Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture [Hardcover]

Walter J. Ong (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr (June 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080141105X
• ISBN-13: 978-0801411052
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,969,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Ong on discourse and thought as ineradicably oral, January 6, 2012

By 

Thomas J. Farrell (Duluth, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Paperback)

On the occasion of the Ong Centenary Year in 2012, I hope that Cornell University Press re-issues Walter J. Ong's book INTERFACES OF THE WORD: STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND CULTURE (1977), in which Ong discusses how discourse and thought are rooted ineradicably in orality. With the idea in mind that CUP may re-issue Ong's INTERFACES OF THE WORD, I thought that it might be helpful to prospective new readers of Ong's book for me to mention some biographical information about him.

Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), was a cultural theorist and a religious thinker.

Walter Jackson Ong, Jr., was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His mother and her side of the family were Roman Catholics, but his father and his side of the family were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The middle name of both the father and the son commemorates the family's relative, President Andrew Jackson. The family name is English. For centuries the family name was spelled "Onge"; it is probably related to the English name "Yonge." Father Ong's English ancestors left East Anglia on the same ship that brought Roger Williams to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631.

After graduating from the Jesuit high school and then from the Jesuit college in Kansas City, Walter Jr. worked for a couple of years before he entered the Jesuit order in 1935. As part of his Jesuit training, he earned graduate degrees in philosophy, English, and theology, all from Saint Louis University, before he proceeded to Harvard University for his doctoral studies in English. He was ordained a priest in 1946. He received his Ph.D. in English at the Harvard commencement exercise in May 1955. In 1958, Harvard University Press published his doctoral dissertation, slightly revised, about the French logician and education reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572). Ong taught English at Saint Louis University from 1954 to 1984, when he retired.

In his lifetime, Ong received his fair share of honors and distinctions. In 1963, in honor of his services render to French culture, he was dubbed a knight by the French government, Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques, an honor only rarely conferred on someone who is not a French citizen. In 1964, he delivered the Terry Lectures at Yale University, which were published as the book THE PRESENCE OF THE WORD: SOME PROLEGOMENA FOR CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY (Yale University Press, 1967). In 1966-1967, Ong was the Berg Visiting Professor in English at New York University. In 1966-1967, Ong was one of fourteen Americans on the White House Task Force on Education that reported to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967. In 1967, Ong served as president of the Milton Society of America. From 1968 to 1976, Ong was a trustee of the National Humanities Faculty (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities), serving as president and chairman of the board, 1974-1976. In 1968-1969, he was the Willett Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. In 1971, Ong was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1974, in connection with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fulbright Act, Ong was one of about a dozen Americans selected to be Lincoln Lecturers and to go on lecture tours abroad; his lecture tour took him to several countries in Africa, where he lectured in French in French-speaking countries and in English in English-speaking countries. In 1978, Ong served as the president of the Modern Language Association of America, the only Catholic priest ever elected MLA president to this day. In 1979, he delivered the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, which were published as the book FIGHTING FOR LIFE: CONTEST, SEXUALITY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS (Cornell University Press, 1981). In 1981, the Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto, which were published as the book HOPKINS, THE SELF, AND GOD (University of Toronto Press, 1986). In addition, Ong received sixteen honorary degrees.