Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast with Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks! They are joined by Ella Hornstra for the beginning of a new series on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Thomas and Ella kick off the book discussion with a little biographical background on Huxley and dispel the myth that he belonged to the Bloomsbury Group. Angelina gives some literary history of the period in which Huxley wrote, as well as some thoughts on satire as a response to an age of overwhelming optimism. She also highlights the literary and cultural influences that Huxley satirizes in this novel, including Wells, Ford, and Freud.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

Don't forget to check out this coming year's annual Literary Life Online Conference, happening January 23-30, 2026, "The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human". Our speakers will be Dr. Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, Dr. Anne Phillips, and, of course, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks.

To view the full show notes for this episode, including commonplace quotes and today's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/301. 

On The Literary Life podcast this week, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are back to wrap up their series on Bram Stoker's Dracula. They open with their commonplace quotes then begin diving into the major plot points and the connections being made. Angelina and Cindy discuss what happens to Mina, especially in relation to the idea of the New Woman versus the Angel in the House. Thomas and Angelina talk about Dracula's background and his connection with Satan seen more clearly here at the end of the book. They all share thoughts on the Christian images that are increasingly brought out as the story line progresses.

To check out the latest classes and offerings from Angelina, Thomas and their colleagues, you can visit HouseofHumaneLetters.com. You can also find out what Cindy is up to over on her website, MorningTimeforMoms.com.

Don't forget to head over to https://theliterary.life/300/ to view the full show notes for this episode, including book links, commonplace quotes, and this week's poem. 

This week on The Literary Life Podcast we wrap up the book discussion portion of our series on Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Today, Angelina and Thomas begin with chapter 22, going through the significant scenes all the way to the end of the book. They talk about the ways in which this book is an elegy, as well as the continued glimpses of "the family" as the main character. They also discuss the ways in which May shows herself to be more cunning that she pretends in contrast to Ellen's lack of pretense. Other topics of discussion are America's relationship with foreign influence, Archer's desire to live in an illusion, and the recurring theme of "Faust." They conclude with some thoughts on this book as a parable of American culture.

Join us next week for an episode on the film adaptation of this book with our film guru, Atlee Northmore.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars, especially "The Viking World" taught by Dr. Michael Drout.

To view the full show notes for this week's episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/291. 

On The Literary Life today, we wrap up our series on The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers. Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas begin the conversation with C. S. Lewis' critique of Sayers' work, both what he agreed with and disagreed with in this book, as well as touching on Tolkien's idea of artists as sub-creators. Cindy talks about what it is like writing a book in relation to Sayers' thoughts on the subject of authorship. Thomas shares why he took issue with part of her examples of scalene triangles and the Trinity in relation to aesthetic failures. Angelina shares her dilemma with this same portion, and they discuss the principle they think Sayers was trying to illustrate.

The House of Humane Letters is currently having their Christmas sale until December 31, 2023. Everything is now 20% OFF, so hop on over and get the classes at their best prices now. In addition to the sale, you can also sign up for Atlee Northmore's webinar "A Medieval Romance in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: How to Read Star Wars."

Cindy is also offering at 20% OFF discount throughout the holidays. Use coupon code "advent2023" on MorningTimeforMoms.com/shop until January 2024.

If you missed it, go back to last week's episode to get all the information about our 2024 Reading Challenge, Book of Centuries.

Commonplace Quotes:

Truth herself will, at the promptings of Nature, break forth from even unwilling hearts.

"Veritas ipsa cogente natura etiam ab invitis pectoribus erumpit."

Lactantius, from Divine Institutes, Bk. II

Curiosity may elicit facts, but only real interest may mold these facts to wisdom.

Anna Botsford Comstock, from Handbook of Nature Study

I must therefore disagree with Miss Sayers very profoundly when she says that 'between the mind of the maker and the Mind of the Maker' there is 'a difference, not of category, but only of quality and degree' (p. 147). On my view there is a greater, far greater, difference between the two than between playing with a doll and suckling a child. But with this, serious disagreement ends.

This is the first 'little book on religion' I have read for a long time in which every sentence is intelligible and every page advances the argument. I recommend it heartily to theologians and critics. To novelists and poets, if they are already inclined in any degree to idolatry of their own vocation, I recommend it with much more caution. They had better read it fasting.

C. S. Lewis, from Image and Imagination Thoughts

by Thomas Beddoes

Sweet are the thoughts that haunt the poet's brain Like rainbow-fringed clouds, through which some star Peeps in bright glory on a shepherd swain; They sweep along and trance him; sweeter far Than incense trailing up an out-stretched chain From rocking censer; sweeter too they are Than the thin mist which rises in the gale From out the slender cowslip's bee-scarred breast. Their delicate pinions buoy up a tale Like brittle wings, which curtain in the vest Of cobweb-limbed ephemera, that sail In gauzy mantle of dun twilight dressed, Borne on the wind's soft sighings, when the spring Listens all evening to its whispering. Books Mentioned:

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

Home Economics by Wendell Berry

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we have a very special 200th Episode for you! Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks are joined by their Patreon Friends and Fellows for a live episode recording to launch the 2024 Reading Challenge! This year's challenge theme is "Book of Centuries" and features a timeline of literary periods from which you can choose works to read throughout the next year. The discussion featured suggestions for each literary period and century, and you can get the complete list of book and author suggestions right here. (Due to the length of this list, we will not be adding hyperlinks this week, so please see the document to find any book titles and authors you want to explore.) As usual, there will also be a kids' version of the reading challenge!

To download a PDF version of the adult reading challenge, click here. To download a PDF of the kids' version, click here.

The House of Humane Letters is currently having their Christmas sale until December 31, 2023. Everything is now 20% OFF, so hop on over and get the classes at their best prices now. In addition to the sale, you can also sign up for Atlee Northmore's webinar "A Medieval Romance in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: How to Read Star Wars."

Cindy is also offering at 20% OFF discount throughout the holidays. Use coupon code "advent2023" on MorningTimeforMoms.com/shop until January 2024.

Commonplace Quotes:

Chaucer had the rare gift of an author of liking people he did not respect.

G. K. Chesterton, from Chaucer

Modern education promotes the unmitigated study of literature and concentrates our attention on the relation between a writer's life, his surface life, and his work. That is the reason it is such a curse.

Madeleine L'Engle, from Walking on Water

A very famous writer once said, "A book is like a mirror. If a fool looks in, you can't expect a genius to look out."

J. K. Rowling Whitsunday

by George Herbert

Listen sweet Dove unto my song, And spread thy golden wings in me; Hatching my tender heart so long, Till it get wing, and fly away with thee. Where is that fire which once descended On thy Apostles? thou didst then Keep open house, richly attended, Feasting all comers by twelve chosen men. Such glorious gifts thou didst bestow, That th'earth did like a heav'n appear; The stars were coming down to know If they might mend their wages, and serve here. The sun which once did shine alone, Hung down his head, and wisht for night, When he beheld twelve suns for one Going about the world, and giving light. But since those pipes of gold, which brought That cordial water to our ground, Were cut and martyr'd by the fault Of those, who did themselves through their side wound, Thou shutt'st the door, and keep'st within; Scarce a good joy creeps through the chink: And if the braves of conqu'ring sin Did not excite thee, we should wholly sink. Lord, though we change, thou art the same; The same sweet God of love and light: Restore this day, for thy great name, Unto his ancient and miraculous right. Books Mentioned:

200th Episode Literary Life Book Suggestions

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Due to illness among our hosts and holiday travel plans, we are airing a Best Of Series episode this week instead of our previously planned episode on The Mind of the Maker. Please enjoy this lighthearted discussion as you prepare for your Thanksgiving feasting, and join us right here next week for a very special 200th episode featuring our Friends and Fellows and introducing the 2024 Reading Challenge!

Today on The Literary Life Podcast we bring you another fun episode in our "In Search of the Austen Adaptation" series. Hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks are joined by resident film aficionado, Atlee Northmore to discuss film adaptations on Sense and Sensibility. The conversation opens by revisiting the question of what makes a good adaptation of a book when translating it for the screen. They talk about the challenges of showing modern audiences the characters and situations as Jane Austen meant them to be understood. Atlee gives a brief overview of the lesser known film adaptations, as well as a more in depth discussion of the 1995 and 2008 versions. You can access the PDF he created with links to watch here.

Commonplace Quotes:

Sound principles that are old may easily be laid on the shelf and forgotten, unless in each successive generation a few industrious people can be found who will take the trouble to draw them forth from the storehouse.

Thomas Ruper, as quoted by Karen Glass

His senile fury was not exhausted by endless repetition.

Eric Linklater

'Remember, no one is made up of one fault, everyone is much greater than all his faults,' and then she would add with a smile: 'I find it much easier to put up with people's faults than with their virtues!'

Charlotte Mason, as quoted by Essex Cholmondeley

The great abstract nouns of the classical English moralists are unblushingly and uncompromisingly used: good sense, courage, contentment, fortitude, some duty neglected, some failing indulged, impropriety, indelicacy, generous candor, blameable distrust, just humiliation, vanity, folly, ignorance, reason. These are the concepts by which Jane Austen grasps the world. In her we still breathe the air of the Rambler and Idler. All is hard, clear, definable; by some modern standards, even naïvely so. The hardness is, of course, for oneself, not for one's neighbours. It reveals to Marianne her want 'of kindness' and shows Emma that her behaviour has been 'unfeeling'. Contrasted with the world of modern fiction, Jane Austen's is at once less soft and less cruel.

C. S. Lewis Selection from With a Guitar, To Jane

by Percy Shelley

Ariel to Miranda:-- Take This slave of music, for the sake Of him who is the slave of thee; And teach it all the harmony In which thou canst, and only thou, Make the delighted spirit glow, Till joy denies itself again And, too intense, is turned to pain. For by permission and command Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, Poor Ariel sends this silent token Of more than ever can be spoken; Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who From life to life must still pursue Your happiness,-- for thus alone Can Ariel ever find his own. From Prospero's enchanted cell, As the mighty verses tell, To the throne of Naples he Lit you o'er the trackless sea, Flitting on, your prow before, Like a living meteor. When you die, the silent Moon In her interlunar swoon Is not sadder in her cell Than deserted Ariel. Book List:

In Vital Harmony by Karen Glass

The Story of Charlotte Mason by Essex Cholmondeley

Robert the Bruce by Eric Linklater

C. S. Lewis' Selected Literary Essays edited by Walter Hooper

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

 

Today's episode of The Literary Life is a continuation of our series covering The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers. Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas discuss chapters 6-8 this week, which they acknowledge are probably the most difficult portions of this book so far. Angelina starts off with some questions she has about why chapter six in included and how it fits with other arguments she has already made earlier. Thomas reads and expands on a passage about the autobiographer and his art. Angelina makes a distinction between moral goodness and artistic goodness in works of fiction and art. Cindy highlights the idea of justification and something being "out of true."

Coming up from House of Humane Letters on November 16, 2023, Jennifer Rogers' webinar on Tolkien and The Old English Tradition. You can sign up now and save your spot!

Commonplace Quotes:

My friend, the Scottish poet and translator Alastair Reid, carries a lifetime's worth of poems—an entire small library—in his head. "Do you memorize them?" someone asked him once. "No," he answered gravely. "I remember them."

Christian McEwan, World Enough and Time

The book everywhere exhibits the style and temper for which the author was both loved and hated. The essays are full of cheerful energy. The young people would call them 'bonhomous'.

By a bonhomous writer they mean one who seems to like writing and what he writes of, and to assume that his readers will mostly be people he would like. I think that this last assumption is what infuriates them.

C. S. Lewis, Image and Imagination

If you are not careful…you'll be a genius when you grow up and disgrace your parents.

Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden The Bird and the Tree

by Ruth Pitter

The tree, and its haunting bird, Are the loves of my heart; But where is the word, the word, Oh where is the art, To say, or even to see, For a moment of time, What the Tree and the Bird must be In the true sublime? They shine, listening to the soul, And the soul replies; But the inner love is not whole, and the moment dies. O give me before I die The grace to see With eternal, ultimate eye, The Bird and the Tree. The song in the living green, The Tree and the Bird– O have they ever been seen, Ever been heard? Books Mentioned:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life Podcast today, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks continue discussing Dorothy L. Sayers' The Mind of the Maker. In today's conversation, they cover the ideas in chapters 3-5, including the following: the creative process in relation to the members of the Trinity, the relationship of the writer to his own creation, the misconception of art as self-expression, the problem with poetic justice, and much more!

