von Goethe, were all serious thinkers whose poetry expressed that serious thinking, especially regarding the truth of the imagination. Barfield goes further and says,

People can no longer say, with Keats, "I am certain of the truth of the imagination." No. They must know in what way imagination is true! Otherwise they cannot feel its truth. (100)

I think that impulse to know in what way imagination is true is still very much alive. We are struggling against the belief that imagination is a personal masquerade, an "entirely inner, subjective activity" (101). Although we are still "apt to distinguish sharply between our consciousness of nature and nature herself ... such a distinction is not wholly valid" (238). What Barfield pointed out, in the course of his essays, was the degree of falseness of that distinction, where to observe the typical spots or moments of distinction, and how to understand them rightly. In light of Barfield's work, to argue for the (absolute) contingent nature of meaning, of the contingent nature of authorial intention, of the centrality of convention, are all symptoms of a refusal to grow up, to unfold the potential of romanticism from adolescence into the agility and strength and stamina of young adulthood, and then beyond to the experience of a wise and humble middle age.

I had trouble finding this item for an aged aunt. I appreciate being able to ship it so quickly to her house.

The story of Ruth is the story of Ruth's love for the true God, of her unflinching loyalty to an aging and embittered mother-in-law, and of the godly union the Lord used to move history one step closer to fulfillment in the promised Messiah. This book also clearly explains some of the customs that underlie Ruth's story. This book is from the "God's People" series. Papercover. Size, 6 x 8 inches. 42 pages. Published 2003.

This is undoubtedly the finest collection of work on religion and international politics. I could not put it down. The writing was excellent, but what really MADE the book a classic was the editing. Carlson and Owens have done an unbelievable job. The collection and sequencing of the articles allowed the book to be a purely seemless read, even while offering different viewpoints and perspectives. Plus, all 290 pages were perfect, with no smudges, typos, or printing errors.

Five stars. Joe Bob sez check it out.

This was a great book. Will there be #3.
I could not put it down,until I finished it.
This book and Red Sky in the Morning would make a great movie

Great way to learn about the Diaconate and its growing place in the world of ministry.

These are Owen Wister's first western stories, written for Harpers Monthly in 1894-95, and published together under the title "Red Men and White" in 1896. Lovers of his novel "The Virginian" will recognize some of his themes in this collection and an early version of The Virginian himself in the character of Specimen Jones, who appears in three of the stories, first as a drifter and prospector, then as a soldier in the U.S. Army.

The Easterner who narrates much of "The Virginian" appears here, too, in a long story that takes him on a journey across Arizona in the rough, disreputable days before statehood. Wister's concern for the American character, which he finds much eroded among civilians in the West, crops up in this story, "A Pilgrim on the Gila." By contrast, we see his sympathy for young men on the wrong side of the law, only after it has been first lampooned in the satiric "The Serenade at Siskiyou," where the genteel ladies of the town attempt to lighten the hearts of two prisoners held for murder.

That story also explores the tensions between men and women in a frontier world where gender roles are rigidly different. This and one other story concern themselves with the occurrence of lynching alleged lawbreakers. Both of these themes emerge again dramatically in "The Virginian."

Many stories reflect Wister's respect for the disciplined men of the American Army on the frontier. Meanwhile, Indians figure in two stories: "Little Big Horn Medicine" and "The General's Bluff." The title story, "Salvation Gap," is a mining camp melodrama, involving the murder of a woman and the hanging of her lover. "La Tinaja Bonita" is a long story in a similar vein, involving a man's long journey across an arid Arizona desert, driven by jealous love and ending in death. Finally, "The Second Missouri Compromise" tells a humorous story of unreconstructed Southern politicians at odds with the Territorial Governor and his Treasurer, both northerners, in Boise, Idaho.

Wister was already a good storyteller in these early pieces, capturing in vivid detail the western terrain and the mostly squalid life of frontier towns and mining camps. While fascinated by the West, he does not romanticize it. He observes the excesses of unbridled independence there, while lamenting the absence of good sense and ethics among Easterners, especially politicians in Washington. He sees glimpses of character in a few men, mostly in uniform, and they will come together finally in the shining example of The Virginian some half dozen years later.

Title: Scientific genius and creativity : readings from Scientific American / with an introduction by Owen Gingerich.
Publisher: New York : W.H. Freeman, [1987], c1982.
Edition Date: 1987
Language: English
Notes: Includes index.
Physical Details: 110 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.
Other Authors: Gingerich, Owen.
Other Titles: Scientific American.
Subjects: Scientists--Biography.
Creative ability in science.

