The Literary Life Podcast

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks. This week our hosts begin their discussion of The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, covering chapters 1-11. Thomas gives some interesting biographical information about von Arnim, and Angelina shares some perspective on appreciating the art and the life of artist. Cindy highlights the fact that we see only caricatures of the women in England, and it isn't until they get to Italy that we begin to see their real selves. Angelina also points out that all the women are on identity quests in this story. Angelina unpacks some of the metaphors in this book and the Dante-esque images, in addition to the key place beauty has in the story. Commonplace Quotes: Whoso maintains that I am humbled now (Who await the Awful Day) is still a liar; I hope to meet my Maker brow to brow And find my own is higher. Frances Cornford, "Epitaph for a Book Reviewer" "(The) sufferer is by definition a customer." Wendell Berry, from The Art of the Commonplace Beauty will save the world. Fyodor Dostoyevsky Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those. Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. Book List: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim 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 are bringing you another "Literary Life Of" interview episode. This week's guest is Kay Pelham, a lifelong reader, veteran homeschooling mother, and accomplished pianist. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy and Kay dig into their conversation about the journey of Kay's reading life. She shares a little about her family of story-tellers and readers, her personal reading versus school studies, and how her reading life changed as a young adult. Kay also talks about how she came to homeschool using Charlotte Mason's philosophy. The discussion turns to Kay's self-education journey as an older adult and she gives encouragement for anyone coming to this later in life. You can read Kay's own thoughts on books and more at KayPelham.com. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: When children come to school, they can read and speak. When they leave school they can do neither the one nor the other. Arthur Burrell, from "Recitation, the Children's Art" in The Parent's Review It is my settled conviction that in order to read Old Western Literature aright, you must suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits you have acquired in reading modern literature. C. S. Lewis Mythology is the embryo of literature and the arts, not of science, and no form of art has anything to do with making direct statements about nature, mistaken or correct. Similarly, as science does not grow out of mythology, so it can never replace mythology. Mythology is recreated by the poets in each generation, while science goes its own way. Northrup Frye Mozart by Maurice Baring The sunshine, and the grace of falling rain, The fluttering daffodil, the lilt of bees, The blossom on the boughs of almond trees, The waving of the wheat upon the plain— And all that knows not effort, strife or strain, And all that bears the signature of ease, The plunge of ships that dance before the breeze The flight across the twilight of the crane: And all that joyous is, and young, and free, That tastes of morning and the laughing surf; The dawn, the dew, the newly turned-up turf, The sudden smile, the unexpressive prayer, The artless art, the untaught dignity,— You speak them in the passage of an air. Books Mentioned: Creation and Recreation by Northrup Frye If I Were Going: The Alice and Jerry Basic Reader by Mabel O'Donnell My Bookhouse edited by Olive B. Miller Tending the Heart of Virtue by Vigen Guroian The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers The Boys by Ron and Clint Howard 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, our hosts wrap up their series on The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Angelina kicks off today's conversation about chapter 3 with more exploration and clarification of the concept of "the Tao." Cindy talks about the importance of respect for the past and how much we have lost by letting go of that. Thomas highlights the fact that so many education theorists were men who never had reared children and the difference that a mother's experience makes. One of the main themes of this discussion is the state of education and Lewis' prescient insight into our current cultural climate. Lewis also goes beyond criticizing scientism by laying out his vision for good science. We will be back next week with a "Literary Life of…" interview with a surprise guest. After that we will take a short break for the conference, and return in April with a read along of The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: Only in destroying I find ease for my relentless thoughts. Satan in Paradise Lost, by John Milton …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 physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already begun to be warped, had been subtly maneuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result. C. S. Lewis, in That Hideous Strength Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. Book List: Paradise Lost by John Milton The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim 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 of discussions on The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. They open the conversation with their commonplace quotes and give us a working definition of debunking. You can also read a fantastic post on debunking from Kelly Cumbee's blog here. Other topics of this conversation include "the tao," objective reality, utilitarianism, finding wisdom, and how this book speaks to our current culture. Kelly Cumbee will be teaching a webinar on The Tempest by William Shakespeare this Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 5pm Eastern, so head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to register today. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. A Scottish proverb, as quoted by Joseph Addison "Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs." "You see," said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out." C. S. Lewis Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. Proverbs 22:28 (NKJV) Inexpensive Progress by John Betjeman Encase your legs in nylons, Bestride your hills with pylons O age without a soul; Away with gentle willows And all the elmy billows That through your valleys roll. Let's say goodbye to hedges And roads with grassy edges And winding country lanes; Let all things travel faster Where motor car is master Till only Speed remains. Destroy the ancient inn-signs But strew the roads with tin signs 'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!' Command, instruction, warning, Repetitive adorning The rockeried roundabout; For every raw obscenity Must have its small 'amenity,' Its patch of shaven green, And hoardings look a wonder In banks of floribunda With floodlights in between. Leave no old village standing Which could provide a landing For aeroplanes to roar, But spare such cheap defacements As huts with shattered casements Unlived-in since the war. Let no provincial High Street Which might be your or my street Look as it used to do, But let the chain stores place here Their miles of black glass facia And traffic thunder through. And if there is some scenery, Some unpretentious greenery, Surviving anywhere, It does not need protecting For soon we'll be erecting A Power Station there. When all our roads are lighted By concrete monsters sited Like gallows overhead, Bathed in the yellow vomit Each monster belches from it, We'll know that we are dead. Book List: The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis That Hideous Strength 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 this week, our hosts begin a much-anticipated series on The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy share their commonplace quotes to open the discussion, then they give some background on this particular work. They talk about the ideas behind the "new criticism" approach to literature and why it is so problematic. Angelina and Thomas expand on the significance of the concept of the sublime. Cindy shares some thoughts on learning to identify and to produce good writing. Angelina helps us connect Lewis' points about ordo amoris with our current day dilemmas. Other topics touched on in their conversation are the nature of objective reality, the tripartite soul, the medieval view of Reason, debunking the ideal of honor, and so much more. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: The modern state exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good–anyway, to do something to us or make us something. Hence the new name "leaders" for those who were once "rulers." We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, "Mind your own business." Our whole lives are their business. C. S. Lewis, from "Is Progress Possible?" It is good for a professional to be reminded that his professionalism is only a husk, that the real person must remain an amateur, a lover of the work. May Sarton In truth, he wished to command the respect at once of courtiers and of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and to be at the same time respected for despising them. Thomas Macaualy Duty Surviving Self-Love, The Only Sure Friend Of Declining Life. A Soliloquy by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Unchanged within, to see all changed without, Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt. Yet why at others' Wanings should'st thou fret? Then only might'st thou feel a just regret, Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light In selfish forethought of neglect and slight. O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed, While, and on whom, thou may'st--shine on! nor heed Whether the object by reflected light Return thy radiance or absorb it quite: And tho' thou notest from thy safe recess Old Friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air, Love them for what they are; nor love them less, Because to thee they are not what they were. Book List: The History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Macaulay The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis That Hideous Strength 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

Our hosts are back on The Literary Life podcast this week with another fun episode in our series "In Search of the Austen Adaptation." In this episode, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas are joined again by Atlee Northmore to discuss the several film versions of Jane Austen's Emma. To start the conversation, Angelina highlights the challenges of adapting Emma to film. Atlee outlines the major film adaptations of Emma. Then they discuss the ups and downs of the various adaptations, as well as casting, personal favorites and production choices. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: In all our literary experience there are two kinds of response. There is the direct experience of the world itself, while we're reading a book or seeing a play, especially for the first time. This experience is uncritical, or rather pre-critical, so it's not infallible. If our experience is limited, we can be roused to enthusiasm or carried away by something that we can later see to have been second-rate or even phony. Then there is the conscious, critical response we make after we've finished reading or left the theatre, where we compare what we've experienced with other things of the same kind, and form a judgment of value and proportion on it. This critical response, with practice, gradually makes our pre-critical responses more sensitive and accurate, or improves our taste, as we say. But behind our responses to our literary experience as a whole, as a total possession. Northrup Frye Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep. William Shakespeare A boat will not answer to the rudder unless it is in motion; the poet can work upon us only as long as we are kept on the move. C. S. Lewis The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste. Her fool is a fool, her snob is a snob, because he departs from the model of sanity and sense which she had in mind, and conveys to us unmistakably even while she makes us laugh. Never did any novelist make more use of an impeccable sense of human values. It is against the disc of an unerring heart, an unfailing good taste, an almost stern morality, that she shows up those deviations from kindness, truth, sincerity which are among the most delightful things on English literature. Virginia Woolf Selection from "Epistle to a Lady, Of the Characters of Women" by Alexander Pope Say, what can cause such impotence of mind? A Spark too fickle, or a Spouse too kind. Wise wretch! with pleasures too refin'd to please; With too much spirit to be e'er at ease; With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live. Book List: Emma by Jane Austen Tending the Heart of Virtue by Vigen Guroian The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis 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

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are bringing you another Literary Life of interview episode. This week's guest is Timilyn Downey, and together with 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. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. 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

