Lévi-Strauss Claude - More lost Massey lectures: recovered classics from five great thinkers

Recovered Classics from Five Great Thinkers

BARBARA WARD
FRANK H. UNDERHILL
GEORGE GRANT
CLAUDE LVI-STRAUSS
WILLY BRANDT

Individual lectures copyright 1961 The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations by Barbara Ward; 1964 The Image of Confederation by Frank H. Underhill; 1969 Time as History by George Grant and University of Toronto Press Inc.; 1978 Myth and Meaning by Claude Lvi-Strauss and University of Toronto Press Inc.; 1982 Dangers & Options by Willy Brandt; Introduction copyright 2008 Bernie Lucht

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

More lost Massey lectures : recovered classics from five great thinkers / by Willy Brandt... [et al.].

(CBC Massey lectures series)
Contents: Dangers and options / Willy Brandt Time as history / George Grant Myth and meaning / Claude Lvi-Strauss Image of confederation / Frank H.
Underhill The rich nations and the poor nations / Barbara Ward.

ISBN 978-0-88784-801-8

I. Brandt, Willy, 19131992. II. Series.

JZ1242.L6753 2008 081 C2008-901760-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008924730

Cover design: Bill Douglas
Text design and typesetting: Laura Brady, Brady Typesetting & Design

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Printed and bound in Canada

The Massey Lectures were born in the winter of 1961. They were unveiled in late February by the vice-president and general manager of English networks at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), H. G. Walker. Each year, he said in the press release announcing the series, the CBC will invite a noted scholar to undertake study or original research in his field and present the results in a series of half-hour radio broadcasts. He continued, saying that he hoped the lectures would make significant contributions to public awareness and understanding and... further development of the art of broadcasting.

The lectures were named for the Right Honourable Vincent Massey, who had recently completed a seven-year term as governor general of Canada. Massey is notable as the first Canadian-born person to hold the post, but it was work he did before becoming governor general that inspired the CBC to name the new lecture series after him.

In 1949, Vincent Massey had been appointed by the government of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent to head a royal commission mandated to carry out a sweeping study of the entire field of letters, the arts and sciences within the jurisdiction of the federal state. Grandly named the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, it came to be known more simply as the Massey Commission. Its scope included science, literature, the arts, music, drama, film, and broadcasting. The commission held hearings across the country. It listened to testimony from more than a thousand witnesses and received 462 written submissions. It took two years to do its work and issued its final report in 1951.

The Massey Report was enormously influential. It led to, among other things, the establishment of the National Library of Canada and the Canada Council. But more broadly, the report was instrumental in modernizing the role of the federal government in cultural activity. Naming a prestigious lecture series after Vincent Massey was the CBCs way of giving him special recognition for the work he had done to promote culture and the humanities in Canada.

The first set of Massey Lectures was broadcast in the spring of 1961. It consisted of six half-hour talks by Barbara Ward, a British expert in economics and international affairs. Her lectures were called The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations, and in them she examined the causes of poverty in what were then known as the under-developed nations. The lectures were broadcast once a week, on Thursday nights at 8:30. Vincent Massey himself introduced the first broadcast. The CBC later published the lectures as a book, and so began a tradition in public broadcasting and publishing that has continued for forty-seven years, a tradition that has evolved and expanded with the times.

Most, but not all, of the Massey Lectures are still in print. The lectures today are the product of a happy collaboration of three partners CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press, and Massey College in the University of Toronto. For most of their history, the Massey Lectures were recorded within the austere confines of a CBC radio studio in Toronto. But since 2002, they have been delivered each fall before large audiences on university campuses in cities across Canada. The recorded public lectures are then broadcast to listeners in Canada on CBC Radio One, and to all of North America on Sirius Satellite radio. They are also streamed worldwide on the Internet and available as podcasts. Simultaneously with the broadcasts, the lectures are published as a trade paperback that garners international attention and usually makes the bestseller lists. The Massey Lectures have established their place as a truly Canadian institution and are an annual highlight of our national intellectual life.

The Massey Lectures have been graced by some of the finest minds in the world writers, scholars, statesmen, activists men and women from every field of human endeavour who shaped the thought of their times. In 2007, House of Anansi Press and the CBC reached back into the Massey archive to re-issue a set of early classics under the title, The Lost Massey Lectures. These lectures had been out of print for decades, and their appearance in the book marked the first time they again became publicly available.

Now comes a new collection of recovered classics, More Lost Massey Lectures, a selection of lectures from the 60s, 70s and 80s, a period of breathtaking cultural and political upheaval worldwide. Included are Barbara Wards inaugural Massey Lectures, as well as lectures by the Canadian historian and social critic, Frank Underhill; the prominent Canadian political and religious philosopher, George Grant; the father of structural anthropology, Claude Lvi-Strauss; and Willy Brandt, the former chancellor of West Germany and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his work in fostering dtente between eastern and western Europe during the worst years of the Cold War.