If you missed the live webinar Can Dante's Inferno Save the World? with Dr. Jason Baxter, you can still purchase the recording. Also, coming up from House of Humane Letters on November 16, 2023, Jennifer Rogers' webinar on Tolkien and The Old English Tradition. You can sign up now and save your spot!

Commonplace Quotes:

He remained altogether inimitable, yet never seemed conscious of his greatness. It was native in him to rejoice in the successes of other men at least as much as in his own triumphs.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, from "The Death of Robert Louis Stevenson"

Only one hour of the normal day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep and that is the hour spent in bed with a book after being called in the morning.

Rose Macaulay, as quoted by Christian McEwan in World Enough and Time

The unity of a work of art, the basis of structural analysis, has not only been produced solely by the unconditioned will of the artist, for the artist is only its efficient cause: it has form, and consequently a formal cause. The fact that revision is possible, that the poet makes changes not because he likes them better but because they are better, means that poems, like poets, are born and not made.

Northrop Frye, from Fables of Identity Nondum

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

" Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself." ISAIAH xlv. 15. God, though to Thee our psalm we raise-- No answering voice comes from the skies; To Thee the trembling sinner prays But no forgiving voice replies; Our prayer seems lost in desert ways, Our hymn in the vast silence dies. We see the glories of the earth But not the hand that wrought them all: Night to a myriad worlds gives birth, Yet like a lighted empty hall Where stands no host at door or hearth Vacant creation's lamps appall. We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King, With attributes we deem are meet; Each in his own imagining Sets up a shadow in Thy seat; Yet know not how our gifts to bring, Where seek Thee with unsandalled feet. Books Mentioned:

The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks are kick off a new series on The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers. Before discussion the book itself, Angelina gives a little biographical information on Sayers for those who are new to her and her work. They begin talking about the book with the preface and Sayers own purpose in writing it. Cindy shares a little about her first reading of The Mind of the Maker when she was a young newlywed and the impact it made on her. Thomas points out the "laws" Sayers outlines and reads some important quotes from this section.

If you are listening to this episode on the day it drops, it's not too late to get in on today's live webinar Can Dante's Inferno Save the World? with Dr. Jason Baxter. You can also purchase the recording any time if you missed the live class. Also coming up from House of Humane Letters on November 16, 2023, Jennifer Rogers' webinar on Tolkien and The Old English Tradition. You can sign up now and save your spot!

Episode 9: "Are Women Human" by Dorothy L. Sayers

Episodes 5-8 on Gaudy Night

Episode 62: The Literary Friendship of Dorothy and Jack

Commonplace Quotes:

Think not, Mistress, more true dullness lies

In Folly's cap, than Wisdom's grave disguise.

Alexander Pope, from "The Dunciad"

We do not own stories, and when we try to limit them, squeeze the life out of them, lose the love that gave them to us, and fall back into that fatal human flaw–pride, hubris–we are right back to Adam and Eve, who listened to the power of the snake instead of the creativity of God.

Madeleine L'Engle, from Bright Evening Star

This is the first "little book on religion" I have read for a long time in which every sentence is intelligible and every page advances the argument.

C. S. Lewis, in a review of Mind of the Maker Reason Has Moons

by Ralph Hodgson

Reason has moons, but moons not hers, Lie mirror'd on the sea, Confounding her astronomers, But O! delighting me. Books Mentioned:

Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

"Learning in Wartime" by C. S. Lewis

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast this week as we wrap up our series of discussion on C. S. Lewis' novel Out of the Silent Planet. Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks are covering from chapter 16 to the end of the book in today's episode. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina starts the conversation comparing the ideas in Gulliver's Travels with what Lewis is doing in this book. Thomas quotes a passage from the Aeneid in Latin as they talk about the parallels to Out of the Silent Planet. The structure of the medieval romance is seen fully as we finish the story, as noted by Angelina. She and Thomas also point out more connections with Paradise Lost. Cindy brings everything together with some thoughts on the unraveling of modernity.

Join us next week as we kick off a new series on The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers!

House of Humane Letters is thrilled to announce an all new webinar from Dr. Jason Baxter coming October 31st! Register today for Can Dante's Inferno Save the World? Also coming up from House of Humane Letters on November 16, 2023, Jennifer Rogers' webinar on Tolkien and The Old English Tradition. You can sign up now and save your spot!

Commonplace Quotes:

But unlike most artists, Ruskin valued the seeing more than the doing. "The sight is more important than the drawing," he said. "The greatest thing a human being ever does in this world is to SEE something, and tell what he saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands of people can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion—all in one."

from The World Enough and Time, by Christian McEwan

Build, build your Babels black against the sky-

But mark yon small green blade, your stones between,

The single spy

Of that uncounted host you have outcast;

For with their tiny pennons waving green

They shall storm your streets at last.

F. L. Lucas, from "Beleaguered Cities"

The old universe was wholly different in its effect. It was an answer, not a question. It offered not a field for musing but a single overwhelming object; an object which at once abashes and exalts the mind. For in it there is a final standard of size. The Primum Mobile is really large because it is the largest corporeal thing there is. We are really small because our whole Earth is a speck compared with the Primum Mobile.

C. S. Lewis, from Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature Science-Fiction Cradlesong

by C. S. Lewis

By and by Man will try To get out into the sky, Sailing far beyond the air From Down and Here to Up and There. Stars and sky, sky and stars Make us feel the prison bars. Suppose it done. Now we ride Closed in steel, up there, outside Through our port-holes see the vast Heaven-scape go rushing past. Shall we? All that meets the eye Is sky and stars, stars and sky. Points of light with black between Hang like a painted scene Motionless, no nearer there Than on Earth, everywhere Equidistant from our ship. Heaven has given us the slip. Hush, be still. Outer space Is a concept, not a place. Try no more. Where we are Never can be sky or star. From prison, in a prison, we fly; There's no way into the sky. Books Mentioned:

The Secular Scripture by Northrop Frye

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts continue their discussion of C. S. Lewis' science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet, covering chapters 6-15. Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks begin by sharing their commonplace quotes, including some heated debate about sausages, then dive in to this section. They start by looking at Ransom's need to let go of some of his own modern preconceptions and categories, in spite of being steeped in the classics. Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy also discuss a variety of other themes, including: the contrasts between Lewis and Tolkien in world-building, Lewis' crafting a medieval tale in the genre of modern science fiction, and the problems with Ransom's anthro-centric perspective.

House of Humane Letters is thrilled to announce an all new webinar from Dr. Jason Baxter coming October 31st! Register today for Can Dante's Inferno Save the World? Also coming up from House of Humane Letters on November 16, 2023, Jennifer Rogers' webinar on Tolkien and The Old English Tradition. You can sign up nowand save your spot!

Commonplace Quotes:

It is to me inconceivable that Nature as we see it is either what God intended or merely evil; it looks like a good thing spoiled.

C. S. Lewis, from Letters of C. S. Lewis

What do you usually do when you are shut up in a secret room, with no chance of getting out for hours? As for me, I always say poetry to myself. It is one of the uses of poetry–one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances of that kind, or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night. You will find poetry most useful for this purpose. So learn plenty of it, and be sure it is the best kind, because this is most useful as well as most agreeable.

Edith Nesbit, from The House of Arden

Lewis began the trilogy as a conscious critique of what he called "Wellsianity," a philosophy that applies Darwinism to the metaphysical sphere, believing that humans may evolve into a new species of gods, spreading from world to world and galaxy to galaxy. Though one finds this quasi-religious belief sometimes called "Evolutionism" in Olaf Stapledon, G. B. Shaw, and C. H. Waddington, Lewis found it most fully embodied in Wells' novels, and he set out to produce a Wellsian fantasy with an anti-Welsian theme. Lewis' Ransom books contrast so sharply from other stories of space voyages that Robert Scholes and Eric S. Rabkin credit him with inventing a new genre: "anti-science fiction."

from Reading the Classics with C. S. Lewis, edited by Thomas L. Martin A Selection from "I Saw Eternity the Other Night"

by Henry Vaughn

I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world And all her train were hurl'd. Books Mentioned:

Kingsley Amis

William Morris

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas bring us the first installment in their series of discussions about C. S. Lewis' science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet. Angelina shares some background on how Lewis began writing this book and what he set out to do through the genre of science fiction within the form of a romance. In looking at the historical time period in which he was writing, Thomas brings out the transcendent quality of Lewis' message. They talk about Ransom's character and his embodiment of the "old ways." Cindy points out the Dante-esque details of the beginning of Ransom's journey.

Other themes our hosts discuss are the problem of eugenics, the study of philology, the similarities in setup with First Men in the Moon, the enchantment of modernity, medieval cosmology, and so much more!

House of Humane Letters is thrilled to announce an all new webinar from Dr. Jason Baxter coming October 31st! Register today for Can Dante's Inferno Save the World? Also coming up from House of Humane Letters on November 16, 2023, Jennifer Rogers' webinar on Tolkien and The Old English Tradition. You can sign up now and save your spot!

Commonplace Quotes:

"I'm with Orwell,' said Strike. "Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them."

Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling)

An age of discovery…is apt to loathe established institutions, and be filled with spiritual arrogance.

Agnes Mure Mackenzie, The Kingdom of Scotland

It is a strange comment on our age that such a book lies hid in a hideous paper-backed edition, wholly unnoticed by the cognescenti, while any "realistic" drivel about some neurotic in a London flat–something that needs no real invention at all, something that any educated man could write if he chose, may get seriously reviewed and mentioned in serious book–as if it really mattered. I wonder how long this tyranny will last? Twenty years ago I felt no doubt that I should live to see it all break up and great literature return: but here I am, losing teeth and hair, and still no break in the clouds.

C. S. Lewis, from a letter to Joy Davidman, Dec. 1953 A Selection from New Heaven and New Earth

by D. H. Lawrence

I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown. I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb starved from a life of devouring always myself now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand stretched out and touching the unknown, the real unknown, the unknown unknown. My God, but I can only say I touch, I feel the unknown! I am the first comer! Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are nothing, nothing! I am the first comer! I am the discoverer! I have found the other world! Books Mentioned:

On Stories by C. S. Lewis

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and a brand new episode for this fall season! This week Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas begin this series of episodes on science fiction stories, beginning with some background on H. G. Wells and his book The First Men in the Moon. This sets the scene for us as we then continue on next week with the opening of a discussion of C. S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet.

Thomas gives some biographical background information about Wells, and Angelina shares some distinctives of the science fiction genre and its sub-categories. Cindy highlights how much Out of the Silent Planet truly is a derivative of The First Men In the Moon with Lewis putting forward a very different premise.

House of Humane Letters is thrilled to announce an all new webinar from Dr. Jason Baxter coming October 31st! Register today for Can Dante's Inferno Save the World?

Commonplace Quotes:

One of the very best things about the world is that so little of it is me.

Andrew Grieg

He could bear anything except to be silenced. Like most violent controversialists, he believed himself to be the pattern of meekness and good temper.

Ronald Knox, from Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion

Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message.

G. K. Chesterton Astrophil and Stella 31: With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies

by Sir Philip Sydney

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face! What, may it be that even in heav'nly place That busy archer his sharp arrows tries! Sure, if that long-with love-acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case, I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit? Are beauties there as proud as here they be? Do they above love to be lov'd, and yet Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess? Do they call virtue there ungratefulness? Books Mentioned:

World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down by Christian McEwan

From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne

Ursula K. Le Guin

Isaac Asimov

Michael Crichton

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome to The Literary Life Podcast and our series covering The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Angelina and Thomas open with their commonplace quotes, then begin discussing the events and characters of this section of the book. Some of the ideas they build on this week are the challenges to social conventions, the many references to the goddess Diana and May's "boyishness", examples of the pretense of society, and the language of flowers. In addition, Thomas shares his feelings about the character of Newland Archer, and Angelina points out the recurring themes of love triangles throughout these chapters.

Join us next week when we finish up the last chapters of this book, then come back after that for an episode on the film adaptation of this book with our film guru, Atlee Northmore.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

Be sure to visit https://theliterary.life/290 to view the full show notes for this episode, complete with quotes, book lists, and today's poem.

On this week's episode of The Literary Life, we bring you another installment in our "Best of" Series. Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks continue their discussion of J. R. R. Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle". If you missed the Back to School 2020 Conference when it was live, you can still purchase access to the recordings at MorningTimeforMoms.com. Angelina opens the book chat highlighting Tolkien's mirroring of Dante's Divine Comedy with Niggle's journey, and our hosts move through a recap of the story. The questions we should be asking as we read are whether this story deals with the recovery of our vision and whether it ends with a eucatastrophe.