On The Literary Life podcast this week, we will wrap up our series on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Our hosts, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas walk through the last two acts of the play, sharing their thoughts on the structure and ideas presented here. Angelina talks about why she thinks Shakespeare resolves the different conflicts the way he does. They discuss the importance of the play within the play, the fairy tale atmosphere, and the unreality of time and space. Cindy and Angelina both bring up plot points that feel slightly problematic to them. Angelina highlights the theme of harmonizing discord and bringing order from disorder. On February 8th, Angelina will be offering a webinar on Jonathan Swift: Enemy of the Enlightenment. Check it out at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: Revolutionaries always hang their best friends. Christopher Hollis It is easy to forget that the man who writes a good love sonnet needs not only be enamored of a woman, but also to be enamored of the sonnet. C. S. Lewis For the end of imagination is harmony. A right imagination, being the reflex of the creation, will fall in with the divine order of things as the highest form of its own operation; "will tune its instrument here at the door" to the divine harmonies within; will be content alone with growth towards the divine idea, which includes all that is beautiful in the imperfect imagination of men; will know that every deviation from that growth is downward; and will therefore send the man forth from its loftiest representations to do the commonest duty of the most wearisome calling in a hearty and hopeful spirit. This is the work of the right imagination; and towards this work every imagination, in proportion to the rightness that is in it, will tend. The reveries even of the wise man will make him stronger for his work; his dreaming as well as his thinking will render him sorry for past failure, and hopeful of future success. George MacDonald Earth's Secret by George Meredith Not solitarily in fields we find Earth's secret open, though one page is there; Her plainest, such as children spell, and share With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind. Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, In turbid cities, can the key be bare. It hangs for those who hither thither fare, Close interthreading nature with our kind. They, hearing History speak, of what men were, And have become, are wise. The gain is great In vision and solidity; it lives. Yet at a thought of life apart from her, Solidity and vision lose their state, For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives. Book List: Fossett's Memory by Christopher Hollis A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard 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 continue our series on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with coverage of Act 3. Angelina talks about the pacing of this act and the importance of the characters' madcap, lunatic behavior. She also highlight's Shakespeare's wrestling with the relationship between the imagination and art and reality. Thomas highlights the structure of the play as reflecting a dreamlike state. Cindy shares some of her thoughts on being concerned about making sure our children know what is real and pretend. On February 8th, Angelina will be offering a webinar on Jonathan Swift: Enemy of the Enlightenment. Check it out at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: The most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life. Samuel Pepys, describing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in his diary Or the lovely one about the Bishop of Exeter, who was giving the prizes at a girls' school. They did a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the poor man stood up afterwards and made a speech and said [piping voice]: 'I was very interested in your delightful performance, and among other things I was very interested in seeing for the first time in my life a female Bottom.' C. S. Lewis in a conversation with Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss Still, if Homer's Achilles isn't the real Achilles, he isn't unreal either. Unrealities don't seem so full of life after three thousand years as Homer's Achilles does. This is the kind of problem we have to tackle next–the fact that what we meet in literature is neither real nor unreal. We have two words, imaginary, meaning unreal, and imaginative, meaning what the writer produces, and they mean entirely different things. Northrop Frye A Dream by William Blake Once a dream did weave a shade O'er my angel-guarded bed, That an emmet lost its way Where on grass methought I lay. Troubled, wildered, and forlorn, Dark, benighted, travel-worn, Over many a tangle spray, All heart-broke, I heard her say: "Oh my children! do they cry, Do they hear their father sigh? Now they look abroad to see, Now return and weep for me." Pitying, I dropped a tear: But I saw a glow-worm near, Who replied, "What wailing wight Calls the watchman of the night? "I am set to light the ground, While the beetle goes his round: Follow now the beetle's hum; Little wanderer, hie thee home!" Book List: Of Other Worlds by C. S. Lewis The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard The Golden Ass by Apuleius 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 on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. After kicking off the episode with their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas start digging into the play itself. Thomas brings up the importance of the timing of this story being midsummer. Angelina gives a little background into the names and characters in this play as well as some of the major ideas we can be looking for in the story. In February Angelina will be offering a webinar on Jonathan Swift: Enemy of the Enlightenment. Check it out at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet. John Dryden, in a letter to Jonathan Swift It would be difficult indeed to define wherein lay the peculiar truth of the phrase "merrie England", though some conception of it is quite necessary to the comprehension of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In some cases at least, it may be said to lie in this, that the English of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, unlike the England of today, could conceive of the idea of a merry supernaturalism. G. K. Chesterton And yet, there are people who say that Shakespeare always means, "just what he says." He thinks that to find over and under meanings in Shakespeare's plays is to take unwarranted liberties with them, is like a man who holds the word "spring" must refer only to a particular period of the year, and could not possibly mean birth, or youth or hope. He is a man who has never associated anything with anything else. He is a man without metaphors, and such a man is no man at all, let alone a poet. Harold Goddard Advice to Lovers by Robert Graves I knew an old man at a Fair Who made it his twice-yearly task To clamber on a cider cask And cry to all the yokels there:-- "Lovers to-day and for all time Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: Love is not kindly nor yet grim But does to you as you to him. "Whistle, and Love will come to you, Hiss, and he fades without a word, Do wrong, and he great wrong will do, Speak, he retells what he has heard. "Then all you lovers have good heed Vex not young Love in word or deed: Love never leaves an unpaid debt, He will not pardon nor forget." The old man's voice was sweet yet loud And this shows what a man was he, He'd scatter apples to the crowd And give great draughts of cider, free. Book List: "Battle of the Books" by Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 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 new season of The Literary Life podcast! This week we bring you an introduction both to William Shakespeare and his play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas seek to give new Shakespeare readers a place from which to jump into his work and more experienced readers eyes to see more layers in his stories. Cindy begins with some perspective on how to start cultivating a love for Shakespeare. Angelina shares her "hot take" on whether you should read the play or watch the play. They suggest some books for further digging into Shakespeare's works, and Angelina gives an overview of the format of his comedies. Thomas goes into some detail about Roman comedy. Next week we will be back with a discussion of Acts I and II of the play. Also, if you would like to join the free live read-along over at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information. Commonplace Quotes: If certain tendencies within our civilization were to proceed unchecked, they would rapidly take us towards a society which, like that of a prison, would be both completely introverted and completely without privacy. The last stand of privacy has always been, traditionally, the inner mind….It is quite possible, however, for communications media, especially the newer electronic ones, to break down the associative structures of the inner mind and replace them by the prefabricated structures of the media . A society entirely controlled by their slogans and exhortations would be introverted because nobody would be saying anything: there would only be echo, and Echo was the mistress of Narcissus….the triumph of communication is the death of communication: where communication forms a total environment, there is nothing to be communicated. Northrop Frye No writer can persist for five hundred pages in being funny at the expense of someone who is dead. Harold Nicolson Originality was a new and somewhat ugly idol of the nineteenth century. Janet Spens Unwisdom by Siegfried Sassoon To see with different eyes From every day, And find in dream disguise Worlds far away— To walk in childhood's land With trusting looks, And oldly understand Youth's fairy-books— Thus our unwisdom brings Release which hears The bird that sings In groves beyond the years. Book List: "The Practice of Biography" by Harold Nicolson The Modern Century by Northrop Frye An Essay on Shakespeare's Relation to Tradition by Janet Spens Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb Stage Fright on a Summer Night by Mary Pope Osborne 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 Shakespeare's Problem Plays by E. M. Tillyard Shakespeare's Early Comedies by E. M. Tillyard Shakespeare's History Plays by E. M. Tillyard Great Stage of Fools by Peter Leithardt 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 week's episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share a wrap up of their year in reading–their favorite books of the year, their most hated books read in 2021, and how they each did with covering the categories of the #LitLife192021 Reading Challenge. They also talk a little about how they will be approaching their reading for next year. Download the Two for '22 adult reading challenge PDF here, and the kids' reading challenge PDF here. The Literary Life Commonplace Books published by Blue Sky Daisies are back with new covers for 2022! Also, check out the Christmas sale at HouseofHumaneLetters.com! Coming up on The Literary Life podcast in the new year, we have Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream coming up in January and after that, Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Then we will be reading The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim and Charles Dickens' Hard Times later in the year. Our children's classic novel this year will be The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Commonplace Quotes: Literature's world is a concrete human world of immediate experience. The poet uses images and objects and sensations much more than he uses abstract ideas. The novelist is concerned with telling stories, not with working out arguments. Northrop Frye The moon is the only one of the heavenly bodies that, whilst rising resplendently like the other luminaries, nevertheless changes and waxes and wanes as we do. Malcolm Guite I almost think that the same skin For one without has two or three within. Lord Byron, from "Don Juan" The Poetry of Shakespeare by George Meredith Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; – Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays; Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it; Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great human heart. Book List: Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye Faith, Hope, and Poetry by Malcolm Guite David's Crown by Malcolm Guite Savior of the World by Charlotte Mason The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side by Agatha Christie Anthony Horowitz Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson Wintering by Katherine May The Narnian by Alan Jacobs In the Year of Our Lord 1943 by Alan Jacobs Elizabeth Goudge Assignment in Brittany by Helen Macinnes Look Back with Love by Dodie Smith The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley The Atonement by Ian McEwan Desmond MacCarthay David Cecil Letters by a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell The Odd Women by George Gissing Excellent Women by Barbara Pym If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley Corsets and Codpieces by Karen Bowman *The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall (not recommended) *Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt (not recommended) MacBeth by William Shakespeare As the Indians Left It by Robert Sparks Walker Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset Lady Susan by Jane Austen Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth A Hobbit, A Wardrobe and A World War by Joseph Laconte Piranesi by Susanna Clarke Neil Gaiman The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham Mythos by Stephen Fry Nina Balatka by Anthony Trollope Christmas at Thompson Hall by Anthony Trollope 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

"Two for '22" Literary Life Reading Challenge! This coming year Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are challenging us to read books in 11 categories, but choose 2 books in each category, with a bit of a twist. In today's episode they briefly go over each category and give a few examples of books would fit into those categories. They also take us through the Kids' "Two for '22" Reading Challenge topics. Next time we will be back with a wrap-up episode for our 19 for 2022 Reading Challenge. The Literary Life Commonplace Books published by Blue Sky Daisies are back with new covers for 2022! Coming up on The Literary Life podcast in the new year, we have Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dreamcoming up in January and after that, Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Then we will be reading The Enchanted Aprilby Elizabeth von Arnim and Charles Dickens' Hard Times later in the year. Our children's classic novel this year will be The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Commonplace Quotes: The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful. One must sense him everywhere, but not see him. Gustave Flaubert There reigns thro' all the blank verse poems such a perpetual trick of moralizing every thing–which is very well, occasionally–but never to see or describe any interesting appearance in nature, without connecting it by dim analogies with the moral world, proves faintness of Impression. Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that everything has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life. Malcolm Guite The principle behind modern methods of reading is stated in the form: if there is to be a meaning, it shall be ours. C. S. Lewis There is No Frigate Like a Book by Emily Dickinson There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul – Book List: Faith, Hope and Poetry by Malcolm Guite The Allegory of the Faerie Queene by Pauline Parker Hard Times by Charles Dickens Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell The Splendid Century by W. H. Lewis The Fellowship by Philip and Carol Zaleski Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Goyer Tolkein and The Great War by John Garth A Hobbit, a Wardrobe and a Great War by Joseph Loconte The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey Elizabeth the Great by Elizabeth Jenkins The Daughter of Time by Josephine They Elizabeth von Arnim Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Anthony Horowitz Margery Allingham E. C. Bentley Nero Wolfe Series Alan Bradley J. K. Rowling/Roberth Galbraith A Collection of Essays by George Orwell Essays of G. K. Chesterton by G. K. Chesterton David Bentley Hart In a Cardboard Belt! by Joseph Epstein Padraic Colum The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls by Nathaniel Hawthorne Bill Peet: An Autobiography by Bill Peet Kingfisher Book of Russian Tales by James Mayhew Paul Galdone The Cooper Kids Adventure Series by Frank Peretti Harriet the Spy Series by Louise Fitzhugh 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 episode for you to kick off a fun series of episodes that will come up from time to time, "In Search of the Austen Adaptation." This week 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

