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The Walker Percy Project

PRIMARY RESOURCES

An Annotated Bibliography of Walker Percy's Writings on Language

A bibliography of his writings on language with short annotations of each of his semiotic writings

Percy's Writings on Language (An Annotated List of Percy's Books and Essays)

The following bibliography covers the period 1954-2019 as represented in each of Percy's four non-fiction books identified in the following section below. The majority of the listed essays beneath it are collected in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975).

Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature (2019) provides resources not selected for publication in either Message in the Bottle or Signposts in a Strange Land.

Additional Resource: See Walker Percy's Writings on Language (By Original Publication and Date) for a listing of where each item below originally appeared in print.


Percy's Non-fiction Books Incorporating Writings on Language

  1. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975).
    Fifteen scholastic essays on the unique nature of mankind, language, and their relationship. Contains Percy's most technical considerations of language and epistemology.
  2. Lost in the Cosmos:The Last-Self Help Book (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983).
    A general, lay philosophical consideration of the nature of the "self" and its quest for identity. A book in a genre of its own.
  3. Signposts in a Strange Land (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991).
    Posthumous publication of Percy's uncollected nonfiction works divided into three major sections: "Life in the South"; "Science, Language, and Literature"; and "Morality and Religion."
  4. Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2019).
    Features numerous previously unpublished Percy writings on language. The book provides a systematic framework for understanding his intellectual background related to his writings on the subject of language.
Return to Semiotics Overview page.
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Specific Writings on Language Within the Preceding Books

1. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other

**Note on Chapters 1-6
In this book only the essays "The Delta Factor," "Metaphor as Mistake," and "The Message in the Bottle" are directly concerned with Percy's philosophy of language.

**Note on Chapters 7-15 in The Message in the Bottle
The following are the chapters in MB that are most concerned with his philosophy of language.

Return to Primary Book Descriptions page.

2. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last-Self Help Book

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3. Signposts in a Strange Land
The following essays from the section of this essay collection entitled "Science, Language, and Literature" are concerned with Percy's semiotics.

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4. Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature
This posthumous book provides numerous previously unpublished writings by Percy on language and provides a systematic framework for understanding his intellectual perspectives on the subject of semiotics [244 pps].

Return to Primary Book Descriptions page.