Cindy brings out more of the autobiographical nature of this story for Tolkien. Angelina tosses around the idea that Parish and Niggle may be doubles and be a picture of Tolkien's two selves. Thomas talks about what Niggle has to do in the "purgatory" section of the story. They also talk about the themes of art and the artist, sub-creation, and redemption. Come back next week to hear a discussion about why we ought to read myths.

Commonplace Quotes:

It is when a writer first begins to make enemies that he begins to matter.

Hilton Brown

Kill that whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts—dull because their relations to each other, and the one life that works in them all, must remain undiscovered. Whoever would have his children avoid this arid region will do well to allow no teacher to approach them—not even of mathematics—who has no imagination.

George MacDonald

There were people who cared for him and people didn't, and those who didn't hate him were out to get him. . . But they couldn't touch him. . . because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deidre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees.

Joseph Heller On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet

by Samuel Johnson

Condemned to Hope's delusive mine,
    As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts, or slow decline,
    Our social comforts drop away.

Well tried through many a varying year,
    See Levet to the grave descend;
Officious, innocent, sincere,
    Of every friendless name the friend.

Yet still he fills Affection's eye,
    Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind;
Nor, lettered Arrogance, deny
    Thy praise to merit unrefined.

When fainting Nature called for aid,
    And hovering Death prepared the blow,
His vigorous remedy displayed
    The power of art without the show.

In Misery's darkest cavern known,
    His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan,
    And lonely Want retired to die.

No summons mocked by chill delay,
    No petty gain disdained by pride,
The modest wants of every day
    The toil of every day supplied.

His virtues walked their narrow round,
    Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
And sure the Eternal Master found
    The single talent well employed.

The busy day, the peaceful night,
    Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
His frame was firm, his powers were bright,
    Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

Then with no throbbing fiery pain,
    No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
    And freed his soul the nearest way.

Book List:

Rudyard Kipling by Hilton Brown

A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome to another episode of our "Best Of" Series on The Literary Life with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks. Both this week and next, our hosts will be discussing J. R. R. Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle".

Angelina sets the stage with a little historical background on Tolkien's writing of this story as well as some thoughts on allegory and how to read a fairy tale. She talks about this story as an exploration of the struggle of the ideals and demands of art against the demands of practical life and the question of whether or not art is useful. Cindy shares her ideas about the importance of the Inklings for Tolkien to get his work out into the world. Angelina shares about the type of journey on which the main character, Niggle, is called to go on in this story. As you read, we encourage you to look for how Tolkien harmonizes the different tensions within the story.

Commonplace Quotes:

Here are some of the points which make a story worth studying to tell to the nestling listeners in many a sweet "Children's Hour";––graceful and artistic details; moral impulse of a high order, conveyed with a strong and delicate touch; sweet human affection; a tender, fanciful link between the children and the Nature-world; humour, pathos, righteous satire, and last, but not least, the fact that the story does not turn on children, and does not foster that self-consciousness, the dawn of which in the child is, perhaps, the individual "Fall of Man."

Charlotte Mason

The essay began by noting that total war was underway, with fighting not only "in the field and on the sea and in the air," but also in "the realm of ideas." It said: "The mightiest single weapon this war has yet employed" was "not a plane, or a bomb or a juggernaut of tanks"–it was Mein Kampf. This single book caused an educated nation to "burn the great books that keep liberty fresh in the hearts of men." If America's goal was victory and world peace, "all of us will have to know more and think better than our enemies think and know," the council asserted. "This was is a war of books. . . Books are our weapons."

Molly Guptill Manning, quoting from the essay "Books and the War"

In everything I have sought peace and not found it, save in a corner with a book.

Thomas à Kempis Milton

by Edward Muir

Milton, his face set fair for Paradise,
And knowing that he and Paradise were lost
In separate desolation, bravely crossed
Into his second night and paid his price.
There towards the end he to the dark tower came
Set square in the gate, a mass of blackened stone
Crowned with vermilion fiends like streamers blown
From a great funnel filled with roaring flame.
Shut in his darkness, these he could not see,
But heard the steely clamour known too well
On Saturday nights in every street in Hell.
Where, past the devilish din, could Paradise be?
A footstep more, and his unblinded eyes
Saw far and near the fields of Paradise.

Book List:

Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason

When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis

Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer

Smith of Wooten Major by J. R. R. Tolkien

Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien

Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte

Spirits in Bondage by C. S. Lewis

Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Today on The Literary Life podcast, we bring you another episode from the "Best of" series vault, our discussion of J. R. R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories". Tune in again over the next two weeks as we continue the conversation with Tolkien's short story Leaf by Niggle. If you missed the 2020 Back to School conference that Cindy introduced in this episode, you can still get the recording at MorningTimeforMoms.com.

Angelina sets the stage for this discussion by orienting us to the context for the essay by Tolkien as a critique of what is considered a fairy story. She points out the difference between cautionary tales like those by Charles Perrault and the German folk and fairy tales collected by the Grimm Brothers. Our hosts highlight Tolkien's definition of true fairy stories, ones that take place in the "perilous realm" and involve a journey element. He critiques Andrew Lang as including many stories as fairy tale that are not truly fairy stories. They also discuss topics from the essay including sub-creation, magic and spells, suspension of disbelief, and children's responses to fairy stories.

Commonplace Quotes:

One should forgive one's enemies, but only after they are hanged.

Heinrich Heine

The German folk soul can again express itself. These flames do not only illuminate the final end of the old era. They also light up the new. Never before have the young men had so good a right to clean up the debris of the past. If the old men do not understand what is going on, let them grasp that we young men have gone and done it. The old goes up in flames. The new shall be fashioned from the flame of our hearts.

Joseph Goebbles

Human beings are not human doings.

Nigel Goodwin Into My Heart an Air That Kills

by A. E. Houseman

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those far remembered hills,
What spires, what towns are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot go again.

Book List:

When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura

Roger Lancelyn Green

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer

The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

Phantastes by George MacDonald

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast today we are pleased to bring you a special episode focusing on the importance of a good translation when reading works originally written in other languages. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are joined for this conversation by Dr. Anne Phillips, who has a BA in Latin and Greek and a Doctorate in Classical Studies and teaches Latin at the House of Humane Letters. They start out with the question of basic principles for determining what makes a good translation. Angelina brings up C. S. Lewis' review of Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey and the principles he sets forth. Anne shares her experience with reading classic works in their original languages and how much richer and more enjoyable it is for her. Another topic they cover is the challenge of translating poetry.

Angelina, Thomas, and Anne both share some of their least liked translations of classical Greek and Latin works, as well as some recommendations for better translations. They also talk about finding good translations of Old English and Middle English works.

Thomas is also teaching a webinar along with Michael Williams on the modern poets W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot on September 28th. You can now register at House of Humane Letters.

Commonplace Quotes:

He had the successful portrait painters essential gift and saw men, with few exceptions, as they liked to see themselves.

C. V. Wedgwood

In my opinion value-judgements in literature should not be hurried. It does a student little good to be told that A is better than B, especially if he prefers B at the time. He has to feel values for himself, and should follow his individual rhythm in doing  so. In the meantime, he can read almost anything in any order, just as he can eat mixtures of food that would have his elders reaching for the baking soda. A sensible teaching or librarian can soon learn how to give guidance to a youth's reading that allows for undeveloped taste and still doesn't turn him into a gourmet or a dyspeptic before his time.

Northrop Frye

A good translation is one that lets Homer sing.

Thomas Banks

There is a sense in which everything is untranslatable. A man may write what is as good or even better than the original, but from the nature of the case it cannot be precisely the same thing. There are even moments when one feels it is something of a desecration to translate at all, but that is surely over-scrupulous, a weakness which, if all had yielded to it, would certainly have left the world poorer.

Walter Headlam Ode 5, Book 1: To Pyrrha

by Horace, trans. by John Milton

What slender youth, bedew'd with liquid odors, Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave, Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou In wreaths thy golden hair, Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he Of faith and changed gods complain, and seas Rough with black winds, and storms Unwonted shall admire! Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold, Who, always vacant, always amiable Hopes thee, of flattering gales Unmindful. Hapless they To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me, in my vow'd Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea. Books Mentioned:

Velvet Studies by C. V. Wedgwood

The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

The Children's Homer by Padraic Colum

The Odyssey trans. by Richmond Lattimore

The Iliad trans. by Richmond Lattimore

The Aeneid trans. by Sarah Ruden

A. E. Stallings

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Beowulf trans. by Burton Raffel

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight trans. by Burton Raffel

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, trans. by Burton Raffel

The Landmark Heroditus trans. by Andrea L. Purvis

The Landmark Thucydides trans. by Richard Crawley

The Landmark Xenophon trans. by John Marincola

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we wrap up our discussion of The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas dive right in to the last section and share their various thoughts on finishing this book. Angelina and Thomas talk about some of Chesterton's thoughts on Impressionism in the arts. Cindy and Thomas make some connections with the old rhyme about "Monday's Child." They talk about more of the allegorical elements that are clearly spelled out by Chesterton, as well as many other relations they make to other stories, including the one great story.

Be sure to join us next week when we have a special episode about why translation matters with Dr. Anne Phillips!

Angelina is teaching a class on How to Read Beowulf August 28-September 1, 2023. Get in on this mini-class at House of Humane Letters.

Thomas is also teaching a webinar along with Michael Williams on the modern poets W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot on September 28th. You can now register at House of Humane Letters.

Commonplace Quotes:

Almost everywhere and almost invariably the man who has sought a cryptogram in a great masterpiece has been highly exhilarated, logically justified, morally excited, and entirely wrong.

But it is all detail; and detail by itself means madness. The very definition of a lunatic is a man who has taken details out of their real atmosphere.

The truth is, I fear, that madness has a great advantage over sanity. Sanity is always careless. Madness is always careful.

G. K. Chesterton, from The Soul of Wit

Looking for an author's life in his books is vulgar anyhow, and can be most misleading.

L. P. Hartley, from A Perfect Woman

Perhaps it is not worthwhile to try to kill heresies which so rapidly kill themselves, and the cult of suicide committed suicide some time ago. But it should not wish it supposed as some think I have supposed, that in resisting the heresy of pessimism, I have implied the equally morbid and diseased insanity of optimism. I was not then considering whether anything is really evil but whether is really evil, and in relation to the latter nightmare, it does still seem to me relevant to say that nightmares are not true and that in them even the faces of friends may appear as the faces of fiends. I tried to turn this notion of resistance to a nightmare into a topsy-turvy tale about a man who fancied himself alone among enemies and found that each of the enemies was, in fact, on his own side and in his own solitude.

G. K. Chesterton, on The Man Who Was Thursday The End of the World

by Dana Gioia

"We're going," they said, "to the end of the world." So they stopped the car where the river curled, And we scrambled down beneath the bridge On the gravel track of a narrow ridge. We tramped for miles on a wooded walk Where dog-hobble grew on its twisted stalk. Then we stopped to rest on the pine-needle floor While two ospreys watched from an oak by the shore. We came to a bend, where the river grew wide And green mountains rose on the opposite side. My guides moved back. I stood alone, As the current streaked over smooth flat stone. Shelf by stone shelf the river fell. The white water goosetailed with eddying swell. Faster and louder the current dropped Till it reached a cliff, and the trail stopped. I stood at the edge where the mist ascended, My journey done where the world ended. I looked downstream. There was nothing but sky, The sound of the water, and the water's reply.

"The End of the World" from Interrogations at Noon. Copyright © 2001 by Dana Gioia. Reprinted for educational purposes only.

Books Mentioned:

W. Summerset Maugham

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

The Human Beast by Emile Zola

Theodore Dreiser

Jack London

On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters by Hilaire Belloc

Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On the Literary Life podcast this week Angelina, Cindy and Thomas continue their series on G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Before diving into the plot of these chapters, our hosts discuss the similarities and differences between Chesterton and Kafka's works of fiction. Thomas gives some historical context on anarchy as well as assassinations in the time period of this book. Angelina points out the Dante-esque language in this section, as well as the continuing themes of chivalry. Cindy highlights the character of Sunday and how he looms large, quite literally, over everyone's imaginations in the story. Some other thoughts our hosts discuss include modernity's mindset as it relates to the atmosphere of this story, the idea of the underdog fighting against all odds, and the humorous moments that break some of the tension. Be sure to come back next week when we wrap up our series on The Man Who Was Thursday.

If you missed our 2023 Back to School Conference when it was live, you can still go back and view the recordings when you purchase access to the conference at MorningTimeforMom.com.

Angelina is teaching a class on How to Read Beowulf at the end of August 2023. Get in on this mini-class at House of Humane Letters.