This was a gift from a friend, eventually I picked it up to take a look at it. I never put it down for three hours, it is a great story. The author has done a fantastic job of pulling in the reader and painting a picture. This should be turned into a film you can picture the scenes as you read it. Plenty of action and adventure to submerse yourself into. A great book and new original storyline.
I hope to see more from the author.

Recalling a northeast Texas Baptist revival, William A. Owens takes us with him to the sawdust-floored tent where a missionary revivalist is leading the congregation in the old hymn "I Shall Not Be Moved." As the music ends, an old woman observes with conviction, "That song sure gits to the gizzard!" (I suspect that the adverb sounded more like "shawr" than "sure," and "gits" is exactly how she would have pronounced the verb.) In the spirit of that unnamed woman from early-twentieth century Lamar County, Texas, may I say that A SEASON OF WEATHERING is one book that "sure gits to the gizzard"?

Taking up the author's life where it was left at the end of the first autobiographical book, THIS STUBBORN SOIL, this book shows us a young man entering his second decade with many of the same struggles that we witnessed in the first--continuing his education and finding a job. In the chaotic, often-interrupted process, Owens is also trying to "find himself," that is, to find out what direction he should go, what goals he should set, what purpose he should make of his life. Recall from the first book that Owens' young life so far has been formed by hoeing fields, picking cotton, and going from one poor one- or two-room country school to another as his fatherless family moves here and there trying to find work. He has never been formally educated beyond the seventh grade. He has never had the benefit of a guidance counselor and has never heard of such a thing as a vocational aptitude test. He knows from experience only that farming on shares (i.e., giving most of one's crop to the land owner as rent for the fields) remains a path to poverty and, at times, near starvation. So, when I use the phrase "trying to find himself," I am essentially speaking of physical and spiritual survival, not of social status or of self-gratification.

During these years of confusion and desperation, Owens encounters the powerful call of fundamentalist religion. Having neither the education nor the experience to recognize the pervasive influence of superstition among the ignorant country folk such as himself, Owens falls, for a time, under the influence of local Baptists. His book gives us a frighteningly vivid picture of the unbending, strict, and oppressive nature of a doctrine that evolved more from ignorance than from theology. The specter of an innocent girl brought to ecclesiastical trial for the heinous crime of merely observing other young persons dancing tells more about the nature of such people than any mere description of their callousness could accomplish.

Owens wanted to be a country teacher, but, to get a teaching certificate in 1920's Texas, one needed to finish high school. To do that, he would have to go to a college that offered high school completion courses. To continue school, he needed money. To get money, he had to interrupt his schooling frequently to seek work in the fields or in the stock rooms of retail or mail-order stores. This cycle, where the necessities of life stood squarely in the way of achieving any sort of goal for bettering oneself, seemed unbreakable.

To make matters worse, the Great Depression was making itself felt even in the rural fields and along the rutted dirt-and-mud roads of northeast Texas. Jobs were scarce and never permanent. How can one worry about tuition for school when there's not enough food for supper?

Owens has not written a "Horatio Alger story." In the real life of which Owens writes, hard work and clean living do not necessarily reap any sort of reward. His is a story of hardship and of failure as often as it is of success. In fact, the failures often seem to outweigh the successes. Yet we know from Owens' later life that he will finally succeed. Somehow he will break the link that holds him to the impoverished and uneducated society into which he was born. We know that he will eventually escape from the cotton fields and the stock rooms into literature and into the ranks of academe. But that does not happen in this book.

The shining success of A SEASON OF WEATHERING is the detailed portrait that it paints of the society, the culture, the economy, the pervasive fundamentalism, the racism, and the struggle for survival that characterized the "working poor" (to use a twenty-first century phrase) in the early decades of the previous century in America's Southland. Having more recently come from that area of the country myself, I can also attest that many characteristics of that society and culture persist yet today in only slightly modified form, so the book remains more contemporary than one might suppose.

Offering a recommendation as to who would receive the greatest benefit from reading this book is difficult because it touches on so many areas of interest: sociology, poverty, country education in early 20th century America, fundamentalist religion, regional history of northeast Texas, the history of Lamar County and of Paris Junior College, and even a bit of folk dancing. The book is certainly worth searching out from used and out-of-print book dealers, but experience it after having first read THIS STUBBORN SOIL, for the two books are inextricably linked and should be perused in their chronological order.

To conclude with a "teaser," everyone will love the story of the gift of a reproduction Greek statue of male wrestlers to the new Paris Junior College. Talk about grist for preachers' sermons!