PRIMARY RESOURCES
Walker Percy's Writings on Language (By Original Publication and Date)
A bibliography of his writings on language listed by original publication and date, including books and essays
Percy's Writings on Language by Book (by Chronological Date)
The following bibliography covers the period 1954-2019. The majority of the essays listed are compiled in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975). Percy's second non-fiction work, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983), provides a lay introduction to his theories of language, in particular its "A Semiotic Primer of the Self."
As posthumous works, the essay collection Signposts in a Strangeland (1991) published one previously unavailable language-related essay entitled "Is a Theory of Man Possible?". In turn, a book-length work entitled Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature (2019) features numerous previously unpublished writings by Percy on language and provides a systematic framework for understanding his intellectual perspectives on the subject of language.
Additional Resource: See Walker Percy's Writings on Language (An Annotated Listing) for an annotated listing of the following publications.
Percy's Writings on Language by Books and Essays (by Chronological Date)
The following abbreviation key identifies in which book a particular essay appears. Percy's first semiotic essay was published in 1954.
MB = Message in the Bottle*
LC = Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
SS = Signposts in a Strangeland
SE = Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature
*Note: The essays below listed in brackets [ ] indicate essays in the Message in the Bottle that do not treat language as a topic, but which are included in this bibliography so as to provide a comprehensive listing of the essays included in the book.
- "Symbol as Need." Thought, 29 (Autumn 1954), 381-90. Essay, in Message in the Bottle [abbreviated as MB below]. Reprinted in Sequicentennial issue of Thought, Vol. 65, No. 258.
- "Symbol as Hermeneutic in Existentialism: A Possible Bridge from Empiricism." Philosophy and Phenomenonlogical Research, 16 (June 1956), 522-30. Essay in MB as "Symbol as Hermeneutic in Existentialism."
- ["The Man on the Train: Three Existential Modes." Partisan Review, 23 (Fall 1956), 478-94. Essay, in MB as "The Man on the Train."]
- "Semiotic and a Theory of Knowledge." The Modern Schoolman, 34 (May 1957), 225-46. Essay, in MB.
- "The Act of Naming." Forum, 1 (Summer 1957), 4-9. Essay, in MB as "The Mystery of Language."
- "Metaphor as Mistake." The Sewanee Review, 64 (Winter 1958), 79-99. Essay, in MB.
- "Symbol, Consciousness, and Intersubjectivity." The Journal of Philosophy, 55 (17 June 1958), 631-41. Essay, in MB.
- ["The Loss of the Creature." Forum, 2 (Fall 1958), 6-14. Essay, in MB.]
- "Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method." The New Scholasticism, 32 (October 1958), 443-75. Essay, in MB.
- "The Message in the Bottle." Thought, 34 (Autumn 1959), 405-33. Essay, in MB.
- "Naming and Being." The Personalist, 41 (Spring 1960), 148-57. Essay, in Signposts in a Strange Land [abbreviated as SS as listed below, 1991].
- "The Symbolic Structure of Interpersonal Process." Psychiatry: A Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 24 (February 1961), 39-52. Essay, in MB.
- "Symbol and Existence: A Study of Meaning," unpublished manuscript of 318 pages compiled in 1960-61; in Percy collection at UNC-Chapel Hill; miscellaneous chapters published as essays.
- ["Notes for a Novel about the End of the World." Katallagete, 3 (Winter 1967-68), 7-14. Essay, in MB.]
- "Toward a Triadic Theory of Meaning." Psychiatry: A Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 35 (February 1972), 1-19. Essay, in MB.
- "The Delta Factor." The Southern Review, 11 (January, 1975), 29-64. Essay, in MB.
- 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, Giroux, 1975.
- "A Theory of Language." First published in MB, 298-327.
- Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983. Especially "A Semiotic Primer of the Self," pp. 86-126.
- "The Fateful Rift: The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind," excerpted as "The Divided Creature" in The Wilson Quarterly, 13 (Summer 1989), 77-87. Also printed in Design for Arts in Education, (January 1, 1990) Vol. 91, No. 3, p. 2. In SS pp. 271-291.
- Signposts in a Strange Land. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1991. Listed essays.
- "Is a Theory of Man Possible?". In SS, pp. 111-129. [Unpublished before SS.]
- Symbol and Existence: A Study in Meaning: Explorations of Human Nature. Mercer University Press, 2019. [Previously unpublished materials, 244 pages.]