Thomas is also teaching a webinar along with Michael Williams on the modern poets W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot on September 28th. You can now register at House of Humane Letters.

Commonplace Quotes:

It's important, too, that everything that has a story, such as a myth, should be read or listened to purely as a story. Many people grow up without really understanding the difference between imaginative and discursive writing. On the rare occasions when they encounter poems or even pictures, they treat them exactly as though they were intended to be pieces of more or less disguised information. Their questions are all based on this assumption: "What is he trying to get across?" "What am I supposed to get out of it?" "Why doesn't someone explain it to me?" "Why couldn't he have written it in a different way so that I could understand him?" The art of listening to story is a basic training for the imagination.

Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

The biographer is there to explain rather than to judge. To get a clear view of a man we do not need to be told if his actions were good…but how and why he came to do them.

Lord David Cecil, "Modern Biography"

Or read again The Man Who Was Thursday. Compare it with another good writer, Kafka. Is the difference simply that the one is 'dated' and the other contemporary? Or is it rather that while both give a powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each one of us encounters in his (apparently) single-handed struggle with the universe, Chesterton, attributing to the universe a more complicated disguise, and admitting the exhilaration as well as the terror of the struggle, has got in rather more, is more balanced: in that sense, more classical, more permanent?

C. S. Lewis, "Period Criticism" Selection from Paradise Lost, Book 1

by John Milton

Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd

That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,

His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd

In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n,

And shook his throne.   What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield:

And what is else not to be overcome?

Books Mentioned:

The Oxford Book of Christian Verse ed. by Lord David Cecil

On Stories by C. S. Lewis

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Castle by Franz Kafka

Day of the Assassins by Michael Burleigh

The Defendant by G. K. Chesterton

The Song of Roland trans. by Dorothy L. Sayers

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

King Lear by William Shakespeare

The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome back to the Literary Life podcast this week and our new series on G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas open with their commonplace quotes, as usual, then proceed to setting up the background for this book and the man Chesterton himself. Thomas also shares Chesterton's poem to E. C. Bentley that opens this book and gives a brief explication of the poem. Following this, our hosts recap each chapter in the first section. Angelina makes several connections to Paradise Lost in this section, as well as pointing out the romantic and chivalric quest elements in the story. Cindy highlights the fact that we also have the fair maiden character here. Join us again next week when we will cover chapters 5-10 as events become even more strange.

If you missed our 2023 Back to School Conference when it was live, you can still go back and view the recordings when you purchase access to the conference at MorningTimeforMom.com.

Angelina is teaching a class on How to Read Beowulf at the end of August 2023. Get in on this mini-class at House of Humane Letters.

Thomas is also teaching a webinar along with Michael Williams on the modern poets W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot on September 28th. You can now register at House of Humane Letters.

Commonplace Quotes:

Had her mother been somebody else's mother she would perhaps have admired her unreservedly.

L. P. Hartley, A Perfect Woman

When a child is reading, he should not be teased with questions as to the meaning of what he has read, the signification of this word or that; what is annoying to older people is equally annoying to children.

Charlotte Mason

And there is…Mooreeffoc, or Chestertonian Fantasy. Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written up in every town in this land. It is Coffeeroom, view from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle.

J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories" GKC

by Walter de la Mare

Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way,

Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;

The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,

Pity and innocence his heart at rest.

Books Mentioned:

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

John Le Carre

Graham Greene

Oscar Wilde

Franz Kafka

John Buchan

Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde

Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast we have a fun "Best of" Series episode for you from our collection of "In Search of the Austen Adaptation" podcasts! On this episode our hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are joined by Atlee Northmore, and together they are debating which film version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the best. Atlee shares some of the history of the Pride and Prejudice adaptations that were made for TV and film. Angelina highlights different ideas of what makes a good film adaptation of a book. Cindy brings up the importance of the casting, and Angelina talks about why she still feels like no film has gotten Mr. Darcy right. She also talks about the difficulty of embodying the virtues that Jane Austen gives her characters. Our hosts critique each major movies from over the decades, sharing what they like and dislike about each one.

Click here to download the PDF Atlee created for all the Pride and Prejudice film adaptations.

Commonplace Quotes:

If we cannot get the better of life, at any rate, we can be so free as to laugh at it.

Desmond MacCarthy

Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader's mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial.

Virginia Woolf

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

G. K. Chesterton

Never judge a book by its movie.

Anonymous False Though She Be

by William Congreve

FALSE though she be to me and love, I'll ne'er pursue revenge; For still the charmer I approve, Though I deplore her change. In hours of bliss we oft have met: They could not always last; And though the present I regret, I'm grateful for the past. Book List:

The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On today's "Best of The Literary Life" episode, Angelina and Cindy interview Caitlin Bruce Beauchamp. In addition to being an AmblesideOnline homeschool graduate and a lover of the humanities, Caitlin is a busy wife and a mother of young children. In their conversation, Angelina, Cindy and Caitlin dive into the deep end from the start, discussing the purpose of beauty. They talk about Caitlin's early reading life and how she came to love books. She shares how she had to learn some humility in her reading life as an adult.

Angelina asks Caitlin how she finds the time to keep up her reading life amidst the responsibilities of mothering. Cindy and Caitlin talk about the importance of feeding your mind with other people's ideas instead of taking the road to self-pity. The ladies discuss the timing of reading certain books to children and the great joy of watching children blossom as they listen to the right kinds of stories. Caitlin shares some of the books she reads to get out of a slump, as well as some other favorites and current reads.

Commonplace Quotes:

In his memoir Suprised by Joy Lewis described his ideal daily routine to be reading and writing from nine until one and again from five until seven, with breaks for meals, walking, or tea-time. Apart from those six hours of study every day, he also enjoyed light reading over meals or in the evening hours. All in all, Lewis' preferred schedule seemed to include seven or eight hours of reading per day!

David C. Downing and Michael G. Maudlin, in the preface to The Reading Life

To be seeking always after the useful does not become free and exalted souls.

Aristotle

The years to come – this is a promise –

will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought

where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,

than this deepest affinity between your eyes and the world.

The flock thickens

over the roiling, salt brightness. Listen,

maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world

in the clasp of attention, isn't the perfect prayer,

but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,

is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,

but of pure submission. Tell me, what else

could beauty be for? And now the tide

is at its very crown,

the white birds sprinkle down,

gathering up the loose silver, rising

as if weightless. It isn't instruction, or a parable.

It isn't for any vanity or ambition

except for the one aloud, to stay alive.

It's only a nimble frolic

over the waves. And you find, for hours,

you cannot even remember the questions

that weigh so in your mind.

Mary Oliver, selection from "Terns" In the Bleak Midwinter

by Christina Rossetti

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Book List:

The Reading Life by C. S. Lewis

Poetics by Aristotle

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Happy Hollisters by Jerry West

Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace

Stories from The Faerie Queen by Jeanie Lang

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Silence by Shusako Endo

Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Middlemarch by George Eliot (the Audible version read by Juliet Stevenson)

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

Light in August by William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane

Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane

Elizabeth Goudge

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas sit down for a chat with twin sisters Addison and Ella Hornstra. Together they have been given a literary home education, and this fall they will continue that journey at New College Franklin. Angelina introduces the Hornstra ladies and she and Thomas tell a little bit about having them as students. Cindy also shares how she met the Hornstra family. Then they dig into the girls' reading journeys from the beginning of their learning to read all the way to their current reading lives. Some of the topics that come up in this conversation are: reading content beyond your understanding, owning your reading life, the problem with using the wrong approach to literature, the dangers of modern education for uniquely gifted students, the power of just reading well, and so much more.

Come explore, with seasoned moms, the things that stand the test of time in our homeschools at this year's Literary Life Back to School Online Conference. In addition to our hosts, Donna-Jean Breckenridge and a panel of home educating parents and their adult children, will be bringing encouragement and insight to help you on your homeschool journey. This year's conference will be live online on August 2-5, with recordings available for those who cannot join live.

Commonplace Quotes:

It is bad to spend too many hours over either a microscope or telescope or in gazing fixedly at some one distance range. The eyes need change of focus, and so does the imagination. There has been in modern Europe a shocking riot in misuse of the imagination. The remedy is to learn to use it. But the same kind of people who would like to bandage a child's eyes lest it should learn to squint like to bandage the imagination lest it should wear itself out by squinting.

Mary Everest Boole

Away from the immense, cloistered in our own concepts, we may scorn and revile everything. But standing between earth and sky, we are silenced by the sight.

Abraham Heschel

In nature, the bird who gets up earliest catches the most worms, but in book collecting, the prizes fall to birds who know worms when they see them.

Michael Sadlier

The madman, of all men, lives most in a world of his own.

E. J. Oliver

Symbols are the nature speech of the soul, a language older and more universal than words.

Edmund Spenser Sonnet XIX: On His Blindness

by John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait." Books Mentioned:

The Philosophy and Fun of Algebra by Mary Everest Boole

Thunder in the Soul by Abraham Heschel

A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes

Coventry Patmore by E. J. Oliver

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

Beatrix Potter

Mistmantle Chronicles by M. I. McAllister

Redwall Series by Brian Jacques

Poppy Series by Avi

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White

Ralph Mouse Series by Beverley Cleary

The Cat of Bubastes by G. A. Henty

In Freedom's Cause by G. A. Henty

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Gene Stratton Porter

The Chronicles of Prydain Series by Lloyd Alexander

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Phantastes by George MacDonald

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome to The Literary Life Podcast and a new series featuring the book The Age of Innocence. Our hosts, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks introduce us to American Gilded Age author, Edith Wharton, the "First Lady of American Letters." They also share their own experiences with reading Wharton's stories, novels, and letters, as well as some background on the time period and cultural context in which she was writing. In discussing the first several chapters of this book, Angelina and Thomas point out small details and subtleties that Wharton uses to give us hints about the characters and situations she presents.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

To view the full show notes for this episode, including book links, commonplace quotes, and today's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/289. 

Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and the final episode in our series on Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped. This week, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas open with a discussion of the difference between Jacobites and Whigs and how that contrast is played out in this story. Angelina and Cindy compare the characters of David Balfour and Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island and how they display honor. Angelina addresses moralizing stories versus making a moral observation of a story. Thomas gives a summary of the last several chapters of Kidnapped and makes some comment on the lawyer Rankeillor. They highlight more of the epic romance elements found in this book, as well.

Check out our Upcoming Events page to see the schedule for the rest of the summer and into fall.

Join us for the 5th Annual Back to School Conference with your hosts, along with special guest speaker Donna-Jean Breckenridge this August 2-5, 2023. Learn more and register at morningtimeformoms.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

But in these days we are forced even against our will to judge everything, even plays, morally. A crowd of artists and aesthetes have declared in this age that art is immoral; but the fact plainly and obviously remains that there never was a time in the history of the world when art was so moral. If there be a fault in the popular criticism of the day, it is that it is far too much so.

G. K. Chesterton, The Soul of Wit

Man is by nature so dissatisfied an animal that he must always be acclaiming something that he fondly believes to be new.

Charles Petrie, The Four Georges

But though the thing is to be criticised (and admired) strictly as an adventure story, there are sidelights of interest about it considered as a historical novel. It carries on a rather curiously balanced critical attitude, partly inherited from the attitude of Sir Walter Scott, the paradox of being intellectually on the side of the Whigs and morally on the side of the Jacobites.

G. K. Chesterton, Robert Louis Stevenson Scotland's Winter

by Edwin Muir

Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
The water at the mill
Sounds more hoarse and dull.
The miller's daughter walking by
With frozen fingers soldered to her basket
Seems to be knocking 
Upon a hundred leagues of floor
With her light heels, and mocking
Percy and Douglas dead,
And Bruce on his burial bed,
Where he lies white as may
With wars and leprosy,
And all the kings before
This land was kingless,
And all the singers before
This land was songless,
This land that with its dead and living waits the Judgement Day.
But they, the powerless dead,
Listening can hear no more
Than a hard tapping on the floor
A little overhead
Of common heels that do not know
Whence they come or where they go
And are content
With their poor frozen life and shallow banishment.

Books Mentioned:

The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

David Balfour/Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy continue their discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, covering chapters 7-18. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Thomas opens the conversation with a brief synopsis of chapter 7. Angelina notes the increase in danger and violence in this section of the book, and our hosts talk about the roguish character of Alan Breck. They make many comparisons between Kidnapped and Treasure Island and highlight the other-world atmosphere Stevenson creates while staying in the real world. Cindy mentions some of the conflict between the Campbells and MacDonalds, and Thomas fleshes out a little more of this aspect of Scottish history.