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are excited to bring you a much anticipated interview with Dr. Carolyn Weber, author of the popular memoir, Surprised by Oxford. She is also currently a professor at New College Franklin. To keep up with Carolyn, visit carolynweber.com or follow her on Facebook. Angelina and Cindy kick off the conversation by asking Carolyn about her childhood and how she came to love reading. They talk about her experience in school education and whether that differed from her personal reading life. Carolyn talks about her love of teaching and her immersive literary education experience at Oxford. She also expands on the way that reading the Bible for the first time opened her eyes to so many more of the truths in the literature she had read. Commonplace Quotes: Unexpectedly, it was Oxford that taught me it was okay to be both feminine and smart, that intelligence was, as a friend put it, a "woman's best cosmetic." Carolyn Weber I'm like an addict when it comes to books. Compelled to read, understand, savor, wrangle with, be moved by, learn to live from these silent companions who speak so loudly. Surely some language must have a word for such a "book junkie"? Carolyn Weber We must not, that is, try to behave as though the Fall had never occurred nor yet say that the Fall was a Good Thing in itself. But we may redeem the Fall by a creative act. Dorothy Sayers Batter my heart, three-person'd God by John Donne Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. Book List: Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber Holy Is the Day by Carolyn Weber The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Robertson Davies Margaret Atwood Stephen Leacock Flannery O'Connor Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv Mousekins books by Edna Miller Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Paradise Lost by John Milton The Crosswicks Journals by Madeleine L'Engle Elizabeth Goudge Frederick Buechner Frankenstein by Mary Shelley The Epic of Gilgamesh Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The Giver by Lois Lowry The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass by Adrian Plass A Small Cup of Light by Ben Palpant Letters from the Mountain by Ben Palpant Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon Come Away, My Beloved by Frances J. Roberts The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri 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 final episode in our series covering Mansfield Park by Jane Austen here on The Literary Life podcast. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas dive right into the book chat today in order to cover as much as possible as they wrap up Fanny Price's story. Angelina brings out the parallels to Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. Cindy talks about how Julia and Maria's upbringing is instructive for parents. Another topic is how, in a way, the characters continue their roles from "Lover's Vows" in real life unless they repent. Our hosts also highlight Fanny's journey toward finding a home throughout this story. Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! Also, check out the House of Humane Letters newsletter to get in on the read-a-long of Shakespeare's The Tempest. To view the schedule for upcoming episodes, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more! Commonplace Quotes: To educate means to help the human soul enter into the totality of the real. Luigi Giussani, from the forward to Beauty for Truth's Sake The man who is endowed with logical astuteness is very apt to keep himself in practice by taking up indefensible positions for the fun of defending them. G. M. Young Information can thrill, but only once. Wendell Berry Amoretti Sonnet XXII by Edmund Spenser This holy season, fit to fast and pray, Men to devotion ought to be inclin'd: Therefore I likewise on so holy day, For my sweet saint some service fit will find. Her temple fair is built within my mind, In which her glorious image placed is, On which my thoughts do day and night attend, Like sacred priests that never think amiss. There I to her as th' author of my bliss, Will build an altar to appease her ire: And on the same my heart will sacrifice, Burning in flames of pure and chaste desire: The which vouchsafe, O goddess, to accept, Amongst thy dearest relics to be kept. Book List: Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins The Risk of Education by Luigi Giussani Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott Daylight and Champaign by G. M. Young A Preface to the Faerie Queene by Graham Hough Ourselves by Charlotte Mason Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber 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 for another installment in our series covering Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share their commonplace quotes which leads them into discussing Fanny's character in contrast to the heroine of a gothic novel. They talk about what makes a good marriage in the Regency period and Jane Austen's own personal life, as well as the contrast between the household of Sir Thomas compared to Fanny's own family home. Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! Also, check out the House of Humane Letters newsletter to stay in the know about our upcoming read-a-long of Shakespeare's The Tempest. To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more! Commonplace Quotes: Fear the man who says he knows how things should be. He doesn't Alexander Galich Things were easier for us. We were brought up on stories with happy endings and on the Prayer Book. C. S. Lewis One of the most dangerous of literary ventures is the little, shy, unimportant heroine whom none of the other characters value. The danger is that your readers may agree with the other characters. Something must be put into the heroine to make us feel that the other characters are wrong, that she contains the depths they never dreamed of. That is why Charlotte Brontë would have succeeded better with Fanny Price. To be sure, she would have ruined everything else in the book; Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris would have been distorted from credible types of pompous dullness, lazy vapidity and vulgar egoism into fiends complete with horns, tails and rhetoric. But through Fanny there would have blown a storm of passion which made sure that we at least would never think her insignificant. C. S. Lewis Something Nasty in the Bookshop by Kingsley Amis Between the Gardening and the Cookery Comes the brief Poetry shelf; By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology Offers itself. Critical, and with nothing else to do, I scan the Contents page, Relieved to find the names are mostly new; No one my age. Like all strangers, they divide by sex: Landscape Near Parma Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex, So does Rilke and Buddha. "I travel, you see", "I think" and "I can read" These titles seem to say; But I Remember You, Love is my Creed, Poem for J., The ladies' choice, discountenance my patter For several seconds; From somewhere in this (as in any) matter A moral beckons. Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart Or squash it flat? Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; Girls aren't like that. We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff Can get by without it. Women don't seem to think that's good enough; They write about it. And the awful way their poems lay them open Just doesn't strike them. Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them. Deciding this, we can forget those times We stayed up half the night Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes, And couldn't write. Book List: Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis Pamela by Samuel Richardson David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Jane Austen by Peter Leithart 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 are back to discuss the next several chapters of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. They pick back up with the continuation of the Cinderella theme in these chapters, and much of the conversation centers around the Crawfords and their ambitions and schemes. Once again, Fanny is demonstrated to be the embodiment of temperance. Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more! Commonplace Quotes: Lewis learnt that focusing on the state of his own mind was precisely the wrong way to obtain the imaginative pleasures that he had been seeking for ten years and more. Michael Ward Through seas of knowledge we our course advance, Discov'ring still new worlds of ignorance; And these discov'ries make us all confess That sublunary science is but guess; Matters of fact to man are only known, And what seems more is mere opinion; The standers-by see clearly this event; All parties say they're sure, yet all dissent; With their new light our bold inspectors press, Like Ham, to show their fathers' nakedness, By who example after ages may Discover we more naked are than they. Sir John Denham, "The Progress of Learning" The Inklings is now really very well provided, with Fox as chaplain, you as army, Barfield as lawyer, Havard as doctor–almost all the estates, except of course, anyone who could actually produce a single necessity of life: a loaf, a boot, or a hut. C. S. Lewis Sly Thoughts by Coventry Patmore "I saw him kiss your cheek!"—"T'is true." "O Modesty!"—"'T was strictly kept: He thought me asleep; at least, I knew He thought I thought he thought I slept." Book List: Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man by Michael Ward That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis Experiment in Criticism 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 this special Halloween episode of The Literary Life, Angelina (Harriet Vane), Cindy (Professor MacGonagall), and Thomas (Lord Peter Wimsey), talk about Edgar Allan Poe's tale, "The Masque of the Red Death." If you are a Patron, you can watch this episode and see our hosts in their costumes as they discuss the story! Angelina begins the chat with a little background on Edgar Allan Poe and his thoughts on the imagination and why he wrote the way he did, as well as connections with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Thomas points out the connection between this story and Boccaccio's Decameron. Highlights of the discussion include Poe's use of medieval motifs, the imagery and symbolism in Poe's writing, the modern person's avoidance of considering death, and Poe's idea of life as a play within a play. Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! Next week we will continue our series on Mansfield Park. To view the schedule for the episodes in the series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more! Commonplace Quotes: I am more concerned by what "the Bomb" is doing already. One meets young people who make the threat of it a reason for poisoning every pleasure and evading every duty in the present. Didn't they know that, bomb or no bomb, all men die, many in horrible ways? There is no good moping and sulking about it. C. S. Lewis There are certain evil men who would be less dangerous if there were not some scrap of virtue in them. La Rochefoucauld This handmaiden (poesy) is not forbidden to moralize in her own fashion. She is not forbidden to depict but to reason and preach of virtue. Edgar Allan Poe, from his review of Longfellow's Ballads Sonnet – To Science by Edgar Allan Poe Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree? Source: The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946) Book List: Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis Maxims and Reflections by François de La Rochefoucauld "The Philosophy of Composition" by Edgar Allan Poe The Murders in the Rue Morge by Edgar Allan Poe The Decameron by Giovanni Boccacio Comus by John Milton The Tempest by William Shakespeare The Castle of Utronto by Horace Walpole Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen Oxford Book of English Verse ed. by Arthur Quiller-Couch Hamlet by William Shakespeare 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 are continuing their series on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. This is the third episode in the series. They open their discussion talking about the virtue of temperance and how Fanny Price embodies temperance. In looking at the plot and the reaction of various characters to Sir Thomas' return, they bring out more of Fanny's virtues in contrast to the vices of other players in this section. Other themes highlighted in this section are the harp as a symbol of harmony, the problem of self-focus, the qualities of nature, and the Cinderella story parallels Austen is playing with. Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more! Commonplace Quotes: He had a head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief. Edward Hyde Here, again, I would urge that appreciation is not a voluntary offering, but a debt we owe, and a debt we must acquire the means to pay by patient and humble study. In this, as in all the labours of the conscience seeking for instruction, we are enriched by our efforts; but self-culture should not be our object. Let us approach Art with the modest intention to pay a debt that we owe in learning to appreciate. So shall we escape the irritating ways of the connoisseur! Charlotte Mason The temperate man is so well-ordered that he does not feel the temptations of passion or desire. There is a difficulty about temperance, too, since it is a virtue that consists chiefly of not doing things. The liveliness of action and imagery must occur chiefly among its opponents, and we know what is liable to happen in this situation, even when there is no doubt about where our moral sympathy should lie. We have seen it in many works of fiction. But Guyon remains a colorless hero, and there is neither a heroic trial nor a radiant climax to his quest. Graham Hough To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may forever tarry. Book List: Lord Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion by Edward Hyde Ourselves by Charlotte Mason A Preface to the Faerie Queene by Graham Hough "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe 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, we continue our conversation on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share their commonplace quotes, then dive into the book chat, beginning with some commentary on Fanny's education in contrast to that of the Bertram sisters. They also talk about the concepts of restraint, temptation, and boundaries and how we see these ideas play out in the various characters. Angelina points out how Fanny is the fixed moral center throughout this whole section. She also talks about the play within the novel and how Austen's use of this form reflects Shakespeare. We hope that the discussion opens up new levels of understanding for you as you read this novel along with us! To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more! Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: I entirely agree that it's no good trying to coerce or argue artists into giving what they haven't got. Either they burst into tears, or go sullen, or–if they are hearty extraverts–they cheerfully turn out fifteen new versions, each worse than the last. Actors too. They're the most kittle cattle of the lot. Dorothy Sayers, in a letter to C. S. Lewis While affording some secrets of the way of the will to young people, we should perhaps beware of presenting the ideas of self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control. All adequate education must be outward bound, and the mind which is concentrated on self-emolument, even though it be the emolument of all the virtues, misses the higher and the simpler secrets of life. Duty and service are the sufficient motives for the arduous training of the will that the child goes through with little consciousness. Charlotte Mason She is almost a Jane Austen heroine condemned to a Charlotte Brontë situation. We do not even believe in what Jane Austen tells us of her good looks; whenever we are looking at the action through Fanny's eyes, we feel ourselves sharing the consciousness of a plain woman. C. S. Lewis, "A Note on Jane Austen" 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'ercharged with burden 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 expressed. O, learn to read what silent love hath writ. To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. Book List: Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason 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 with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks. Today our hosts embark on a new series of discussions as we read through Jane Austen's Mansfield Park together. To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Our hosts open the conversation with their first experience with this book and some thoughts on why people may struggle with Mansfield Park more than any other Austen novel. Angelina highlights the similarities some people note between Austen and Shakespeare and how this book illustrates that point. Thomas responds to criticisms that Fanny is a "prig." Cindy brings up the importance of place in this book thematically. Other ideas they discuss in this episode are moving from blindness to sight, the importance of triangles in this book, and appearances versus reality. Commonplace Quotes: Many come to wish their tower a well… W. H. Auden, from "The Quest" Sadly, we do not have a Christian culture today that easily discriminates between a person of spiritual depth and a person of raw talent. Like the wheat and the tares of Jesus' parable, they can be difficult to distinguish. The result is that more than a few people can be fooled into thinking they are being influenced by a spiritual giant when, in fact, they are being manipulated by a dwarf. Gordon MacDonald Would you think I was joking if I said that you can put a clock back, and that if the clock is wrong it is often a very sensible thing to do? But I would rather get away from that whole idea of clocks. We all want to progress. But progress mean getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man… If you look at the present state of the big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on. C. S. Lewis Fairy-tale Logic by A. E. Stallings Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks: Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat, Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat, Select the prince from a row of identical masks, Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote, Or learn the phone directory by rote. Always it's impossible what someone asks— You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe That you have something impossible up your sleeve, The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak, An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke, The will to do whatever must be done: Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son. As printed in Poetry Magazine, March 2010 Book List: Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald Voyage of the Dawn Treader 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

