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/lp/edinburgh-university-press/barfield-s-necessary-angels-WnCTxhTRKU
- Publisher
- Edinburgh University Press
- Copyright
- Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
- ISSN
- 2045-8797
- eISSN
- 2045-8800
- DOI
- 10.3366/ink.2021.0099
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
Barfield’s Necessary Angels A reader encountering Owen Barfield for the first time through his dramatic trilogy, Angels At Bay, might be disposed to accept critic and playwright George Woodcock’s characterization of its author as ‘an English eccentric of considerable learning’. What are we to make of three related plays taking place in two venues, the first depicting events in modern London, and the second in a trans-earthly setting inhabited by supernatural beings? Barfield is known principally through his non-fiction. The intellect that gleams from Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning and Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry is formidable. Anyone who has read, say, appendix II to Poetic Diction, will be forgiven for indulging in a certain nostalgia for the grand art of argument; or, after finishing Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s, for entertaining the prospect of an opponent being cross-examined by its author. Even the redoubtable C.S. Lewis, Barfield’s contestant in the ‘Great War’ of ideas conducted between the two friends, conceded that Barfield ‘changed me more than I him’. That Barfield did not achieve more widespread recognition owes in part to his open embrace of the views of Rudolf Steiner. In his introduction to
Journal
Journal of Inklings Studies – Edinburgh University Press
Published: Apr 1, 2021