Join us for the 5th Annual Back to School Conference with your hosts, along with special guest speaker Donna-Jean Breckenridge this August 2-5, 2023. Learn more and register at morningtimeformoms.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

Mr. Roger Lancelyn Green, writing in English not long ago, remarked that the reading of Rider Haggard had been to many a sort of religious experience. To some people this will have seemed simply grotesque. I myself would strongly disagree with it if 'religious' is taken to mean 'Christian.' And even if we take it in a sub-Christian sense, it would have been safer to say that such people had first met in Haggard's romances elements which they would meet again in religious experience if they ever came to have any. But I think Mr. Green is very much nearer the mark than those who assume that no one has ever read the romances except in order to be thrilled by hair-breadth escapes. If he had said simply that something which the educated receive from poetry can reach the masses through stories of adventure, and almost in no other way, then I think he would have been right.

C. S. Lewis

The conception which unites the whole varied work of Stevenson was that romance, or the vision of the possibilities of things, was far more important than mere occurrences: that one was the soul of our life, the other the body, and that the soul was the precious thing.

G. K. Chesterton, from Varied Types

What do you usually do when you are shut up in a secret room, with no chance of getting out for hours? As for me, I always say poetry to myself. It is one of the uses of poetry–one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances of that kind, or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night. You will find poetry most useful for this purpose. So learn plenty of it, and be sure it is the best kind, because this is most useful as well as most agreeable.

E. Nesbit, from The House of Arden A Selection from Rob Roy's Grave

by William Wordsworth

Thou, although with some wild thoughts
Wild Chieftain of a savage Clan!
Hadst this to boast of; thou didst love
The liberty of man.

And, had it been thy lot to live
With us who now behold the light,
Thou would'st have nobly stirred thyself,
And battled for the Right.

For thou wert still the poor man's stay,
The poor man's heart, the poor man's hand;
And all the oppressed, who wanted strength,
Had thine at their command.

Books Mentioned:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome back to a new read along series on The Literary Life Podcast! This week Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy will begin their discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, covering chapters 1-6, as well as giving some background information on the beloved author and the historical setting of this book. Angelina talks about the life of R. L. Stevenson, and Thomas sets the historical stage for the story. We also get a glimpse into the form of the novel as a romance from some clues Stevenson gives at the outset. Cindy highlights the foreboding in the song of a woman David Balfour passes on the road. They look more closely at David's plight, the role of the usurping uncle, and Stevenson's excellent storytelling.

Come back next week to get in on the discussion of chapters 7-18.

You are not too late to participate in Thomas' mini-class on G. K. Chesterton taking place live or later from June 26th through July 7th. Register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com today!

Commonplace Quotes:

Perhaps it is a mistake to suppose that metaphors can be invented. The real ones, those that formulate intimate connections between one image and another, have always existed; those we can invent are the false ones, which are not worth inventing.

Jorge Luis Borges, An Essay on Hawthorne

The tragedy of King Lear, in some of its elements perhaps the very greatest of all the Shakespearean tragedies, is relatively seldom played. It is even possible to have a dark suspicion that it is not universally read; with the usual deplorable result, that it is universally quoted. Perhaps nothing has done so much to weaken the greatest of English achievements, and to leave it open to facile revolt or fatigued reaction, than the abominable habit of quoting Shakespeare without reading Shakespeare.

G. K. Chesterton, from and introduction to The Spice of Life

Truth is a stern mistress, and when one hath once started off with her one must follow on after the jade, though she lead in flat defiance of all the rules and conditions which would fain turn that tangled wilderness the world into the trim Dutch garden of the story-tellers.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke Epitaph on a Jacobite

by Thomas Macaulay

To my true king I offered free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him, I threw lands, honours, wealth, away.
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languished in a foreign clime,
Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting place I asked, an early grave.
Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

Books Mentioned:

The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton

Other Inquisitions: 1937-1952 by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. by Ruth L. C. Simms

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, ed. by Dale Ahlquist

The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle

George MacDonald

Andrew Lang

Sir Walter Scott

C. S. Lewis

Alfred de Vigny

Alessandro Manzoni

Alexandre Dumas

The Sacketts Series by Louis L'Amour

Roger Lancelyn Greene

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas wrap up their discussion of C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce with the final chapters 11-14. Cindy and Angelina talk about the dangers of familial love becoming the end-all-be-all, as well as Lewis' exploration of Dante's idea of sin. They go in depth with this exploration of sin as a distortion of something that might naturally seem good and the way Lewis pairs people to demonstrate that in these chapters. Angelina talks about the medieval view of ordered man versus the disordered man and how that relates to the man with the horse. They wrap up with the importance of stories in depicting truth in a veiled way, instead of only theological argument and discourse, in helping us live out our faith in a properly ordered way.

Until next time, check out our Upcoming Events page to view our schedule and see what we will be reading together over the next few months!

Commonplace Quotes:

We chose from the library shelves any book of Tales for the Young, and took much pleasure in prophesying the events. We could rely on Providence to punish the naughty and bring to notice the heroism of the good, and generally grant an early death to both. Why was there a bull in a field? To gore the disobedient. Why did cholera break out? To kill the child who went down a forbidden street. The names told us much: Tom, Sam, or Jack were predestined to evil, while a Frank could do nothing but good. Henry was a bit uncertain: he might lead his little sister into that field with bravado, or he might attack the bull to save her life at the cost of his own. We had bettings of gooseberries on such points.

M. V. Hughes

Exaggeration is one of art's great devices.

J. B. Priestley

Hell is inaccurate.

Charles Williams There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods

by Lord Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Book List:

A London Child of the Seventies by M. V. Hughes

Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc

An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley

The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Paradise Lost by John Milton

A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis

Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins

The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis

A Woman of the Pharisees by François Mauriac

Perelandra by C. S. Lewis

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks discuss chapters 7-10 of C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Angelina points out the way in which Lewis uses the "newcomer" character to explain the world he has created. They discuss the various personalities Lewis presents who choose not to take the journey to heaven, sharing how these sketches often hit a little too close to home.

They also talk about the influence of George MacDonald on Lewis and his role in this story. Thomas helps us make some connections with Lewis and Virgil, as well as explaining some of the references made by MacDonald's character. Cindy points out how our loves can be entryways into either heaven or hell. Join us again next week as we finish up our discussion of The Great Divorce together!

There is still time to sign up for Thomas' upcoming mini-class on G. K. Chesterton taking place live from June 26th through July 7th. Register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com today!

Commonplace Quotes:

Meanwhile, you will write an essay on self-indulgence. There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit.

Evelyn Waugh

Shame belongs, rather, to the bookish recluse who knows not how to apply his reading to the good of his fellows or to manifest its fruit to the eyes of all.

Cicero

It is simply my lifelong experience—that men are more likely to hand over to others what they ought to do themselves, and women more likely to do themselves what others wish they would leave alone. Hence both sexes must be told "Mind your own business," but in two different senses!

C. S. Lewis To a Skylark

by William Wordsworth

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

Book List:

Letters to an American Lady by C. S. Lewis

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Pro Archia Poeta by Cicero

Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

George MacDonald

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Psychomachia by Prudentius

Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor

Satires of Circumstance by Thomas Hardy

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks discuss chapters 2-6 of C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Angelina reminds us as we begin this exploration of Lewis' narrative not to read too much theology into the details of this dreamlike world he creates. Cindy points out the similarities between these chapters and his descriptions at the end of The Last Battle. Thomas highlights the passage on Napoleon from chapter 2, showing what Lewis envisioned hell to be like. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas talks about the description of the land near heaven, the various characters' responses, as well as the weight of the actual environment and Lewis' picture of those who people it.

Be sure to check out Thomas' upcoming mini-class on G. K. Chesterton taking place live from June 26th through July 7th. Register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com today!

Commonplace Quotes:

We long for paradise because we were created for paradise. We were created to live in an environment that cooperates with, not fights against, our desires. We were created for Eden, a place we've never been, and so we desire a perfect life full of healthy relationships.

Julie Sparkman

Anyone who puts himself forward to be elected to a position of political power is almost bound to be socially or emotionally insecure, or criminally motivated, or mad.

Auberon Waugh

"The secret is not to dream," she whispered. "The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and now I am real. I know where I come from and where I'm going. You cannot fool me anymore. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine."

Terry Pratchett The Stricken Deer

by William Cowper

I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
Long since; with many an arrow deep infixt
My panting side was charg'd, when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by one who had himself
Been hurt by th' archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.
With gentle force soliciting the darts,
He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live.
Since then, with few associates, in remote
And silent woods I wander, far from those
My former partners of the peopled scene;
With few associates, and not wishing more.
Here much I ruminate, as much I may,
With other views of men and manners now
Than once, and others of a life to come.
I see that all are wand'rers, gone astray
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chace of fancied happiness, still wooed
And never won. Dream after dream ensues,
And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed; rings the world
With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,
And add two-thirds of the remainder half,
And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay
As if created only like the fly
That spreads his motley wings in th' eye of noon
To sport their season and be seen no more.

Book List:

Unhitching from the Crazy Train by Julie Sparkman

Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

"Unspoken Sermons: The Last Farthing" by George MacDonald

The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis

Tramp for the Lord by Corrie Ten Boom

Paradise Lost by John Milton

The Brook Kerith by George Moore

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast today, Cindy Rollins, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks begin their series on The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. Today you are going to get a crash-course in Medievalism through Lewis' story, and we hope you will enjoy this book as much as our hosts do. Angelina kicks off the discussion even while sharing her commonplace quote, sharing some information about the epigraph and front matter. She gives us some historical context, both for where this books comes in Lewis' own timeline, as well as some ideas of the journey of the soul and medieval dream literature.

Thomas gives some background on Prudentius and his allegorical work The Psychomachia. Angelina goes into some comparisons between The Great Divorce and Dante's Divine Comedy. Thomas talks about Nathanial Hawthorne's short story The Celestial Railroad as a satire of Pilgrim's Progress. Also, if you haven't read and listened to E. M. Forster's Celestial Omnibus, see Episode 17. As they get into discussing the Preface, Thomas give us some information on William Blake. We will be back next week with a discussion on Chapters 2-6.

Be sure to check out Thomas' upcoming mini-class on G. K. Chesterton taking place live from June 26th through July 7th. Register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com today!

Commonplace Quotes:

We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them. Man cannot discover them by his own powers and if he sets out to seek for them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will be unable to discern the falsity.

Simone Weil, from "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"

A poet is not a man who says "look at me", but rather a man who points at something and says "look at that."

C. S. Lewis

No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it–no plan to retain this of that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.

George MacDonald, from "Unspoken Sermons: The Last Farthing" MCMXIV

by Philip Larkin

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day–

And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word–the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

Book List:

The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Divine Comedy by Dante

Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

The Holy War by John Bunyan

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason

A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis

The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

In this conversation, Angelina and Cindy talk all things related to the detective novel. Why do we love detective fiction so much? What are the qualities of a good detective novel? What is the history of detective fiction, and how did World War I bring about the Golden Age of the genre? Angelina and Cindy answer all these questions and more. Be sure to scroll down for links to all the books and authors mentioned in this episode! 

Commonplace Quotes:

Those who read poetry to improve their minds will never improve their minds by reading poetry, for the true enjoyments must be spontaneous and compulsive and look to no remoter end. The Muses will submit to no marriage of convenience.

C. S. Lewis

One of these days I shall write a book in which two men are seen to walk down a cul de sac, and there is a shot, and one man is found murdered, and the other runs away with a gun in his hand, and after twenty chapters stinking with red herrings, it turns out that the man with the gun did it after all.