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, our hosts are continuing their discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If you missed last week's episode, you will want to go back and catch Part 1 here. Angelina kicks of the book chat with a look at the format of the story and how it keeps us in suspense. Thomas brings up the idea of forbidden knowledge found in this book and the similarities between it and Frankenstein. Some other topics covered in this episode include the dangers of dehumanizing victims of crime, the nature of sin and addiction, the Renaissance idea of the well-ordered man, and the mythic qualities of this story. Be sure to check out Thomas' class on The French Revolution and other fall webinars at House of Humane Letters. Don't forget to check out our sister podcast, The Well Read Poem, as well as Cindy's new podcast, The New Mason Jar! We will be back here on The Literary Life in two weeks with our first in a series of episodes on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Commonplace Quotes: One beautiful starry-skied evening, we two stood next to each other at a window, and I, a young man of about twenty-two who had just eaten well and had good coffee, enthused about the stars and called them the abode of the blessed. But the master grumbled to himself: "The stars, hum! hum! The stars are only a gleaming leprosy in the sky." Heinrich Heine It is a mistake, perhaps, to think that, to do one thing well, we must just do and think about that and nothing else all the time. It is our business to know all we can and to spend a part of our lives in increasing our knowledge of Nature and Art, of Literature and Man, of the Past and the Present. That is one way in which we become greater persons, and the more a person is, the better he will do whatever piece of special work falls to his share. Let us have, like Leonardo, a spirit 'invariably royal and magnanimous.' Charlotte Mason The poet's job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always takes place. Northrup Frye The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson From breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do — All alone beside the streams And up the mountain-sides of dreams. The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, And many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod. Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, Nor can remember plain and clear The curious music that I hear. Book List: Ourselves by Charlotte Mason The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye Frankenstein by Mary Shelley The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Paradise Lost by John Milton Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brönte The Picture of Dorian Gray by 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

Welcome to today's episode of The Literary Life Podcast! Today our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks explore Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. After their commonplace quote discussion, each cohost shares some personal thoughts on Robert Louis Stevenson. Be aware that this episode will contain some spoilers, though we will not spoil the full ending. Thomas shares some biographical information about R. L. Stevenson. Angelina points out the mythic quality of this story and the enduring cultural references inspired by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She and Thomas also discuss some of the differences between early and late Victorian writers. They also begin digging into the first section of the book. Join us again next week for the second part of this discussion. The fall schedule for the podcast will be posted soon on our Upcoming Events page for those who want to know what we will be reading and talking about on the podcast next! Don't forget to check out our sister podcast, The Well Read Poem, as well as Cindy's new podcast, The New Mason Jar! Commonplace Quotes: I would rather (said he) have the rod to be the general terrour to all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other. Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell Do not talk about Shakespeare's mistakes: they are probably your own G. M. Young The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn… They disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we see it for ourselves, but with a singular change–that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. Robert Louis Stevenson R L S by A. E. Houseman Home is the sailor, home from sea: Her far-borne canvas furled The ship pours shining on the quay The plunder of the world. Home is the hunter from the hill: Fast in the boundless snare All flesh lies taken at his will And every fowl of air. 'Tis evening on the moorland free, The starlit wave is still: Home is the sailor from the sea, The hunter from the hill. Book List: The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Daylight and Champaign by G. M. Young "Books Which Have Influenced Me" by Robert Louis Stevenson David Balfour by Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson King Solomon's Mines by H. Ryder Haggard The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Beowulf Robert Louis Stevenson by G. K. Chesterton God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen The Body Snatcher and Other Stories 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

Welcome to this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast! 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. Come back next week when we will explore Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Don't forget to check out our sister podcast, The Well Read Poem, as well as Cindy's new podcast, The New Mason Jar! 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

