Related Research Articles
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).
Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism. His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Ernest André Gellner was a British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist described by The Daily Telegraph, when he died, as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals, and by The Independent as a "one-man crusader for critical rationalism".
Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press.
In 1949, shortly before he died, the English author George Orwell prepared a list of notable writers and other people he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the anti-communist propaganda activities of the Information Research Department, a secret propaganda organisation of the British state under the Foreign Office. A copy of the list was published in The Guardian in 2003 and the original was released by the Foreign Office soon after.
The "London Letters" were a series of fifteen articles written by George Orwell when invasion by Nazi Germany seemed imminent, and published in the American left-wing literary magazine Partisan Review. As well as these "London Letters", PR also published other articles by Orwell.
The Freedom Defence Committee was a UK-based organisation set up on 3 March 1945 to "uphold the essential liberty of individuals and organisations, and to defend those who are persecuted for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, writing and action." Chaired by Herbert Read, with Fenner Brockway and Patrick Figgis as vice-chairmen, the committee's secretary was Ethel Mannin. Later, George Orwell became a vice-chair and George Woodcock, secretary.
"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" is a critical essay published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell. The essay is a review of Gulliver's Travels with a discussion of its author Jonathan Swift. The essay first appeared in Polemic No 5 in September 1946.
"The Prevention of Literature" is an essay published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell. The essay is concerned with freedom of thought and expression, particularly in an environment where the prevailing orthodoxy in left-wing intellectual circles is in favour of the communism of the Soviet Union.
"Some Thoughts on the Common Toad" is an essay published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell. It is a eulogy in favour of spring.
"Second Thoughts on James Burnham" is an essay, first published in May 1946 in Polemic, by the English author George Orwell. The essay discusses works written by James Burnham, an American political theorist.
"A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray" is an essay by the English author George Orwell. In it Orwell encourages the public-spirited action of planting trees, which may well make up for the harm people do in their lives. The essay was first published in Tribune on 26 April 1946.
Humphrey Richard "Hugh" Slater (1906–1958) was an English author and painter.
The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, novels, and non-fiction books written by the British writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), either under his own name or, more usually, under his pen name George Orwell. Orwell was a prolific writer on topics related to contemporary English society and literary criticism, who has been declared "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture." His non-fiction cultural and political criticism constitutes the majority of his work, but Orwell also wrote in several genres of fictional literature.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a staunch believer in democratic socialism and member of the anti-Stalinist Left, modelled the Britain under authoritarian socialism in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and on the very similar practices of both censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.
Situation is a concept developed by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. It refers to "how ritualized action might be avoided or at least confronted consciously as contrary to the subject's freedom of nihilation". It was first expressed in his 1943 work Being and Nothingness, where he wrote that:
[T]here is freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only through freedom [...] There can be a free for-itself only as engaged in a resisting world. Outside of this engagement the notions of freedom, of determination, of necessity lose all meaning.
NOW was a British political and literary periodical founded in 1940 by George Woodcock, its first editor, from 1940 to 1941, and by Freedom Press from 1943 to 1947.
Critical Essays (1946) is a collection of wartime pieces by George Orwell. It covers a variety of topics in English literature, and also includes some pioneering studies of popular culture. It was acclaimed by critics, and Orwell himself thought it one of his most important books.
"Reflections on Gandhi" is an essay by George Orwell, first published in 1949, which responds to Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. The essay, which appeared in the American magazine Partisan Review, discusses the autobiography and offers both praise and criticism to Gandhi, focusing in particular on the effectiveness of Gandhian nonviolence and the tension between Gandhi's spiritual worldview and his political activities. One of a number of essays written by Orwell and published between Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), "Reflections on Gandhi" was the last of Orwell's essays to be published in his lifetime and was not republished until after his death.
References
- 1 2 3 Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain by Stefan Collini Oxford University Press, 2006 ISBN 0-19-929105-5, ISBN 978-0-19-929105-2
- ↑ Art-Historical Notes: "Where are the Hirsts of the 1930s now?" The Independent, Nov 13, 1998 by David Buckman
- ↑ The Guardian
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose (1945-1950) (Penguin)
- ↑ Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 3: As I Please (1943-1945) (Penguin)
- 1 2 3 "The Philosophical Works of A. J. Ayer" (PDF). Perception and identity : essays presented to A.J. Ayer, with his replies to them. Graham Macdonald, A. J. Ayer. London. 1979. ISBN 0-333-27182-3. OCLC 6012043.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link) - ↑ Rogers, Ben (1999). A.J. Ayer. Grove Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-8021-1673-4.
Ayer [...] began writing for Polemic, an elegant new quarterly edited by an ex-communist, Humphrey Slater. The first edition [...] featured an essay on 'Deistic Fallacies', and later numbers included an article on free will, 'Freedom and Necessity' - one of Ayer's most frequently cited and reprinted papers - and another on 'The Claims of Philosophy', first delivered as a lecture late in 1946 to an inaugural Unesco conference. Diverse as they are in subject, all these articles revolve around the big moral questions - the purposes of philosophy, the nature of freedom, the meaning of life - and in their audience and approach are quite different from anything Ayer had written before the war. Like French existentialism, they represented a response to a thirst among the war's survivors for an articulation of the most basic principles of the new world order.
- ↑ O'Donahoe, Benedict (2001). "Dramatically Different: The Reception of Sartre's Theatre in London and New York". Sartre Studies International. 7 (1): 2. doi:10.3167/135715501782368440. ISSN 1357-1559. JSTOR 23511112 – via JSTOR.
Meanwhile, back 'overseas', the doyen of logical positivism, A.J. Ayer, had published a not unfriendly critique of the text. He took the play to be an illustration of the theory expounded in L'être et le néant that 'death makes me a prey to others', and felt this was inevitably flawed in dramatic representation, since Garcin is shown as conscious in death, therefore as an object for himself as well as for others, hence as 'not really dead'. Ayer concedes that this paradox is dramatically necessary, but, predictably, is concerned about its illogicality, concluding with a quotation from Wittgenstein: 'Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.' Sartre, of course, would have agreed, though this is doubtless a truth which he (like many lesser folk) had perceived without first consulting Wittgenstein. So Huis clos initially had a mixed reception...
 | This British magazine or academic journal–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See tips for writing articles about magazines. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |