Lionel Basney was a poet and professor of English at Calvin College

Calvin College

Calvin College is a comprehensive liberal arts college located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Founded in 1876, Calvin College is an educational institution of the Christian Reformed Church and stands in the Reformed tradition of Protestantism...

 in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

. Prior to his time at Calvin, Basney taught at Houghton College

Houghton College

Houghton College is a Christian liberal arts college affiliated with the Wesleyan Church. The college is a member of both the Christian College Consortium and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities...

, where his father also taught before him. Basney was interested in Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

, and Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd

Ned Ludd or Ned Lud, possibly born Ned Ludlam or Edward Ludlam, is the person from whom the Luddites took their name. His actions inspirated the folkloric character of Captain Ludd, also known as King Ludd or General Ludd, who became the Luddites' alleged leader and founder.It is believed that Ned...

 and the origins of the Luddite

Luddite

The Luddites were a social movement of 19th-century English textile artisans who protested – often by destroying mechanised looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life...

 movement. He was the author of An Earth-Careful Way of Life: Christian Stewardship and the Environmental Crisis. Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...

's Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition is dedicated to Basney.

In 2000, The Conference on Christianity and Literature at Pepperdine University

Pepperdine University

Pepperdine University is an independent, private, medium-sized university affiliated with the Churches of Christ. The university's campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean in unincorporated Los Angeles County, California, United States, near Malibu, is the location for Seaver College, the School of...

 began awarding the annual Lionel Basney Prize "to the article deemed by the CCL Publications Committee to be the most outstanding article of the year in Christianity and Literature". According to the website, "the award...commemorates both the scholarly career and the personal character of a teacher, scholar, poet, and essayist who, during nearly two decades of affiliation with Calvin College, was deeply committed to CCL and all that it seeks to promote."

Basney's own work received awards and critical recognition, particularly the essays that were published in The American Scholar

The American Scholar

The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America's fledgling society to...

 in 1999 and 2002. "Immanuel's Ground" was included in The Best Christian Writing 2000 (ed. John Wilson) and The Best Spiritual Writing 2000 (ed. Philip Zaleski

Philip Zaleski

Philip Zaleski is the author and editor of several books on religion and spirituality, including The Recollected Heart, The Benedictines of Petersham, and Gifts of the Spirit. In addition, he is coauthor with his wife Carol Zaleski of Prayer: A History and The Book of Heaven. Zaleski...

.) "Teacher: Eleven Notes" not only was included in The Best Christian Writing 2002 (ed. John Wilson) but also received The American Scholar

The American Scholar

The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America's fledgling society to...

's award for Best Essay in January 2003.

According to Basney,

Works

• "Myth, History and Time in The Lord of the Rings
  The Lord of the Rings
  The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
  
  " in Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism By Rose A. Zimbardo, Neil David Isaacs 2004 Houghton Mifflin ISBN 0618422536.
• "Teacher: Eleven Notes." The American Scholar
  The American Scholar
  The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America's fledgling society to...
  
  : 71:1 (January 2002): 75-89.
• "The Snow Plough Man." Christianity and Literature: 50:3 (Spring 2001): 412-435.
• An Earth-Careful Way of Life: Christian Stewardship and the Environmental Crisis, Vancouver
  Vancouver
  Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
  
  , BC: Regent College
  Regent College
  Regent College is an international graduate school of Christian Studies, located next to the campus of the University of British Columbia in the University Endowment Lands west of Vancouver, British Columbia, and is an affiliated college of that university....
  
   Publishing, 2000 ISBN 1573831727. (Original Publication Information: Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994 ISBN 0830813225.)
• "Immanuel's Ground." The American Scholar
  The American Scholar
  The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America's fledgling society to...
  
  : 68.3 (Summer 1999): 109-120.
• "Meditations for Lent 1999". The Banner
  The Banner (magazine)
  The Banner is a magazine published by the Christian Reformed Church in North America. It was originally published as The Banner of Truth by the Rev. John Yeury de Baun in the 1860s and '70s for the benefit of the True Reformed Dutch Church in America...
  
  February-March 1999.
• "Questioning Progress: The Resurrection of Ned Ludd". Books & Culture: 4.5 (September/October 1998): 18.
• "Technolatry Unmasked". The Other Side: 33.3 (May/June 1997).
• "Mia California: An Opera Journal" in Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1996.
• "Five Notes on the Didactic Tradition
  Didacticism
  Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
  
  , in Praise of Wendell Berry
  Wendell Berry
  Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...
  
  " in Paul Merchant, editor. Wendell Berry (American Authors Series). Lewiston, Idaho: Confluence, 1991: 174-183.
• "Narrative and Judgment in the Life of Savage." Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly: 14.2 (Spring 1991): 153-64.
• "Prudence in the Life of Savage." ELN: 28.2 (Dec. 1990): 17-24.
• "'His Proper Business': Johnson's Adjustment to Society." Texas Studies in Literature and Language: 32.3 (Fall 1990): 397-416.
• "Having Your Meaning at Hand: Work in Snyder
  Gary Snyder
  Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
  
   and Berry", in: World, Self, Poem: Essays on Contemporary Poetry from the Jubilation of Poets, ed Leonard M. Trawick. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990: 130-143.
• "Review of Collected Poems 1957-1982." Christianity and Literature 25 (Summer 1986): 31-32.
• "God and Peter Wimsey." Christianity Today 17 (1973): 27–28
• "The Balanced Mind: Johnson's Christian Empiricism
  Empiricism
  Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
  
  "; Christian Scholar's Review III:3 (1973).
• "Ecology and the Scriptural Concept of the Master"; Christian Scholar's Review III:1 (1973): 49-50.
• "'Lucidus Ordo': Johnson and Generality" Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Autumn, 1971): 39-57.

External links

• Memorial page by Claire (Basney) Ramsey
• Poem by Basney
• "Tragedy befalls community" obituary in 10 Sept 1999 Calvin College Chimes
• The Conference on Christianity and Literature's Lionel Basney Award