We are back this week on The Literary Life with the final another episode in our 2021 Summer Short Story series, a discussion of D. H. Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner." After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks begin the literary chat with some background information on the writer D. H. Lawrence. Cindy talks about her reaction to this story and the running thread of bitterness underlying throughout. Angelina highlights the significance of the cultural climate of the 1920s in this story. As the story unfolds, we see magical and fairy tale elements, as well as some significant symbols, including the rocking horse. Come back next week for an important episode on magic in literature and how to approach books with magical elements. Following that, we will explore Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Don't forget to check out our sister podcast, The Well Read Poem, as well as Cindy's new podcast, The New Mason Jar! Commonplace Quotes: Rather than being restricted to the simple material they can read on their own, young children need to listen to their teachers read more complex books aloud and engage in discussions about what they've heard—and, depending on their age, write about it. At the same time, teaching disconnected comprehension skills boosts neither comprehension nor reading scores. It's just empty calories. In effect, kids are clamoring for broccoli and spinach while adults insist on a steady diet of donuts. Natalie Wexler Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Alexander Pope, "Essay on Man" Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it. D. H. Lawrence The Wooden Horse of Myth by Oscar Williams The wooden horse of myth stands on the air arching a traitorous neck on roofed mankind: the clocks are eyeballs round with mock despair hunting in sanguine skylines of the mind: and cherub faces fluttering in position, dolls tethered by the nerves behind the curtain and soldiers draped about the foiled ignition portend an end momentously uncertain. Meanwhile the white-haired meadows of the sea sing in the fixtures of the music box: the crowning glory of the verb to be marches its fields of fire among the rocks-- while tides of flowers topple from the blood and horseless hills affirm their mountainhood. Book List: Studies in Classic American Literature by D. H. Lawrence The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence (not recommended) Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence 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 Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks are chatting with their indispensable assistant, Atlee Northmore, about his literary life. Atlee shares what it was like for him growing up in a family that supported reading and kept books around at all time. He talks about his school years and both his positive and negative memories of reading for school. Talking about college, Atlee tells about wanting to be a film maker and his experience studying writing screen plays. He shares how college and life circumstances temporarily dampened his love for story, but taking classes with Angelina and listening to the podcast has brought it all back. Also, if you are listening to this episode on the day it drops, you are not too late to sign up and join our 2021 Back to School online conference with special guest James Daniels! Get all the info and register at morningtimeformoms.com! On August 5th, Cindy Rollins' New Mason Jar podcast will be officially launching, so head over to thenewmasonjar.com to learn more and subscribe! Commonplace Quotes: One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books. Graham Greene …there is also a sort of wild fairy interest in them, which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good-boy stories which have been in later years composed for them. Sir Walter Scott, from German Popular Stories Information can thrill, but only once. Wendell Berry All suffices reckoned rightly: Spring shall bloom where now the ice is, Roses make the bramble sightly, And the quickening sun shine brightly, And the latter wind blow lightly, And my garden teem with spices. Christina Rossetti, "Amen" Inventory by Dorothy Parker Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. Book List: Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene The Way of Ignorance by Wendell Berry Stephen King The Harry Potter Collection The Spiderwick Chronicles A Series of Unfortunate Events The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson Notting Hill by Richard Curtis How to Read the Bible at Literature by Leland Ryken Dune by Frank Herbert Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters 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 this week's episode of The Literary Life and our discussion of Fred Uhlman's novella "Reunion." After they finished sharing their commonplace quotes, Cindy shares how she came across this novella and why she wanted to discuss it on the podcast. Thomas talks about the historical backdrop of the book as well as a little biographical info about the Uhlman. Angelina points out how much this story drove home the point of how assimilated the Jewish people were into European society and culture. They talk about the friendship between Hans and Konradin and their common taste in great literature. Other topics discussed were the unreality of what was happening in Germany, personal loyalty versus political loyalty, the dilemma of understanding pre-World War II Germany, and the power of a faithful life. Join us back here next week for an episode on The Literary Life of Atlee Northmore! We are excited to announce our third annual Literary Life Back to School Online Conference! This year's theme is Awakening: The Pursuit of True Education, and our featured guest speaker is James Daniels. The conference will take place on August 4-7, 2021, and you can learn more and register at morningtimeformoms.com. Cindy also has some exciting announcements, including the debut of the new expanded edition of her book Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love, is now available! AND she is starting a new Charlotte Mason podcast called The New Mason Jar, set to begin airing on August 5, 2021! Commonplace Quotes: Literature is full of teaching, by precept and example, concerning the management of our physical nature. I shall offer a lesson here and there by way of sample, but no doubt the reader will think of many better teachings; and that is as it should be; the way such teaching should come to us is, here a little and there a little, incidentally, from books which we read for the interest of the story, the beauty of the poem, or the grace of the writing. Charlotte Mason I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War. I read early and voraciously and indiscriminately–Andrew Lang's colored Fairy Book, Hans Andersen, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and my very favorite book, Asgard and the Gods, a German scholarly text, with engravings, about Norse mythology, which my mother had used as a crib in her studies of Ancient Norse. I never really like stories about children doing what children do–quarreling and cooking and camping. I like magic, the unreal, the more than real. I learned from the Asgard book that even the gods can be defeated by evil. I knew nothing about the Wagnerian Nordic pageantry of the Third Reich. Nor did I have any inkling that the British occupying forces in Germany after the war were going to ban the Grimms because they fed a supposedly bloodthirsty German imagination. Indeed, I retreated into them from wartime anxieties. A. S. Byatt Every fairy tale worth recording at all is the remnant of tradition possessing true historical value; historical, at least, insofar as it has arisen out of the mind of a people under special circumstance, and risen not without meaning, nor removed altogether from their sphere of religious faith. John Ruskin Sonnet 104 by William Shakespeare To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived: For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred: Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead. Book List: Reunion by Fred Uhlman Ourselves by Charlotte Mason Possession by A. S. Byatt The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt Paris, 1919 by Margaret MacMillan Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (not recommended) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 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's episode of The Literary Life podcast is in celebration of our 100th episode! Our host held a LIVE Q&A session in the Patreon group, fielding questions from patrons and social media followers alike. Questions range from topics such as what has surprised them about their reading lives this year, to what writing projects they have going on behind the scenes, to literary landmarks and so much more! Thank you to all our listeners and supporters for making this journey possible and for just listening every week. We appreciate each and every one of you! Join us again next week for our discussion of Frank Uhlman's short story "Reunion." We are excited to announce our third annual Literary Life Back to School Online Conference! This year's theme is Awakening: The Pursuit of True Education, and our featured guest speaker is James Daniels. The conference will take place on August 4-7, 2021, and you can learn more and register at morningtimeformoms.com. Cindy also has some exciting announcements, including the debut of the new expanded edition of her book Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love, is now available! AND she is starting a new Charlotte Mason podcast called The New Mason Jar, set to begin airing on August 5, 2021! Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: If you've got something you want to say, just think first as to whether it's really worthwhile, and you're sure to find that it isn't. Hugh Walpole, "The Enemy in Ambush" The vicar's wife would not be quite that endless whimper of self-pity which she now is, if she did not in a sense "love" the family. The continued disappointment of her continued and ruthless demand for sympathy, for affection, for appreciation has helped to make her what she is. The greed to be loved is a fearful thing. Some of those who say, and almost with pride, that they live only for love, come at last to live in incessant resentment. C. S. Lewis Lastly, from the properties (the castle on the mountain, the cottage in the wood, the helpful beasts, the guardian dragons, the cave, the fountain, the trysting lane, etc.), he will acquire the basic symbols to which he can add railway trains, baths, wrist-watches and what-have-you from his own experience, and so build up a web of associations which are the only means by which his inner and outer life, his past and his present, can be related to, and mentally enrich, each other. Half our troubles, both individual neuroses and collective manias like nationalism, seem to me to be caused largely by our poverty of symbols, so that not only do we fail to relate one experience to another but also we have to entrust our whole emotional life to the few symbols we do have. W.H. Auden, In Praise of the Brothers Grimm, The New York Times Book Review, 12 November 1944 Imagination by John Davidson There is a dish to hold the sea, A brazier to contain the sun, A compass for the galaxy, A voice to wake the dead and done! That minister of ministers, Imagination, gathers up The undiscovered Universe, Like jewels in a jasper cup. Its flame can mingle north and south; Its accent with the thunder strive; The ruddy sentence of its mouth Can make the ancient dead alive. The mart of power, the fount of will, The form and mould of every star, The source and bound of good and ill, The key of all the things that are, Imagination, new and strange In every age, can turn the year; Can shift the poles and lightly change The mood of men, the world's career. Book List: God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall by Sir Thomas Browne The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom A. W. Tozer Trusting God by Jerry Bridges Between Walden and the Whirlwind by Jean Fleming Edith Schaeffer Esther de Waal The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis Northrop Frye George Lyman Kittredge Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes by Ken Meyers King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard Dorothy L. 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

This week on The Literary Life, we bring you another episode in our 2021 Summer Short Story series. This week Angelina, Cindy and Thomas talk about E. M. Forster's short story "The Machine Stops." If you are interested in more E. M. Forster chat, you can go listen to our hosts discuss "The Celestial Omnibus" in Episode 17. Angelina points out how this story made her think of Dante. Thomas and Cindy share their personal reactions to reading "The Machine Stops." They marvel at how prescient Forster was to imagine a world that comes so close to our current reality. They also discuss how to stay human in an increasingly de-humanizing world. On July 15, 2021, we will be celebrating our 100th episode hosting a LIVE Q&A episode in our Patreon group, and you can ask questions in our Facebook group with hashtag #litlife100. The recording will air on July 20th. We are excited to announce our third annual Literary Life Back to School Online Conference! This year's theme is Awakening: The Pursuit of True Education, and our featured guest speaker is James Daniels. The conference will take place on August 4-7, 2021, and you can learn more and register at morningtimeformoms.com. Cindy also has some exciting announcements, including the debut of the new expanded edition of her book Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love, is now available! AND she is starting a new Charlotte Mason podcast called The New Mason Jar, set to begin airing on August 5, 2021! Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: Imagination, in its earthbound quest, Seeks in the infinite its finite rest. Walter de la Mare (from "Books") from "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone. The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men. Book List: Two Stories and a Memory by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Howards End by E. M. Forster The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison 1984 by George Orwell 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 bring you our first Summer Short Story episode covering "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy. To start off the discussion of this short story, Thomas gives us some background to help answer Angelina's question about why this story seems so very different from other Tolstoy works. Angelina shares how to approach this story like a parable. Cindy brings up the question of the difference between ambition and vocation in terms of contentment. On July 15, 2021, we will be celebrating our 100th episode hosting a LIVE Q&A episode in our Patreon group, and you can ask questions in our Facebook group with hashtag #litlife100. The recording will air on July 20th. We are excited to announce our third annual Literary Life Back to School Online Conference! This year's theme is Awakening: The Pursuit of True Education, and our featured guest speaker is James Daniels. The conference will take place on August 4-7, 2021, and you can learn more and register at morningtimeformoms.com. Cindy also has some exciting announcements, including the debut of the new expanded edition of her book Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love, which will be available in early July. AND she is starting a new Charlotte Mason podcast called The New Mason Jar, set to drop on August 5, 2021! Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: It is a mistake, perhaps, to think that, to do one thing well, we must just do and think about that and nothing else all the time. It is our business to know all we can and to spend a part of our lives in increasing our knowledge of Nature and Art, of Literature and Man, of the Past and the Present. That is one way in which we become greater persons, and the more a person is, the better he will do whatever piece of special work falls to his share. Let us have, like Leonardo, a spirit invariably royal and magnanimous. Charlotte Mason Earth's Eternity by John Clare Man, Earth's poor shadow! talks of Earth's decay: But hath it nothing of eternal kin? No majesty that shall not pass away? No soul of greatness springing up within? Thought marks without hoar shadows of sublime, Pictures of power, which if not doomed to win Eternity, stand laughing at old Time For ages: in the grand ancestral line Of things eternal, mounting to divine, I read Magnificence where ages pay Worship like conquered foes to the Apennine, Because they could not conquer. There sits Day Too high for Night to come at–mountains shine, Outpeering Time, too lofty for decay. Book List: Ourselves by Charlotte Mason Book of Virtues ed. by William Bennett Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom 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 on Sophocles' Greek drama Antigone. Thomas starts out the conversation setting up the background circumstances for this play. He talks about the different roles the main characters play in relation to each other. Angelina and Cindy share some parallels they see between Sophoclean and Shakespearean characters and dialogue. They look closely at Creon's flaws and his interaction with his son, as well as his ultimate downfall. Be sure to come back next week for our first Summer Short Story episode on "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy. We are excited to announce our third annual Literary Life Back to School Online Conference! This year's title is Awakening: The Pursuit of True Education, and our featured guest speaker is James Daniels. The conference will take place on August 4-7, 2021, and you can learn more and register at morningtimeformoms.com. We also will be celebrating our 100th episode hosting a LIVE Q&A episode in our Patreon group, and you can ask questions in our facebook group with hashtag #litlife100. Commonplace Quotes: All true poetry can be interpreted in manifold different ways, for it has arisen from life and it returns back to life. It hits us like sunshine no matter where we are standing. For that reason a moral precept or a relevant object lesson can be readily derived from these tales; it was never their purpose to instruct, nor were they made up for that reason, but a moral grows out of them, just as good fruit develops from healthy blossoms without help from man. Wilhelm Grimm A Dirge by Christina Rossetti Why were you born when the snow was falling? You should have come to the cuckoo's calling, Or when grapes are green in the cluster, Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster For their far off flying From summer dying. Why did you die when the lambs were cropping? You should have died at the apples' dropping, When the grasshopper comes to trouble, And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble, And all winds go sighing For sweet things dying. Book List: The Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles 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 first episode in our series on Sophocles' Greek drama Antigone. After sharing a little about their background with this play, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas talk about the overall structure and the conventions of Greek Drama and Greek Tragedy. Thomas also gives an overview of the type of characters to expect in Greek Tragedy, and he highlights the ways in which Sophocles changed Greek Drama. Angelina explains the ideas of unity of time, unity of place, and unity of plot as presented by Aristotle. Thomas also summarizes the myth on which this play is based, talks about Creon's character, and expands on some of the tensions present in Antigone. Commonplace Quotes: You don't know what ideas my mind-spirit needs right now; I don't know what your mind-spirit need; and we don't know the mind-spirit needs of each child in a classroom. Vital ideas are not sold pre-measured in a bottle. Anne White She had a terror of solitary evenings, all the terror of one who did not care for books, who was soaked in superstition and loved lights and noise. Hugh Walpole When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves. The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness which I find illuminating: hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe. The strange and terrible thing is that this kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. The great tragedians have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. Madeleine L'Engle A Scot to Jeanne D'Arc by Andrew Lang DARK Lily without blame, Not upon us the shame, Whose sires were to the Auld Alliance true; They, by the Maiden's side, Victorious fought and died; One stood by thee that fiery torment through, Till the White Dove from thy pure lips had passed, And thou wert with thine own St. Catherine at the last. Once only didst thou see, In artist's imagery, Thine own face painted, and that precious thing Was in an Archer's hand From the leal Northern land. Book List: Ideas Freely Sown by Anne White The Thirteen Travellers by Hugh Walpole The Sea Tower by Hugh Walpole A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis The Oresteia by Aeschylus The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles Mythology by Edith Hamilton The Poetics by Aristotle Trojan Women by Euripides The Bacchae by Euripides 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, your Literary Life podcast hosts, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks are happy to be joined by Kelly Cumbee to talk about Edmund Spenser. They begin the conversation with Kelly giving a little biographical information on Spenser. Kelly shares how she came to read The Faerie Queene with her own children and for her education, then fell in love with it herself. Angelina talks about Spenser's style of writing and his vision for creating a medieval feel in his work. Kelly gives us a brief synopsis of the general outline of The Faerie Queene and the virtues that are the focus of each book. Some other topics they discuss are the courtly love tradition, the harmony between the court and the country, the journey of the soul pictured in the quest stories, and the levels of reading that may be applied to The Faerie Queene. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. You can find Kelly Cumbee on her blog at Landscape Plotted and Pieced. Commonplace Quotes: That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love… William Wordsworth That men have been burnt alive willingly is a fact of no little interest to anyone who has ever put his hand in the flame of a candle. G. K. Chesterton The poem is a great palace, but the door into it is so low that you must stoop to go in. No prig can be a Spenserian. It is, of course, much more than a fairy tale, but unless we can enjoy it as a fairy tale first of all, we shall not really care for it. C. S. Lewis I chose books that I wanted to read for my own education and brought the children along with me. This made homeschooling and morning time a feast for my soul as well as theirs. Jamie Marstall Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name by Edmund Spenser One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. "Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay, A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise." "Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew." Book List: The Shepheard's Calendar by Edmund Spenser St. George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges and Trina Schart Hyman Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves by Edmund Spenser and Roy Maynard The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, ed. by A. C. Hamilton The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, Penguin edition Orlando Furioso by Lodovico Ariosto The Aeneid by Virgil The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis The Last Romantics by Graham Hough A Book of Emblems by Andrea Alciati Stories from The Faerie Queene by Jenny Lang Stories from The Faerie Queene by Mary Macleod Hackett Classics Faerie Queene Collection Amoretti by Edmund Spenser 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 wrap up their series on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas open the discussion with some commentary on the wickedness in the heart of every human and the cost of courage to stand against the crowd. They examine Beatty's character and why he might have wanted to die. Angelina brings up the way in which Montag's courage convicts Faber of his own cowardice. They also talk about the detrimental effects of pleasure-seeking being the driving goal of people's existence. Other topics of discussion include the images of death and rebirth, the importance of remembrance, and having humility instead of hubris. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Previous episodes you may want to check out if you are new The Literary Life: An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis (Episodes 20-23) and "Are Women Human" by Dorothy L. Sayers (Episode 9). Commonplace Quotes: There is no such thing as low brows, only low hearts. C. S. Lewis More unsolicited advice: if you really want a well-read, well-educated child, you will stop dropping books or subjects just because he doesn't think he likes them. Education is the development of taste, not the reinforcement of a child's lack of it. Brandy Vencel People ask me to predict the future when all I want to do is prevent it. Ray Bradbury from "Four Quartets" by T. S. Elliot The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire. Book List: Selected Literary Essays by C. S. Lewis An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis 1984 by George Orwell Animal Farm by George Orwell A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess Lord of the Flies by William Golding 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 continue with the second part of their series on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy dive into the topics at hand, including but not limited to the following: Clarisse's role as a Beatrice character, the gift of inspiration versus the gift of interpretation in art, living in an age of distraction, the passing down of cultural memory, and leisure as the basis of education. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Commonplace Quotes: Long and delicate maneuverings had bred in him a habit of deceit, and his success had convinced him that in politics, dishonesty was but a venial offense. J. D. Mackie "I would not have you think I was doing nothing then." He might, perhaps, have studied more assiduously; but it may be doubted whether such a mind as his was not more enriched by roaming at large in the fields of literature than if it had been confined to any single spot. The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular. The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks? James Boswell, quoting Samuel Johnson Interviewer: How does the story of Fahrenheit 451 stand up in 1994? Ray Bradbury: It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days….It's thought control and freedom of speech control. Ray Bradbury Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. Book List: Cavalier and Puritan by J. D. Mackie The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner The Divine Comedy by Dante Leisure: the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper Range by David Epstein 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 another episode of The Literary Life podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks! This week our hosts open a new series on Ray Bradbury's well-known novel Fahrenheit 451. They talk about the form of the dystopian novel and why it is such a popular form in the modern world. Angelina shares some background on the form, as well as some of the foremost authors and books in this genre. Then they dive into the text, starting with the images of the hearth and the salamander. Looking at the world Bradbury has created, they take note of some of the major ideas and discuss any similarities to our current culture seen in these first several chapters. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Commonplace Quotes: If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that that is all the story is about, they are very definitely wrong. Neil Gaiman It will be a bad day for England when we have done with Shakspere; for that will imply, along with the loss of him, that we are no longer capable of understanding him. George MacDonald Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school it was during the Depression, and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for ten years. Ray Bradbury from "The Burning of the Leaves" by Laurence Binyon Now is the time for the burning of the leaves. They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke Wandering slowly into a weeping mist. Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves! A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist. The last hollyhock's fallen tower is dust; All the spices of June are a bitter reek, All the extravagant riches spent and mean. All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost; Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild Fingers of fire are making corruption clean. Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare, Time for the burning of days ended and done, Idle solace of things that have gone before: Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there; Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind. The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more. Book List: A Dish or Orts by George MacDonald Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Stardust by Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman 1984 by George Orwell Animal Farm by George Orwell Brave New World by Aldous Huxley That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis Utopia by Thomas More Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Frankenstein by Mary Shelley The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson H. G. Wells "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis 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