Dorothy L. Sayers The Listeners

by Walter De La Mare

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveler,   
   Knocking on the moonlit door; 
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   
   Of the forest's ferny floor: 
And a bird flew up out of the turret,   
   Above the Traveler's head: 
And he smote upon the door again a second time;   
   'Is there anybody there?' he said. 
But no one descended to the Traveler;   
   No head from the leaf-fringed sill 
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   
   Where he stood perplexed and still. 
But only a host of phantom listeners   
   That dwelt in the lone house then 
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   
   To that voice from the world of men: 
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,   
   That goes down to the empty hall, 
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken   
   By the lonely Traveler's call. 
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,   
   Their stillness answering his cry, 
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,   
   'Neath the starred and leafy sky; 
For he suddenly smote on the door, even   
   Louder, and lifted his head:— 
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,   
   That I kept my word,' he said. 
Never the least stir made the listeners,   
   Though every word he spake 
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house   
   From the one man left awake: 
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,   
   And the sound of iron on stone, 
And how the silence surged softly backward,   
   When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Book List:

The World's Last Night by C.S. Lewis 

The Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise, and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers 

Nancy Drew #45: The Spider Sapphire Mystery by Carolyn Keene 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald Knox

Agatha Christie 

Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe 

The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The Albert Campion Series by Margery Allingham

The Roderick Alleyn Series by Ngaio Marsh

The Flavia de Luce Series by Allen Bradley

The Inspector Appleby Mystery Series by Michael Innes 

The Daughter of Time and Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey 

Murder Fantastical by Patricia Moyes

The Cormoran Strike Series by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Alexander McCall Smith

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Series by Laurie King

Chief Inspector Gamache Series by Louise Penny 

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael Series by Ellis Peters

The Inspector Adam Dalgliesh Series by P.D. James 

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks, we have a very special episode for you. Our hosts are joined by guests Dan Bunting and Anthony Dodgers, both of whom are pastors, for a discussion on why pastors should read fiction books. Dan is also host of the the Reading the Psalms podcast. Angelina starts off the conversation by asking why these men would prioritize taking literature classes. Anthony shares about his own literary life journey and how rediscovering literature has helped him personally. Dan talks about the book club that he and a couple of his pastor friends have and what kinds of books they read together. They discuss many other deep topics and crucial questions that we hope will be encouraging and thought-provoking to everyone who listens to and shares this episode.

If you want to get the replays of the 2022 Back to School Conference, "Education: Myths and Legends" with special guest speakers Lynn Bruce and Caitlin Beauchamp, along with our hosts Cindy Rollins, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, you can learn more at Morning Time for Moms.

Commonplace Quotes:

If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.

C. S. Lewis, from "Our English Syllabus"

How am I a hog and me both?

Flannery O'Connor

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.

Freidrich Schiller

Whoever wants to become a Christian, must first become a poet.

St. Porphyrios of Kafsokalivia

It is hard to have patience with those Jeremiahs, in press or pulpit, who warn us that we are "relapsing into paganism". It might be rather fun if we were. It would be pleasant to see some future Prime Minister trying to kill a large and lively milk-white bull in Westminster Hall. But we shan't. What lurks behind such idle prophecies, if they are anything but careless language, is the false idea that the historical process allows mere reversal; that Europe can come out of Christianity "by the same door as in she went", and find herself back where she was. It is not what happens. A post-Christian man is not a Pagan; you might as well think that a married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. The post-Christian is cut off from the Christian past, and therefore doubly from the Pagan past.

C. S. Lewis, from "De Descriptione Temporum" A Boy in Church

by Robert Graves

'Gabble-gabble, . . . brethren, . . . gabble-gabble!' My window frames forest and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation. Outside it blows wetter and wetter, The tossing trees never stay still. I shift my elbows to catch better The full round sweep of heathered hill. The tortured copse bends to and fro In silence like a shadow-show. The parson's voice runs like a river Over smooth rocks, I like this church: The pews are staid, they never shiver, They never bend or sway or lurch. 'Prayer,' says the kind voice, 'is a chain That draws down Grace from Heaven again.' I add the hymns up, over and over, Until there's not the least mistake. Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there's a plover! It's gone!) Who's that Saint by the lake? The red light from his mantle passes Across the broad memorial brasses. It's pleasant here for dreams and thinking, Lolling and letting reason nod, With ugly serious people linking Sad prayers to a forgiving God . . . . But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying With furious zeal like madmen praying. Book List:

Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh

Asterix Comics by René Goscinny

Tin Tin by Herge

Sigrid Undset

Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag

Roald Dahl

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

John Donne

George Herbert

The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

Graham Greene

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse edited by Donald Davie

Waiting on the Word by Malcolm Guite

Word in the Wilderness by Malcolm Guite

Neil Gaiman

Bill Bryson

Ursula Le Guin

Terry Pratchett

Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are joined by their podcast producer Kiel Lemon to chat about her own literary life. Kiel and her husband, along with their two children, live in West Virginia where they homeschool and enjoy the outdoors together whenever they can. After sharing commonplace quotes and how Angelina and Cindy met Kiel, they dig in to her background in reading. They also talk at some length about making use of audio books and speak to the concern parents have about audio versus physical books.

Kiel gives a shout out to her high school English teacher for giving her a good foundation in the classics and poetry. She also shares some of her early attempts to give herself a literary education in early adulthood, and Angelina asks Kiel why she was so drawn to old books. They also discuss the challenges of a dry time she went through when she wasn't reading much at all and how to get out of a reading slump. Some other topics they touch on are disciplined versus whimsical reading, keeping multiple books at the same time, going through the AmblesideOnline curriculum with children, and more.

To find out more about Thomas' summer class on G. K. Chesterton and sign up for that, go to houseofhumaneletters.com. To register for Cindy's summer discipleship session, visit morningtimeformoms.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?…Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power?

Annie Dillard, from The Abundance: Narrative Essays New and Old

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

Jane Austen

A man living at the bottom of a well will think the sky is small.

Han Yu

Recent psychological research, together with a number of other contributory factors, has influenced us to emphasise–possibly to over-emphasise–the importance of the unconscious in determining our actions and opinions. Our confidence in such faculties as will and judgement has been undermined, and in collapsing has taken with it a good deal of our interest in ourselves as responsible individuals.

Dorothy L. Sayers, from Introductory Papers on Dante The Land of Story-Books

by Robert Louis Stevenson

At evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter's camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

So when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books.

Books Mentioned:

An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

The Real Mother Goose by Blanche Fisher Wright

The Odyssey by Homer

Howards End by E. M. Forster

Cormoran Strike Series by Robert Galbraith

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge

Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis

"Kate Crackernuts" retold by Joseph Jacobs

Beowulf trans. by Burton Raffell

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Bess Streeter Aldrich

Gene Stratton-Porter

Poems That Touch the Heart ed. by A. L. Alexander

Black Plumes by Margery Allingham

To the Far Blue Mountains by Louis L'Amour

The Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoire by Louis L'Amour

Redwall Series by Brian Jacques

Continuing the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Kidnapped by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On today's episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas will be talking about the milestones of a reader's literary life. This episode developed in response to the many questions they've received over the years about challenges people face throughout their reading lives. They begin by thinking back to childhood and recalling the first time they each chose a book for themselves and fell in love with the story, as well as the feeling of getting their first library cards as children. Thomas asks Angelina when was the first time she found herself arguing with a book, and he answers the same question himself.

Other milestones they discuss are changing your mind about a book on a re-read, learning to see past the imperfections of a book to see the underlying truth, distinguishing the work of art from your subjective reading experience, as well as separating the life of the author from the work of literature. They also answer other common concerns such as "Help! I dislike all the characters in this book!"

Be sure to come back next week as we open our next series on Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence in which we will be covering chapters 1-8.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/288. 

Welcom back to The Literary Life Podcast and our discussion of P. G. Wodehouse's Code of the Woosters. This week Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy finish up the book, covering chapters 10-14. After sharing their commonplace quotes, they start the chat by talking about what exactly the "Code of the Woosters" is for Bertie. Cindy brings up Wodehouse' good experience in boarding school and how that comes out in his stories. Angelina reminds us again of the Roman comic structure that sets the form for this type of story. Thomas highlights some connections between Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde, and P. G. Wodehouse. They also enjoy recounting the moments when Bertie thinks of himself of a detective and compares himself to Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, et al.

Find annotations for the slang, quotes, etc., for The Code of the Woosters here.

To find out more about Thomas' summer class on G. K. Chesterton and sign up for that, go to houseofhumaneletters.com. To register for Cindy's summer discipleship session, visit morningtimeformoms.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

The books that should be set before children are books of play and ceremonial, and pomp and war: the whole gloria mundi, the whole pageant of history, full of blood and pride, may safely be told them–everything but the secret of their own incomparable influence. Children need to be taught primarily the grandeur of the whole world. It is merely the whole world that needs to be taught the grandeur of children.

G. K. Chesterton, from The Speaker, November 24, 1900

Each be other's comfort kind:

Deep, deeper than divined,

Divine charity, dear charity,

Fast you ever, fast bind.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, from "At the Wedding March"

I find that my personal animosity against a writer never affects my opinion of what he writes. Nobody could be more anxious than myself, for instance, that Alan Alexander Milne should trip over a loose boot-lace and break his bloody neck, yet I re-read his early stuff at regular intervals with all the old enjoyment and still maintain that in The Dover Road he produced about the best comedy in English.

Did you read Milne's serial in the Mail? I thought it good. Nothing happened in it, but the characters were so real. I wonder how a book like that sells. Do people want a story or not?

P. G. Wodehouse Pippa's Song

by Robert Browning

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!

Books Mentioned:

P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters edited by Sophie Ratcliffe

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Oscar Wilde

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life Podcast our hosts, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks, continue discussing P. G. Wodehouse's Code of the Woosters together, covering chapters 5-9 today. They share some similarities in Wodehouse's work to Shakespearean and Roman comic characters. Some of these stock characters are the couple, the helpful servant, the unhelpful servant, the irritable old man, and more. Angelina shares her take on Wodehouse's ability to complicate the comedic form. Cindy makes a comparison between the ease created by habits in life and form in stories. Delighting in Wodehouse's skill to turn a phrase, our hosts share many humorous passages throughout this episode, so be sure to stay tuned to the end to catch it all.

Find annotations for the slang, quotes, etc., for The Code of the Woosters here.

To find out more about Thomas' summer class on G. K. Chesterton and sign up for that, go to houseofhumaneletters.com. To register for Cindy's summer discipleship session, visit morningtimeformoms.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

The gentleness and candour of Shakespeare's mind has impressed all his readers. But is impresses us still more the more we study the general tone of sixteenth-century literature. He is gloriously anomalous.

C. S. Lewis

He wrote to Sheran: What do you find to read these days? I simply can't cope with the American novel. The most ghastly things are published and sell a million copies, but good old Wodehouse will have none of them and sticks to English mystery stories. It absolutely beats me how people can read the stuff that is published now. I am reduced to English mystery stories and my own stuff. I was reading Blandings Castle again yesterday and was lost in admiration for the brilliance of the author.

P. G. Wodehouse, as quoted by Frances Donaldson

You notice that popular literature, the kind of stories that are read for relaxation, is always very highly conventionalized…Wodehouse is a popular writer, and the fact that he is a popular writer has a lot to do with his use of stock plots. Of course he doesn't take his own plots seriously; he makes fun of them by the way he uses them; but so did Plautus and Terence.

Northrop Frye

…when you go to his residence, the first thing you see is an enormous fireplace, and round it are carved in huge letters the words: TWO LOVERS BUILT THIS HOUSE. Her idea, I imagine. I can't believe Wells would have thought of that himself.

P. G. Wodehouse, in a letter to William Townend Fashion's Phases

by P. G. Wodehouse

When first I whispered words of love, 
When first you turned aside to hear, 
The winged griffin flew above, 
The mammoth gaily gamboll'd near; 
I wore the latest thing in skins 
Your dock-leaf dress had just been mended 
And fastened-up with fishes fins – 
The whole effect was really splendid. 
Again – we wondered by the Nile, 
In Egypt's far, forgotten land, 
And we watched the festive crocodile 
Devour papyrus from your hand. 
Far off across the plain we saw 
The trader urge his flying camel; 
Bright shone the scarab belt he wore, 
Clasped with a sphinx of rare enamel. 
Again — on Trojan plains I knelt; 
Alas! In vain I strove to speak 
And tell you all the love I felt 
In more or less Homeric Greek;
Perhaps my helmet-strap was tight 
And checked the thoughts I fain would utter, 
Or else your robe of dreamy white 
Bewildered me and made me stutter. 
Once more we change the mise-en-scene; 
The road curves across the hill; 
Excitement makes you rather plain, 
But on the whole I love you still, 
As wreathed in veils and goggles blue, 
And clad in mackintosh and leather, 
Snug in our motor built for two 
We skim the Brighton road together. 

Books Mentioned:

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century by C. S. Lewis

P. G. Wodehouse, A Biography by Frances Donaldson

The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye

Arabian Nights trans. by Burton Richard

The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater

Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On this episode of The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks, are introducing P. G. Wodehouse's entertaining book, Code of the Woosters. This week they will cover chapters 1-4. Our hosts start the conversation sharing some interesting tidbits about P. G. Wodehouse the man, as well as the Wodehousian world in general. Then they begin discussing the story, highlighting Bertie's code of manners that sets up so many problematic situations and Jeeves' unflappable mastery of every circumstance. Find annotations for the slang, quotes, etc., for The Code of the Woosters here.

