Walter
J. Ong, SJ, University Professor Emeritus, William E. Haren Professor
Emeritus of English, and Professor Emeritus of Humanities in Psychiatry
at Saint Louis University , is known for his work in Renaissance
literary and intellectual history and in contemporary culture
as well as for his more wide-ranging studies on the evolution
of consciousness. His next to latest book, Hopkins, the Self,
and God, Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto (Toronto,
Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1986; paperback,
1993), is a historical study of the nineteenth-century English
Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose intense preoccupation
with "inscape," the particular individuality of each
individual existent, and especially with the most particular of
particulars, the human self, was powered by both Victorian and
recent Catholic concerns that aligned Hopkins with modem and postmodern
poetry even before these movements got well under way. This book
concerning Hopkins' profound thinking about the self is relevant
to today's widespread studies on the origins and operation of
human consciousness. The more recent four-volume Faith and
Contexts (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, Vols. 1-3, 1992-1995;
Vol. 4, 1999) is a selection of Ong's essays and studies from
1946 to 1999) edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup.
Professor
Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word
(London and New York: Methuen. 1982; after 1988, Routledge)--translated
into twelve European and Asian languages--reviews the revolutionary
new work on orality-literacy contrasts from ancient through present
cultures, with attention to implications for structuralism, deconstruction,
speech-act and reader-response theory, the teaching of reading
and writing skills to males and to women, social studies, biblical
studies, philosophy, and cultural history generally.
His
next most recent book, Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality,
and Consciousness (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1981), treats the functions of contest in human life, from sports
through classroom teaching and political rhetoric, with reference
to contest in infra-human animal existence, providing new insights
into the complex biological settings of human intellectual and
cultural activity , into sexual differences, and into the human
quest for freedom.
A
trilogy of earlier books, The Presence of the Word (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967; paperback, University
of Minnesota Press, 1981), Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1971), and Interfaces
of the Word (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1977; Cornell paperback, 1982), traces the alienation and reintegration
of consciousness brought about through technological transformations
of the word by writing, print, and electronics, and the effects
of the transformations on oral tradition and literary forms, on
thought processes, and on social structures and behavior .
Two
preceding books by Professor Ong, In the Human Grain (New
York: Macmillan, 1967) and The Barbarian Within (New York:
Macmillan, 1962), are critical explorations of literature, contemporary
culture, and religion. A briefer book, Why Talk? (San Francisco:
Chandler and Sharp, 1973), presents a nontechnical discussion
of the nature and history of language.
Professor
Ong's earlier books on Renaissance intellectual history, Ramus,
Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1958; Harvard paperback, 1983) and Ramus
and Talon Inventory (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1958), were the result of four years' research work in
European universities and libraries, two of these years on a fellowship
from the Guggenheim Foundation of New York. Subsequent research
appointments have included a year (1973-74) as a Fellow at the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford,
California.
Two
other books of his treat the problems of contemporary human beings
and society in relation to the American Catholic tradition: Frontiers
in American Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1957; Macmillan
Paperbacks, 1961) and American Catholic Crossroads (New
York: Macmillan, 1959; Collier Books paperback, 1962), a Catholic
Book Club selection. He has contributed to and edited the volume
Darwin's Vision and Christian Perspectives (New York: MacMillan,
1960) as well as Knowledge and the Future of Man (New York:
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968).
He
has edited other works and is the author also of numerous articles
in literary and scholarly periodicals and also in popular magazines,
in the United States, Canada, and England as well as in France,
Germany, Italy, Latin America, and Japan, and of studies in the
books Immortal Diamond, English Institute Essays, Problems
of Communication in a Pluralistic Society, Literature and Belief,
Religion in America, Education and Culture (Anthropological Approaches),
Minority Language and Literature, etc. He is also the author
of prefaces to books by others, numerous encyclopedia anicles,
etc. Essays and studies of his have been reprinted in many anthologies,
and books of his have been translated into many languages of Europe,
the Near East, and East Asia.
Father
Ong was a member of the National Council on the Humanities from
1968 through 1974 (Vice Chairman 1971-74) and served on the fourteen-person
White House Task Force on Education which reported to President
Johnson in 1967. He has served on the Advisory Board of the John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, has been Co-Chairman of
the National Endowment for the Humanities' Committee on Science,
Technology, and Human Values, and has been Chairman of the Board
and President of the National Humanities Faculty. He served on
the National Commission on the Humanities (1978-80) sponsored
by the Rockefeller Foundation. He has presented papers or served
as resource person or seminar leader at the Center for the Study
of Democratic Institutions (Santa Barbara, California), the Aspen
Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Wenner-Gren Conference Center
for Anthropological Research at Burg Wartenstein, Austria, the
1968 World Student Christian Federation Conference in Turku (Finland),
the Star Seminar of the Graphic Institute in Stockholm (Sweden),
and other conferences. He is a Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.
Well
known as a speaker across the United States and Canada and on
national radio and television networks in the United States and
abroad, Father Ong has lectured widely in Europe, particularly
(in French) to university and other groups in Paris, Bordeaux,
Toulouse, and at the Centre d'Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance
at Tours (University of Poitiers), as well as in the Middle East,
Central and West Africa, North Africa, East Asia, and Latin America.
He has also lectured at the Georgetown Con- ference on the New
Criticism and the Michigan State University Conference in Modern
Literature, and has served as McDonald Lecturer at McGill University,
Terry Lecturer at Yale University, Messenger Lecturer at Cornell
University, Alexander Lecturer at the University of Toronto, Wolf
son College Lecturer at Oxford University, Visiting Professor
of English at the University of California, Fellow of the School
of Letters at Indiana University , Berg Professor of English at
New York University, Visiting Willett Professor in the Humanities
at the University of Chicago, national Phi Beta Kappa Visiting
Scholar for 1969-70, and Lincoln Lecturer abroad for the Board
of Foreign Scholarships 1974.
Walter
Ong was born November 30, 1912, in Kansas City, Missouri, finished
his undergraduate studies there at Rockhurst College and then
worked in commercial positions for two years before entering the
Society of Jesus (or Jesuit Order) in 1935. He did his studies
in philosophy (PhL) and theology (STL) at Saint Louis University
, and graduate studies in English at Saint Louis University (MA)
and Harvard University (PhD). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa
and of Alpha Sigma Nu and holds many honorary degrees, one of
the more recent from the University of Glasgow (Scotland).
He
is also a member of the Renaissance Society of America, the Modern
Language Association of America (President, 1978), the Modem Humanities
Research Association, the American Catholic Commission on Intellectual
and Cultural Affairs, the Cambridge (England) Bibliographical
Society, etC. The French Government has named him Chevalier dans
l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques. He has also served as a member
of the editorial boards of various learned periodicals, as regional
associate for the American Council of Learned Societies, President
of the Central Renaissance Conference and of the Milton Society
of America, member of various national committees of the Modem
Language Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the American Council on Education, etc
For
further information see Who's Who in America, Who's Who in
the World, Who's Who in Government, Directory of American Scholars,
Who's Who in the Midwest, Who's Who in American Education, The
Blue Book (London), Author's and Writer's Who Who (London),
Who's Who in Religion, American Catholic Who's Who, etc.
Remembrances
of Father Ong