This week on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts continue their discussion of The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. After sharing some commentary on their commonplace quotes for the week, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas talk about the things that stood out to them as they read the second half of The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Some of the ideas they share are the following: the commonality of being ordinary, the responses people have to terminal illness, the one person who gives Ilyich comfort, and the humiliation of death. Angelina highlights the Orthodox metaphors and Christian imagery that are so prevalent in the end of this story. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Commonplace Quotes: The only inconvenience is that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection, and in the meantime the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair. Jonathon Swift The humanities do not always make a man humane–that is, liberal, tolerant, gentle, and candid as regards the opinions and status of other men. The fault does not lie in any one of these or in any other of the disciplinary subjects, but in our indolent habit of using each of these as a sort of mechanical contrivance for turning up the soil and sowing the seed. Charlotte Mason I should be cautious of censuring anything that has been applauded by so many suffrages. Samuel Johnson O Child Beside the Waterfall by George Barker O Child beside the Waterfall what songs without a word rise from those waters like the call only a heart has heard- the Joy, the Joy in all things rise whistling like a bird. O Child beside the Waterfall I hear them too, the brief heavenly notes, the harp of dawn, the nightingale on the leaf, all, all dispel the darkness and the silence of our grief. O Child beside the Waterfall I see you standing there with waterdrops and fireflies and hummingbirds in the air, all singing praise of paradise, paradise everywhere. Book List: The Life of Samuel Johnson by Boswell School Education by Charlotte Mason The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 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 week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks delve into part one of a two-part discussion of Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Our hosts kick things off talking about their background with Russian literature, and Thomas gives some biographical information on Tolstoy. They also talk about the concept of the "holy fool." Some ideas discussed in this episode include the characters' responses to death, the mask of respectability, and the problem of discontent. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Commonplace Quotes: Arrogance is a weed that ever grows in a dunghill. Owen Feltham To enhance the wonder, see How arch his notices, how nice his sense Of the ridiculous; . . . . he can read The inside of the earth, and spell the stars; He knows the policies of foreign lands; Can string you names of districts, cities, towns, The whole world over, tight as beads of dew Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs; All things are put to question; he must live Knowing that he grows wiser every day, Or else not live at all, and seeing too Each little drop of wisdom as it falls Into the dimpling cistern of his heart: For this unnatural growth the trainer blame, Pity the tree… Meanwhile old grandame earth is grieved to find The playthings, which her love designed for him, Unthought of: in their woodland beds the flowers Weep, and the river sides are all forlorn. Oh! give us once again the wishing-cap Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood, And Sabra in the forest with St George! The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap One precious gain, that he forgets himself. William Wordsworth, from "Prelude" [Fairy stories] never seek to criticize or moralize, to protest or plead or persuade; and if they have an emotional impact on the reader, as the greatest of them to, that is not intrinsic to the stories. They would indeed only weaken that impact in direct proportion as soon as they set out to achieve it. They move by not seeking to move; almost, it seems, by seeking not to move. The fairy-story that succeeds is in fact not a work of fiction at all; . . . It is a transcription of a view of life into terms of highly simplified symbols; and when it succeeds in its literary purpose, it leaves us with a deep indefinable feeling of truth. C. M. Woodhouse, on Animal Farm, The Times Literary Supplement, 1954 Growing Old by Matthew Arnold What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The luster of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? —Yes, but not this alone. Is it to feel our strength— Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more loosely strung? Yes, this, and more; but not Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline. 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are no more. It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young; It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion—none. It is—last stage of all— When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man. Book List: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy Resolves: Divine, Political, and Moral by Owen Feltham War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Anton Chekhov Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev Papa Panov's Special Day by Mig Holder The Giagantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy Koshka's Tales: Stories from Russia by James Mayhew The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley How Much Land Does a Man Need and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy 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 Li