To find out more about Thomas' summer class on G. K. Chesterton and sign up for that, go to houseofhumaneletters.com. To register for Cindy's summer discipleship session, visit morningtimeformoms.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

A craftsman is excellent in his craft according to his degree of attainment towards its end and his use of the means toward that end. Now the end of writing is the production in the reader's mind of a certain image and a certain emotion. And the means towards that end are the use of words in any particular language; and the complete use of that medium is the choosing of the right words and the putting of them into the right order. It is this which Mr. Wodehouse does better, in the English language, than anyone else alive, or at any rate, than anyone else that I have read for many years past.

Hilaire Belloc

Mr. Wodehouse has created Jeeves. He has created others, but in his creation of Jeeves he has done something which may be respectably compared to the the world of the Almighty in Michelangelo's painting. He has formed a man filled with the breath of life…If in, say, fifty years Jeave and any other of the that great company – but in particular Jeeves – shall have faded, then what we have so long called England will no longer be.

Hilaire Belloc

For Mr. Wodehouse there has been no fall of Man; no 'aboriginal calamity.' His characters have never tasted the forbidden fruit. They are still in Eden. The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden from which we are all exiled. The chef Anatole prepares the ambrosia for the immortals of high Olympus. Mr. Wodehouse's world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.

Evelyn Waugh

[This critic] has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha; but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneraled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

P. G. Wodehouse from In Memoriam A. H. H.

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,

Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
`Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.'

Books Mentioned:

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

Summer Lightning by P. G. Wodehouse

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life Podcast we are pleased to bring you another "Best Of" series replay of one of our most popular episodes. Today our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks tackle the tough questions so many people ask about reading stories dealing with magic. First off, Angelina affirms the need to discernment and the desire to steer clear of that which would be a stumbling block for our children. Cindy shares a little about her own concern when her children were very young. Then they set the groundwork by defining some terms and considering the kinds of questions we need to ask, beginning with Scripture and the church fathers. Be sure to listen to the end when Angelina, Cindy and Thomas suggest some criteria for evaluating magic elements in books before handing them to their students.

Commonplace Quotes:

I am not conscious of having ever bought a book from a motive of ostentation.

Edward Gibbon

There is no language and no knowledge without symbol and metaphor. Two consequences arise from this: one is that we require imagination both to make and to interpret symbols, and the other is that symbols themselves beckon us through language to that which is beyond language. In other words, symbols are energized between the two poles (as Coleridge would say) of immanence and transcendence.

Malcolm Guite

Incidentally, we do not know of a single healthy and powerful book used to educate people (and that includes the Bible) in which such delicate matters do not actually appear to an even greater extent. Proper usage sees no evil here, but finds, as an attractive saying has it, a document of our hearts. Children can read the stars without fear, while others, so superstition has it, insult angels by doing the same thing.

Wilhelm Grimm The Queen Mab Speech

by William Shakespeare

O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Over men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spider web;
Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.
This is she!

Book List:

Memoirs of My Life by Edward Gibbon

Faith, Hope, and Poetry by Malcolm Guite

Wings and the Child by Edith Nesbit

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life, we are bringing you another "Best of The Literary Life Podcast" episode. This week's featured guest is Timilyn Downey, who will be a keynote speaker at this spring's Literary Life Online Conference. Hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins dig into how Timilyn became a lifelong reader. Timilyn shares about the incredibly literary childhood education that she had without even realizing it at the time. She also tells the story of her trip to London during college, then goes into how she used a literary approach in her teaching career. Timilyn also describes her journey to homeschooling and the role that God's grace clearly played in where she is now.

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

The founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was not as programmatic or formal as its name suggests, but rather evolved out of a series of pub discussions and informal get-togethers.

Carolyn Weber

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

Charles MacKay

On a Saturday afternoon in winter, when nose and fingers might be pinched enough to give an added relish to the anticipation of tea and fireside, and the whole week-end's reading lay ahead, I suppose I reached as much happiness as is ever to be reached on earth.

C. S. Lewis from "Among School Children"

by William Butler Yeats

VII Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts—O Presences That passion, piety or affection knows, And that all heavenly glory symbolise— O self-born mockers of man's enterprise; VIII Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? Book List:

The Rossetti's in Wonderland by Dinah Roe

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Little Britches by Ralph Moody

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

The Arabian Nights by Muhsin Mahdi

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins

Morning Time by Cindy Rollins

Tending the Heart of Virtue by Vigen Guroian

D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths by Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

We are back on The Literary Life Podcast this week to wrap up our series on Shakespeare's Othello with a discussion of Acts 4 and 5. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas begin the conversation looking at how the avalanche that began at the climax in Act 3 now continues until the curtain drops. Beginning with her commonplace quote, Angelina expands on the idea that this play uses images of the temptation and fall of man. Thomas reads from Othello's speech in illustration of how disordered he has become. Once again in these acts we see Desdemona's innocence and goodness. Iago's parallels to the storm and to Satan are further illustrated, as well. Cindy, Thomas, and Angelina share their several thoughts on the ending of the play.

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

It is observed that "a corrupt society has many laws"; I know not whether it is not equally true that an ignorant age has many books. When the treasures of ancient knowledge lie unexamined, and original authors are neglected and forgotten, compilers and plagiaries are encouraged, who give us again what we had before, and grow great by setting before us what our own sloth had hidden from our view.

Samuel Johnson, from The Idler, Essay #85

It is very important again that the child should not be allowed to condemn the conduct of the people about him. Whether he is right or wrong in his verdict is not the question. The habit of bestowing blame will certainly blunt his conscience and deaden his sensibility to the injunction "Judge not, that ye be not judged."

Charlotte Mason, from Home Education

If the precise movement of Eve's mind at this point is not always noticed, that is because Milton's truth to nature is here almost too great, and the reader is involved in the same illusion as Eve herself. The whole thing is so quick, each new element of folly, malice, and corruption enters so unobtrusively, so naturally, that it is hard to realize we have been watching the genesis of murder. We expect something more like Lady Macbeth's "unsex me here". But Lady Macbeth speaks thus after the intention of murder has already been fully formed in her mind. Milton is going closer to the actual moment of decision. Thus, and not otherwise, does the mind turn to embrace evil. No man, perhaps, ever at first described to himself the act he was about to do as Murder, or Adultery, or Fraud, or Treachery, or Perversion; and when he hears it so described by other men he is (in a way) sincerely shocked and surprised. Those others "don't understand." If they knew what it had really been like for him, they would not use those crude "stock" names. With a wink or a titter, or in a cloud of muddy emotion, the thing has slipped into his will as something not very extraordinary, something of which, rightly understood and in all his highly peculiar circumstances, he may even feel proud. If you or I, reader, ever commit a great crime, be sure we shall feel very much more like Eve than like Iago.

C. S. Lewis, from A Preface to Paradise Lost Desdemona

by George Gissing

I see thee, Desdemona, pale and cold 
As the pluck'd lily that uncared for dies, 
Thy lips the seat of silence, and thine eyes 
Deserted shrines of chastity; behold, 
Their lamp is quenched, their oracles untold; 
Calm is thy bosom, which no more shall rise 
And fall with love's sweet rapture or sad sighs, 
And thy hands clasp'd in prayer shall ne'er unfold 
Silent and still; yet in that silence speaks 
A voice more eloquent than passion's tongue, 
The mute reproach upon thy innocent face, 
Which chases from his breast who did thee wrong 
The spectre of blind wrath, and in his place 
Despair, for all thy sorrows vengeance wreaks.

Books Mentioned:

Othello by William Shakespeare

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

Ignatius Critical Editions of Shakespeare plays

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and our series covering Shakespeare's play Othello. This week Angelina, Thomas and Cindy talk about the end of Act 2, review Act 3's major plot points, and discuss the bigger ideas present in this and all Shakespeare's stories. Thomas brings out the similarities between Don John in Much Ado About Nothing and Iago in Othello. Angelina highlights the significance of the placement of the wedding dance and the discord occurring within the form of the play. Cindy points out the importance of reputation in this section of the play. Other concepts they talk about include: the character of a warrior, the issue of race in this play, Iago's deception of Othello, Desdemona as a picture of innocence, and so much more.

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

The notion of cosmic order pervades the entire Fairy Queen and prompts such a detail as Spenser's iteration of the phrase "In a comely rew [row]" or "on a row." The arrangement is comely not just because it is pretty and seemly but because it harmonises with a universal order.

But the negative implication was even more frequent and emphatic. If the Elizabethans believed in an ideal order animating earthly order, they were terrified lest it should be upset, and appalled by the visible tokens of disorder that suggested its upsetting. They were obsessed by the fear of chaos and the fact of mutability; and the obsession was powerful in proportion as their faith in the cosmic order was strong. To us chaos means hardly more than confusion on a large scale; to an Elizabethan it mean the cosmic anarchy before creation and the wholesale dissolution that would result if the pressure of Providence relaxed and allowed the law of nature to cease functioning. Othello's "chaos is come again" or Ulysses's "this chaos, when degree is suffocate," cannot be fully felt apart from orthodox theology.

E. M. Tillyard

The world will always believe Shakespeare's version of these events.

Andrew Lang

All the men in history who have really done anything with the future have had their eyes fixed upon the past.

G. K. Chesterton Could Man Be Drunk Forever?

by A. E. Housman

Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
And lief lie down of nights.
But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.

Books Mentioned:

Othello by William Shakespeare

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist

The Malcontent by John Marston

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

Ignatius Critical Editions of Shakespeare plays

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks, we have our second episode covering Shakespeare's play Othello. Today's episode is a discussion of Acts 1 and 2. Our hosts talk about the problem of Iago's antagonism toward Othello, the way in which Shakespeare asks "what if?" to develop new treatments of old stories, the question of Othello's ethnicity, Shakespeare's method of building up layers of disorder in the story, the theme of people out of harmony with the community, plus so much more!

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

It has only been for a short time, a recent and disturbed time of transition, that each writer has been expected to write a new theory of all things or draw a new wild map of the world. The old writers were content to write of the old world, but to write of it with an imaginative freshness which made it in each case look like a new world. The poets taught in a continuous tradition and were not in the least ashamed of being traditional. Each taught in an individual way with a perpetual slight novelty, as Aristotle said, but they were not a series of separate lunatics looking at separate worlds. One poet did not provide a pair of spectacles by which it appeared that the grass was blue, or another poet lecture on optics to teach people to say that the grass was orange. They both had the far harder and more heroic task of teaching people to feel that the grass is green. And because they continue their heroic task, the world, after every epoch of doubt and despair, always grows green again.

G. K. Chesterton

Our age was cultivated thus at length;
But what we gained in skill we lost in strength.
Our builders were with want of genius curst;
The second temple was not like the first.

John Dryden

The atmosphere of the homeschool is on the mother's face.

Lynn Bruce My Pretty Rose Tree

by William Blake

A flower was offered to me, 
  Such a flower as May never bore; 
But I said "I've a pretty rose tree," 
  And I passed the sweet flower o'er. 

Then I went to my pretty rose tree, 
  To tend her by day and by night; 
But my rose turned away with jealousy, 
  And her thorns were my only delight.

Books Mentioned:

Othello by William Shakespeare

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist

Paradise Lost by John Milton

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On this episode of The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks, our hosts introduce their new series on Shakespeare's play Othello. They share some tips and strategies for those new to Shakespeare, both as independent readers and for reading along with children. Angelina also talks more specifically about how to approach reading a Shakespearean tragedy. Finally, our hosts respond to the idea that Shakespeare plays should be watched, not read. Join us back here next week to dive into the discussion of Othello!

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

The devils come because the half-gods go,

But in the end the gods, the gods return.

Humbert Wolfe

I was rereading chapter 14 of Surprised by Joy, and there it was, the opening quote from George MacDonald:  "The one principle of hell is – 'I am my own'."

Andrew Johnson

A convention is a form of freedom. That is the reality that the realists cannot get into their heads. A dramatic convention is not a constraint on the dramatist; it is a permission to the dramatist. It is a permit allowing him to depart from the routine of external reality, in order to express a more internal and intimate reality. . . .

But as Shakespeare had the liberty of a literary convention, he can make Macbeth say something that nobody in real life would say, but something that does express what somebody in real life would feel. It expresses such things as music expresses them; though nobody in those circumstances would recite that particular poem, any more than he would begin suddenly to play on the violin. But what the audience wants is the emotion expressed; and poetry can express it and commonplace conversation cannot. . . .

The realist is reduced to inarticulate grunts and half-apologetic oaths, like an apoplectic major in a club.

