speculative etymology
My only exposure to NPR last year was my wife's mentioning of stories she heard on her commute.My only exposure to NPR now is through their podcasts. And the only one I listen to regularly is "On Words" with John Ciardi, who died in 1986.
Podcasts are bringing back old radio commentaries, a form once thought to be ephemeral.
In one of his not-so-ephemeral commentaries, Ciardi recommends a book called History in English Words by Owen Barfield. He said he couldn't call it a review, because the book was out of print, but recommended the listener seek it in the library.
The book is no longer out of print, and I plan to get it, based on this fascinating non-review:
(Or download MP3.)
Update: In his comment, Stephen Carson recommends this book:
Studies in Words by C.S. Lewis
There's also a description of the book on Wikipedia.
1 Comments:
Owen Barfield was one of the Inklings, a literary discussion group in England that included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Barfield and Lewis were particularly close. In fact, Lewis did something similar as this Barfield book in his Studies in Words (which I've read, I haven't read the Barfield). I can heartily recommend Lewis's book which I found amazingly fun to read considering the subject matter: the shifting meanings of a handful of English words.
I heard a lecture on Barfield that put focus on his philosophical ideas: anthroposophy esp. in the work of Rudolf Steiner, (an Austrian btw). The lecturer was quite enthusiastic about this aspect of Barfield. For what it is worth, I thought Barfield's philosophical speculations sounded, shall we say, not promising.
This stress on philology was in Tolkien as well, as best explained by Shippey. I try to summarize Shippey on this in my article on Tolkien.
The philological approach of Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield (and now Shippey) has largely lost out to the literati in academia and their ever shifting "literary theories" (Freudian, Marxist, deconstructionist, etc.). Methinks this is another one of those cases where making progress means going back to a fork in the road and taking the path not taken.
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