On The Literary Life podcast this week, hosts Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford interview their friend and veteran homeschool mother of 4, Adrienne Freas. Adrienne is now the Classical Education Advisor for the K-12 Curriculum and Professional Development Project at University of Dallas Classical Education Master's Degree program at the University of Dallas, and she is active in consulting and advocating for Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy. Adrienne was a featured speaker in the 2019 Back to School Conference, available for replay at morningtimeformoms.com. Adrienne describes her young life and how the fine arts were the highlight of her childhood and her early struggles to learn to read. She shares how high school literature teachers and reading the classics whet her appetite for even more great literature. She talks about the difference it makes to have a teacher who is enthusiastic and believes the students can step up to the challenge. Cindy, Angelina and Adrienne all share their love for Charlotte Mason and her philosophy of giving children a wide and generous curriculum. Commonplace Quotes: Whenever we are called to teach, our proclamation of goodness should be so wrapped in beauty as to console. This should apply to our daily actions as well, and it is an art. Timothy Patitsas Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. Martin Luther Q (Quiller-Couch) was all by himself my college education. I went down to the public library one day when I was 17 looking for books on the art of writing, and found five books of lectures which Q had delivered to his students of writing at Cambridge. "Just what I need!" I congratulated myself. I hurried home with the first volume and started reading and got to page 3 and hit a snag: Q was lecturing to young men educated at Eton and Harrow. He therefore assumed that his students—including me—had read Paradise Lost as a matter of course and would understand his analysis of the "Invocation to Light" in book 9. So I said, "Wait here," and went down to the library and got Paradise Lost and took it home and started reading it and got to page 3 when I hit a snag: Milton assumed I'd read the Christian version of Isaiah and the New Testament and had learned all about Lucifer and the War in Heaven, and since I'd been reared in Judaism I hadn't. So I said, "Wait here," and borrowed a Christian Bible and read about Lucifer and so forth, and then went back to Milton and read Paradise Lost, and then finally got back to Q, page 3. On page 4 or 5, I discovered that the point of the sentence at the top of the page was in Latin and the long quotation at the bottom of the page was in Greek. So I advertised in the Saturday Review for somebody to teach me Latin and Greek, and went back to Q meanwhile, and discovered he assumed I not only knew all the plays of Shakespeare, and Boswell's Johnson, but also the Second Book of Esdras, which is not in the Old Testament and is not in the New Testament, it's in the Apocrypha, which is a set of books nobody had ever thought to tell me existed. So what with one thing and another and an average of three "Wait here's" a week, it took me eleven years to get through Q's five books of lectures. Helene Hanff After Reading "Antony and Cleopatra" by Robert Louis Stevenson As when the hunt by holt and field Drives on with horn and strife, Hunger of hopeless things pursues Our spirits throughout life. The sea's roar fills us aching full Of objectless desire – The sea's roar, and the white moon-shine, And the reddening of the fire. Who talks to me of reason now? It would be more delight To have died in Cleopatra's arms Than be alive to-night. Book List: The Ethics of Beauty by Timothy Patitsas The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff Macbeth by William Shakespeare Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams The Turn of the Screw by Henry James Emily Dickinson The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition by Karen Glass A History of the English-Speaking People by Winston Churchill Paradise Lost by John Milton The Divine Comedy by Dante Algieri The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie Perceval by Chretien de Troyes Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan Lenten Lands by Douglas Gresham The Betrothed: I Promesi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni The Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Beothius Range by David Epstien Gene Stratton Porter Elizabeth Goudge Waverly by Sir Walter Scott Reorienting Rhetoric by John D. O'Banion Unbinding Prometheus by Donald Cowan Heidi by Johanna Spyri The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fischer The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster Beowulf translated by Burton Raffel The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser The Scarl

On this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks are joined by James Banks to discuss the value of reading Don Quixote and how to approach the book. They talk about translations and how to choose a translation of this particular work. James shares how he first read Miguel de Cervantes' classic work and gives a little contextual background on him as an author. He also argues that Don Quixote is a romance in the tradition of Spenser and is more of a satire of modernity than of chivalry. Other ideas discussed are the comic duo, the Spanish Renaissance literature, the travel novel, and how to dive into reading Don Quixote. It's not too late to register for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 with special guest speaker Wes Callihan. Head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up today! Listen to previous episodes with James Banks by going to The Literary Life podcast Episode 32 and Episode 33. Commonplace Quotes: Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. attributed to Abraham Lincoln I take it to be part and parcel of the same great process of Internalisation which has turned genius from an attendant daemon into a quality of the mind. Always, century by century, item after item is transferred from the object's side of the account to the subject's. And now, in some extreme forms of Behaviourism, the subject himself is discounted as merely subjective; we only think that we think. Having eaten up everything else, he eats himself up too. And where we 'go from that' is a dark question. C. S. Lewis Say you're an idiot. And say you're a Congressman. But I repeat myself. Mark Twain I don't like the word "allegorical." I don't like the word "symbolic." The word I really like is "mythic," and people always think that means "full of lies" when what it really means is full of a truth that cannot be told in any other way but a story. William Golding, BBC interview Clerihew by G. K. Chesterton The people of Spain think Cervantes Equal to half a dozen Dantes: An opinion resented most bitterly By the people of Italy. Book List: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis Lord of the Flies by William Golding Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens The Shadow of Cervantes by Wyndham 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 chat with Wes Callihan, founder of Schola Tutorials and primary instructor in the Old Western Culture series by Roman Roads Media. Thomas starts off our interview today asking Wes what he remembers about stories and reading as a young person. Wes shares how he came to be a teacher and how his literary life developed as he became an adult. Angelina asks Wes about his approach to challenging literature when he started out reading the great books. He shares the joy of reading aloud, even to yourself, rather than silently whenever possible. Wes also talks about how learning languages enhanced his reading as well. Find the Youtube video of Wes' personal library here. Don't forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 for which Wes Callihan will be our keynote speaker. Commonplace Quotes: I have called this work "meadow" on account of the delight, the fragrance and the benefit which it will afford those who come across it, for the virtuous life and the habitual piety do not merely consist of studying divinity, not only of thinking on an elevated plane about things as they are here and now. they must also include the description and writing of the way of life of others. So I have striven to complete this composition to inform your love, oh child, and as I have put together a copious and accurate collection, so I have emulated the most wise bee, gathering up the spiritually beneficial deeds of the fathers. John Moschos The fact that various persons have written angrily to say that the Judas I have depicted seems to them to be a person of the utmost nobility, actuated by extremely worthy motives, confirms my impression that this particular agent of hell is at present doing his master's work with singular thoroughness and success. His exploits go unrecognized – which is just what the devil likes best. Dorothy Sayers People enter politics or the Civil Service out of a desire to exert power and influence events; this, I maintain, is an illness. It is only when one realizes that great administrators and leaders of men have all been at any rate slightly mad that one has a true understanding of history. Auberon Waugh In essence, Tolkien was trying to recover the vision of Eden, the childhood of the race, when beauty was still connected with truth. Through story–the right kind of story, including traditional legends and fairy-tales–the ability to see all things with a pure heart and in the light of heaven could be evoked. He wanted to prove that poetic knowledge, George MacDonald's "wise imagination," could be awoken even in a world apparently closed to its very possibility. Stratford Caldecott On Shakespeare. 1630 by John Milton What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a stary-pointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. Book List: The Spiritual Meadow by John Moschos The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy Sayers Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George Papillon by Henri Charriere Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Paul Thoreaux Sailing the Inside Passage by Robb Keystone The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by John Mandeville The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco The Land of Darkness by Ibn Fadlan The Travels of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta Monologium by St. Anselm Cur Deus Homo by St. Anselm The Aeneid by Virgil The Iliad by Homer, trans. by Alexander Pope Pacific and Other Stories by Mark Helprin Ray Bradbury The Novels of Charles Williams G. K. Chesterton Alexander Pope Fyodor Dostoyevsky Leo Tolstoy Anton Chekhov Aleksander Solzhenitsyn The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis P. G. Wodehouse Edward Gibbon Philip Schaff Taliessin through Logres, The Region of the Summer Stars by Charles Williams Isaac Asimov Theodore Sturgeon Robert Heinlein Arthur C. Clarke 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, a

On this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks wrap up their discussion of George Eliot's Silas Marner. In this episode, Angelina reveals her light bulb moment connecting this story with Shakespeare's play, The Winter's Tale. Thomas talks about the changes in Silas as he has integrated back into the community through his love for Eppie. Cindy points out the characteristics we see in Nancy as a woman who has been through suffering and come out more gracious on the other side. Don't forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 with special guest speaker Wes Callihan. Commonplace Quotes: We are all willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. E. M. Forster Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keep the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. Aldous Huxley The worst evil in the world is brought about not by the open and self-confessed vices but by the deadly corruption of the proud virtues. Dorothy Sayers A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating 'round the perfect trees. And make us happy in the darting bird That suddenly above the bees is heard, The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, And off a blossom in mid air stands still. For this is love and nothing else is love, To which it is reserved for God above To sanctify to what far ends He will, But which it only needs that we fulfill. Book List: Two Cheers for Democracy by E. M. Forster Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Middlemarch by George Eliot The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy Sayers Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell The Tempest by William Shakespeare To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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 episode of The Literary Life Podcast, in which our hosts discuss George Eliot's book Silas Marner, chapters 10-15. Thomas kicks off the discussion by highlighting the character of Dolly Winthrop. Angelina talks about Silas Marner opening himself to grace in these chapters. She also points out the way that Eliot uses Godfrey's character to point out our own potential lack of moral courage. Cindy points out the problem of addiction for Molly in causing her to neglect her own baby. Angelina also talks about the Rumpelstiltskin parallels and other fairy tale elements in the book thus far. Don't forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 with special guest speaker Wes Callihan. Commonplace Quotes: Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours in a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge. Samuel Johnson Philosophy, like medicine, has a great number of drugs, and precious few genuine remedies. Nicolas Chamfort The feudal ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of moveables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty. E. M. Forster On My First Daughter by Ben Johnson Here lies, to each her parents' Ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth; Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due, It makes the father less to rue. At six months' end she parted hence With safety of her innocence; Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears, In comfort of her mother's tears, Hath placed amongst her virgin-train: Where, while that severed doth remain, This grave partakes the fleshly birth; Which cover lightly, gentle earth! Book List: The Year of Our Lord, 1943 by Alan Jacobs The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Complete Maxims and Thoughts by Nicolas Chamfort Howard's End by E. M. Forster The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot The History of the Devil by Daniel Defoe Sir Roger de Coverley by Joseph Addison Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Middlemarch by George Eliot The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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 Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks continue their discussion of George Eliot's Silas Marner, covering chapters 4-9. They talk about the problems facing the Cass family and their tense relationships, examine George Eliot's treatment of Silas Marner's victim-hood, reflect on the changing times of the Victorian period, and Thomas breaks out his "Cheers" accent. Don't forget to check out Angelina and Thomas' upcoming classes at HouseofHumaneLetters.com and Cindy's Discipleship for Moms on Patreon. Commonplace Quotes: Perhaps the first thing that he can learn from the artist is that the only way of "mastering" one's material is to abandon the whole conception of mastery and to co-operate with it in love: whosoever will be a lord of life, let him be its servant. Dorothy Sayers You said that we owe literature almost everything we are and what we have been. If books disappear, history will disappear, and human beings will also disappear. I am sure you are right. Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of transcendence. Some people think of reading only as a kind of escape: an escape from the "real" everyday world to an imaginary world, the world of books. Books are much more. They are way of being more fully human. Susan Sontag Just because a man is going to be hanged tomorrow it does not necessarily follow that he has anything interesting to say about it. Desmond MacCarthy Cradlesong by William Blake Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, Dreaming in the joys of night; Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep Little sorrows sit and weep. Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles. As thy softest limbs I feel Smiles as of the morning steal O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast Where thy little heart doth rest. O the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep! When thy little heart doth wake, Then the dreadful night shall break. Book List: The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers Criticism by Desmond MacCarthy Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry The Aeneid by Virgil Emma by Jane Austen 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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 Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks dig into George Eliot's Silas Marner. Today's discussion gives us an introduction to George Eliot and covers the first three chapters of the book. Thomas shares a little historical context for the setting of Silas Marner and how that affects the interpretation of this book. Angelina points out the ways in which Eliot uses some fairy tale and otherworldly elements to explore moral ideas. Don't forget to check out Angelina and Thomas' upcoming classes at HouseofHumaneLetters.com and Cindy's Discipleship for Moms on Patreon. Commonplace Quotes: A poem can be like two hands that lift you up and put you down in a new place. You look back with astonishment and find that because you have read a few lines on a printed page or listened for a couple of minutes to a voice speaking, you have arrived at somewhere quite different. Elizabeth Goudge Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong… Samuel Johnson These fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are. You can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wits, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people amongst whom your life is passed, that it is needful you should tolerate, pity and love. George Eliot Adlestrop by Edward Thomas Yes. I remember Adlestrop— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop—only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Book List: Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge The Dean's Watch by Elizabeth Goudge Adam Bede by George Eliot The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Middlemarch by George Eliot Romola by George Eliot Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings by George Eliot Silly Novels by Lady Novelists by George Eliot Far From the Madding Crowd 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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 excited to bring some special guests in to speak to the literary life of the educator Charlotte Mason. Along with Angelina, Thomas and Cindy, we also have Donna-Jean Breckenridge and Karen Glass of the AmblesideOnline Advisory. They start off by sharing some biographical information about who Charlotte Mason was and her background. Karen also talks about how and why Mason developed her practices and philosophy and her educational foundation, the PNEU. Donna-Jean mentions the interesting ephemera belonging to Charlotte Mason housed at the Armitt Museum in Ambleside. Finally, the talk turns to how widely Miss Mason read and how important books were to her throughout her whole life. Join us next week for the beginning episode of our series on George Eliot's Silas Marner, covering chapters 1-3. Before you go, don't forget that registration is opening soon at The House of Humane Letters for the spring. You can also check out Cindy's Discipleship Group for Moms on Patreon.com. Commonplace Quotes: Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. Lord Byron, from "Manfred" God is a mystery and not a fellow conspirator. J. B. Priestley There seems good reason to believe that the limit to human intelligence arises largely from the limit to human interests. Charlotte Mason He was fortified by illimitable reading, by a present sense of a thousand possibilities that had been brought to pass, of a thousand things so wisely said that wise action was a necessary outcome. Charlotte Mason The thing is to keep your eye upon words and wait to feel their force and beauty, and when words are so fit that no other words can be put in their places, so few that none can be left out without spoiling the sense, and so fresh and musical that they delight you, then you may be sure that you are reading literature, whether in prose or poetry. Charlotte Mason The Village Schoolmaster by Oliver Goldsmith Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was, and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew: Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned; Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault. The village all declared how much he knew — 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge; In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still, While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew. Book List: In Vital Harmony by Karen Glass Know and Tell by Karen Glass Consider This by Karen Glass Literature and Western Man by J. B. Priestley Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason The Golden Thread by Norman McLeod Scientific Dialogues by Jeremiah Joyce Jacob Behmen by Alexander Whyte The Cloud of Witness The Hidden Life of the Soul by Jean Nicolas Grou Anne of Geierstein: Maiden of the Mist by Sir Walter Scott The Savior of the World by Charlotte Mason Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason The History of Pendennis by William Thackeray The Egoist by George Meredith Hard Times by Charles Dickens David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Bleak House by Charles Dickens Joan and Peter by H. G. Wells Adam Bede by George Eliot Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy Areopagitica by John Milton 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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's book discussion on The Literary Life podcast centers around the book 84, Charing Cross Road. Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks share their first experiences reading this book of letters between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel. Cindy talks about her deep identification with Helene the first time she read 84, Charing Cross Road and how much she dreamed of going to England. Angelina and Thomas talk about the characteristics of Helene as a reader and as a person seeking self-education. Come back again next week for a special guest episode look at the literary life of Charlotte Mason! After that, we dig into George Eliot's Silas Marner. Commonplace Quotes: Our Japanese soldiers who came back from overseas were a pitiful sight. They looked thin, weak, and exhausted. And some of them were invalids, drained of color and borne on stretchers. But among the returning soldiers there was one company of cheerful men. They were always singing, even difficult pieces in several parts and they sang very well. When they disembarked at Yokosuka the people who came to greet them were astonished. Everyone asked if they had received extra rations, since they seemed so happy. These men had had no extra rations, but had practiced choral singing throughout the Burma campaign. Their captain, a young musician fresh from music school, had enthusiastically taught his soldiers how to sing. It was singing that kept up their morale through boredom or hardship and that bound them together in friendship and discipline during the long war years. Without it, they would never have come home in remarkable high spirits. Michio Takeyama Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error before an afflicted truth. Jeremy Taylor Secondhand booksellers are the most friendly and most eccentric of all the characters I have known. If I had not been a writer, theirs would have been the profession I would most happily have chosen. Graham Greene Reading in Wartime by Edwin Muir Boswell by my bed, Tolstoy on my table; Thought the world has bled For four and a half years, And wives' and mothers' tears Collected would be able To water a little field Untouched by anger and blood, A penitential yield Somewhere in the world; Though in each latitude Armies like forest fall, The iniquitous and the good Head over heels hurled, And confusion over all: Boswell's turbulent friend And his deafening verbal strife, Ivan Ilych's death Tell me more about life, The meaning and the end Of our familiar breath, Both being personal, Than all the carnage can, Retrieve the shape of man, Lost and anonymous, Tell me wherever I look That not one soul can die Of this or any clan Who is not one of us And has a personal tie Perhaps to someone now Searching an ancient book, Folk-tale or country song In many and many a tongue, To find the original face, The individual soul, The eye, the lip, the brow For ever gone from their place, And gather an image whole. Book List: 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff The Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama Holy Living by Jeremy Taylor The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff The Narnian by Alan Jacobs The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell P. G. Wodehouse A Modest Proposal by Jonathon Swift Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen The Dubliners by James Joyce The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals by Lord Byron Selected Letters by Jane Austen Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks discuss the importance of reading old books. They begin the conversation by addressing head on the idea that old books are irrelevant. They touch on the fact that when we use the phrase "old books" we mean not just any piece of literature from the past, but those which have stood the test of time. Don't forget to check out our brand new podcast, which has its very own feed, The Well Read Poem. The House of Humane Letters spring classes are opening for registration, so head over there to check out what is coming up! Commonplace Quotes: So, when his Folly opens The unnecessary hells, A Servant when He Reigneth Throws the blame on some one else. Rudyard Kipling I am informed by philologists that the "rise to power" of these two words, "problem" and "solution" as the dominating terms of public debate, is an affair of the last two centuries, and especially of the nineteenth, having synchronised, so they say, with a parallel "rise to power" of the word "happiness"—for reasons which doubtless exist and would be interesting to discover. Like "happiness", our two terms "problem" and "solution" are not to be found in the Bible—a point which gives to that wonderful literature a singular charm and cogency. . . . On the whole, the influence of these words is malign, and becomes increasingly so. They have deluded poor men with Messianic expectations . . . which are fatal to steadfast persistence in good workmanship and to well-doing in general. . . . Let the valiant citizen never be ashamed to confess that he has no "solution of the social problem" to offer to his fellow-men. Let him offer them rather the service of his skill, his vigilance, his fortitude and his probity. For the matter in question is not, primarily, a "problem", nor the answer to it a "solution". L. P. Jacks, Stevenson Lectures Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. C. S. Lewis To Walter de la Mare by T. S. Elliot The children who explored the brook and found A desert island with a sandy cove (A hiding place, but very dangerous ground, For here the water buffalo may rove, The kinkajou, the mungabey, abound In the dark jungle of a mango grove, And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree – The guardians of some long-lost treasure-trove) Recount their exploits at the nursery tea And when the lamps are lit and curtains drawn Demand some poetry, please. Whose shall it be, At not quite time for bed?… Or when the lawn Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn, The sad intangible who grieve and yearn; When the familiar is suddenly strange Or the well known is what we yet have to learn, And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change; When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance, Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range At witches' sabbath of the maiden aunts; When the nocturnal traveller can arouse No sleeper by his call; or when by chance An empty face peers from an empty house; By whom, and by what means, was this designed? The whispered incantation which allows Free passage to the phantoms of the mind? By you; by those deceptive cadences Wherewith the common measure is refined; By conscious art practised with natural ease; By the delicate, invisible web you wove – The inexplicable mystery of sound. Book List: The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis The Giver by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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 explore the popular Agatha Christie mystery novel, Death on the Nile. This discussion will contain spoilers, so if you haven't read or listened to the book yet, stop this episode! But before we get to the book chat, we want to announce that our brand new The Well Read Poem podcast is now live! Also, head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to check out the Winter Webinar Series and Kelly Cumbee's class on King Lear. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas begin the book discussion with a comparison of the authors known as the "Queens of Crime." They also talk about the form of detective novels and how Christie in particular plays with the form to keep readers on their toes. Thomas notes the similarities between Death on the Nile with Henry James' novel The Wings of the Dove. In addition to covering the plot of the story, our hosts walk us through the ways in which Christie writes in order to keep us guessing. If you haven't heard it before, please go and listen to Episode 3: The Importance of the Detective Novel. Commonplace Quotes: The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them. Saki (pen name of H. H. Munro) Pious worshipers, whether or mortal or immortal artists, do their deities little honor by treating their incarnations as something too sacred for rough handling. They only succeed in betraying a fear lest the structure should prove flimsy or false. Dorothy Sayers "Once I went professionally to an archæological expedition–and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do–clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth–the naked shining truth." Hercule Poirot, Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie When We First Met by Robert Bridges When first we met, we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master; Of more than common friendliness When first we met we did not guess. Who could foretell the sore distress, This irretrievable disaster, When first we met? -- We did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master. Book List: Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki (H. H. Munro) The Toys of Peace by Saki The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie Agatha Christie Ngaio Marsh Margery Allingham Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers The Wings of the Dove by Henry James Leave It to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse Tim Powers 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 https://cindyrollins.net, 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