G. K. Chesterton Iago

by Walter de la Mare

A dark lean face, a narrow, slanting eye,
Whose deeps of blackness one pale taper's beam
Haunts with a flitting madness of desire;
A heart whose cinder at the breath of passion
Glows to a momentary core of heat
Almost beyond indifference to endure:
So parched Iago frets his life away.
His scorn works ever in a brain whose wit
This world hath fools too many and gross to seek.
Ever to live incredibly alone,
Masked, shivering, deadly, with a simple Moor
Of idiot gravity, and one pale flower
Whose chill would quench in everlasting peace
His soul's unmeasured flame — O paradox!
Might he but learn the trick! — to wear her heart
One fragile hour of heedless innocence,
And then, farewell, and the incessant grave.
" O fool! O villain! " — 'tis the shuttlecock
Wit never leaves at rest. It is his fate
To be a needle in a world of hay,
Where honour is the flattery of the fool;
Sin, a tame bauble; lies, a tiresome jest;
Virtue, a silly, whitewashed block of wood
For words to fell. Ah! but the secret lacking,
The secret of the child, the bird, the night,
Faded, flouted, bespattered, in days so far
Hate cannot bitter them, nor wrath deny;
Else were this Desdemona. . . . Why!
Woman a harlot is, and life a nest
Fouled by long ages of forked fools. And God —
Iago deals not with a tale so dull:
To have made the world! Fie on thee, Artisan!

Books Mentioned:

Othello by William Shakespeare

London Sonnets by Humbert Wolfe

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit

Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories by Leon Garfield

Stories from Shakespeare by Marchette Chute

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Welcome to this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks. This week our hosts share their discussion of Plato's Ion. This episode serves as an introduction on how to read Plato as well as an opportunity to consider what Socratic dialogue is and is not. Thomas gives some background on Plato as a person as well as his writing of dialogues. Angelina shares her thoughts on why the term "Socratic method" as it is used today is not actually a good teaching technique.

In talking about the text of Ion, Thomas explains what a "rhapsode" is and lets us know that this piece of dialogue is supposed to be humorous, rather satirical in nature. Another background topic related to the conversation is the ancient idea of atheism in contrast to our modern definition. To wrap up, Thomas gives a few suggestions for continuing your reading of Plato.

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

The job of a Christian parent is not to produce godly children. The job of the Christian parent is to be a godly parent.

Christopher Yuan

A few people have ventured to imitate Shakespeare's tragedy. But no audacious spirit has dreamed or dared to imitate Shakespeare's comedy. No one has made any real attempt to recover the loves and the laughter of Elizabethan England. The low dark arches, the low strong pillars upon which Shakespeare's temple rests we can all explore and handle. We can all get into his mere tragedy; we can all explore his dungeon and penetrate into his coal-cellar; but we stretch our hands and crane our necks in vain towards that height where the tall turrets of his levity are tossed towards the sky. Perhaps it is right that this should be so; properly understood, comedy is an even grander thing than tragedy.

G. K. Chesterton, from Illustrated London News, April 27, 1907

Nothing stands still for us. This is our normal state, albeit the one most contrary to our proper inclination

Blaise Pascal The Fall of a Soul

by John Addington Symonds

I sat unsphering Plato ere I slept:
Then through my dream the choir of gods was borne,
Swift as the wind and splendid as the morn,
Fronting the night of stars; behind them swept
Tempestuous darkness o'er a drear descent,
Wherein I saw a crowd of charioteers
Urging their giddy steeds with cries and cheers,
To join the choir that aye before them went:
But one there was who fell, with broken car
And horses swooning down the gulf of gloom;
Heavenward his eyes, though prescient of their doom,
Reflected glory like a falling star,
While with wild hair blown back and listless hands
Ruining he sank toward undiscover'd lands.

Books Mentioned:

Phaedrus by Plato

Othello by William Shakespeare

Out of a Far Country by Angela Yuan and Christopher Yuan

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist

Pensées by Blaise Pascal

Five Dialogues by Plato

Selected Myths by Plato

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On today's episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas wrap up their discussion of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling with the final Mowgli story–"Tiger, Tiger." Before beginning to talk about the story, the chat a little about Kipling's other works and his place in literary history and what sort of writer he was. In this section, Angelina points out the parallels to the first story, as well as the mythic qualities of the whole tale. Together they cover the various ideas in this section, including the ideas of belonging, freedom and boundaries, and heroism.

Join is next week for an episode on "Literary Milestones" in the life of a reader. After that we will begin a new series on Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

Over at House of Humane Letters, a new webinar is now available for registration. It is taught by Heather Goodman and is titled "Coleridge's Imagination: Restoring the Chain of Being." Also, check out this year's Back to School Online Conference, "Educating the Freeborn," over at MorningTimeforMoms.com to get registered and hear all of this year's amazing speakers!

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/287. 

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we bring you another fun Literary Life of…episode. Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy's guest today is Lia Techand, our first international guest on the podcast. Lia, a German born in Kyrgyzstan, currently serving with her husband as a missionary in Australia, along with their two book-loving children. We start off the interview hearing Lia tell about her young life and how she started loving English literature. She talks about her parents and grandparents' reading lives and the legacy of loving books that they left for her. She also shares how literary analysis and symbolism teaching in high school and college challenged her enjoyment of literature. Lia tells about how she stopped reading in university because she was too busy but then started reading again once she became a mother.

Lia and Angelina share some examples of crazy literary theory that is taught in university programs, and how that confused and discouraged Lia so much. She also tells the story of finding The Literary Life podcast and taking classes with Angelina. They wrap up the conversation with some encouragement for readers looking for the meaning in the stories they read. 

Join us next time for a discussion of Plato's Ion, led by Mr. Banks!

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

A story is a work of art. Its greatest use to the child is in the everlasting appeal of beauty by which the soul of man is constantly pricked to new hungers, quickened to new perceptions, and so given desire to grow…

The storyteller…has, in short, accomplished the one greatest aim of story-telling,–to enlarge and enrich the child's spiritual experience, and stimulate healthy reaction upon it.

Of course this result cannot be seen and proved as easily and early as can the apprehension of a fact. The most one can hope to recognize is its promise, and this is found in the tokens of that genuine pleasure which is itself the means of accomplishment.

Sara Cone Bryant, from How to Tell Stories to Children

Every thirty years a new race comes into the world–a youngster that knows nothing about anything, and after summarily devouring in all haste the results of human knowledge as they have been accumulated for thousands of years, aspires to be thought cleverer than the whole of the past. For this purpose he goes to the university, and takes to reading books–new books, as being of his own age and standing. Everything he reads must be briefly put, must be new, as he is new himself. Then he falls to and criticizes.

Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Men of Learning"

What has drawn the modern world into being is a strange, almost occult yearning for the future. The modern mind longs for the future as the medieval mind longed for heaven.

Wendell Berry, from The Unsettling of America

In these days, when Mr. Bernard Shaw is becoming gradually, amid general applause, the Grand Old Man of English letters, it is perhaps ungracious to record that he did once say there was nobody, with the possible exception of Homer, whose intellect he despised to so much as Shakespeare's. He has since said almost enough sensible things to outweigh even anything so silly as that. But I quote it because is exactly embodies the nineteenth-century notion of which I speak. Mr. Shaw had probably never read Home; and there were passages in his Shakespearean criticism that might well raise a doubt about whether he ever read Shakespeare. But the point was that he could not, in all sincerity, see what the world saw in Home and Shakespeare, because what the world saw was not what G. B. S. was then looking for. He was looking for that ghastly thing which Nonconformists call a Message.

G. K. Chesterton, from The Soul of Wit: G. K. Chesterton on William Shakespeare Still ist de Nacht

by Heinrich Heine

Still is the night, and the streets are lone,
     My darling dwelt in this house of yore;
'Tis years since she from the city has flown,
     Yet the house stands there as it did before.

There, too, stands a man, and aloft stares he,
     And for stress of anguish he wrings his hands;
My blood runs cold when his face I see,
     'Tis my own very self in the moonlight stands.

Thou double! Thou fetch, with the livid face!
     Why dust thou mimic my lovelorn mould,
That was racked and rent in this very place
     So many a night in the times of old?

Books Mentioned:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Astrid Lindgren

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Agatha Christie

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

Margery Allingham

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason (section on Goethe)

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne

Beatrix Potter

Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc

Struwwelpeter in English Translation by Heinrich Hoffman

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas are back on The Literary Life Podcast today with another discussion in our series on Aristotle's Poetics. Sharing their commonplace quotes leads into the conversation about why reading this work still matters to our understanding of how to read literature. Thomas and Angelina talk about the problem of literary critics who claim Shakespeare violates Aristotle's "rules" for plays. Cindy's question as to why we read the ancients is another topic of this conversation.

Join us next time when we will have another Literary Life of... guest interview. Then we will be back the next week with a discussion of Plato's Ion.

 

Thomas will be teaching a webinar on Jean Jacques Rousseau on February 24th. You can learn more and register at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up in mid-April, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Episodes Mentioned Today:

Antigone Series Introduction

The Trojan Women Series Introduction

Why Read Pagan Myths

Why Read Fairy Tales

Commonplace Quotes:

The best way to get to know the world is to live in it. The next best is to break your leg and read Boswell's "Life of Johnson" in bed.

Christopher Hollis, from Dr. Johnson

Sensible parents are often distressed at this want of conscience in children; but they are not greatly at fault; the mature conscience demands to be backed up by the mature intellect, and the children have neither the one nor the other. Discussions of the kind should be put down; the children should not be encouraged to give their opinions on questions of right and wrong, and little books should not be put into their hands which pronounce authoritatively upon conduct.

Charlotte Mason, from Home Education

The Classical emphasis, established in Aristotle is esthetic ("hieratic") in the sense that it is focused on the thing made, and assumes an emotional balance or detachment which we see in such aspects of it as catharsis. The fundamental conception of this approach is that of "imitation," which is concerned with the relation of the poem to its context in nature. The other emphasis…is psychological rather than esthetic, and is based on participation rather than on detachment. It thinks of a poem as an "expression,"…rather than as Aristotle's techne or artifact, and its fundamental conception, corresponding to "imitation," is "creation," a metaphor which relates the poet to his context in nature.

Northrop Frye, from The Well-Tempered Critic Sonnet 23

by William Shakespeare

As an unperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart,
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharg'd with burthen of mine own love's might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
⁠O, learn to read what silent love hath writ;
⁠To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast this week, our hosts continue their series of discussions on Aristotle's Poetics. Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas share some pertinent commonplace quotations to open the episode, then dive into this week's text, beginning with Aristotle's definition of "tragedy." Thomas expands on the idea of catharsis, and Angelina outlines Aristotle's necessary elements of a story. Cindy shares her thoughts the distinction between poetry and history. They talk about the form and sequence of a story and why these are so important in Aristotle's view. In working out the definition of terms, our hosts also correct some common and crucial misconceptions.

Thomas will be teaching a webinar on Jean Jacques Rousseau on February 24th. You can learn more and register at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up in mid-April, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

He was happier using the knife than in trying to save the limb.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, from "In the Children's Hospital"

Here the term moral imagination refers very loosely to a way of looking at life, or as Vigen Guroian puts it, "the process by which the self makes metaphors out of images given by experience, which it then employs to find and suppose moral correspondences in experience."

With this in mind, it makes sense to regard reading stories aloud to one's children the archetypal act of the trivium. One is simultaneously remembering a tradition, revealing the Logos, and by voice inflection and gesture dramatizing a story to communicate the meaning heart to heart.

Stratford Caldecott, from Beauty in the Word

It is true that "our way" of misreading the romances is very recent. In the nineteenth centure, even in the Edwardian period, a serious response to the ferlies seems to have been easy and almost universal. Even now it is common among the elderly. Most of my generation have all our lives taken these things with awe and with a sense of their mystery. But a generation has grown up which really needs the corrective that Mr. Speirs is offering. For whatever reason–a materialistic philosophy, anti-romanticism, distrust of one's unconscious–gigantic inhibitions, have, with astonishing rapidity, been built up. The response which was once easy and indeed irresistible now needs to be liberated by some sort of mental ascesis.

C. S. Lewis, from "De Audiendis Poetis" Selection from "An Essay on Criticism"

by Alexander Pope

'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In poets as true genius is but rare,
True taste as seldom is the critic's share;
Both must alike from Heav'n derive their light,
These born to judge, as well as those to write.
Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely who have written well.
Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment too?

Book List:

Othello by William Shakespeare

Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott

Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C. S. Lewis

The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis by Jason Baxter

MacBeth by William Shakespeare

The Odyssey by Homer

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB