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This week on The Literary Life podcast, our series on George MacDonald’s Phantastes continues. Today Angelina and Cindy discuss chapters 15-19. But before they get started, they announce the upcoming reading challenge for next year, the Literary Life 19 Books for 2021 challenge! Also, we are pleased to be bringing you Literary Life Commonplace Books, perfect for recording what you are reading, as well as all your favorite quotes. Angelina and Cindy open the book discussion with the idea of the “other world” structure in fantasy writing, as well as how influential MacDonald was on writers who came after him. They also go in depth with the concept of the Holy Spirit as the originator of creative thought in conjunction with MacDonald’s thoughts on the imagination. Angelina gets excited about the metaphorical descent into Hades in this section of the book. She and Cindy talk about the importance of the hope of redemption, the platonic ideal versus reality, and learning to let go instead of grasp at things. They also return to the idea of true education being noble unrest introduced in last week’s episode. Don’t forget to check out the Advent and Christmas resources our hosts have ready for your holiday season. As mentioned before, Cindy’s new edition of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah is available now, and it is not to late to start if you purchase the Kindle version. Check our CindyRollins.net for more information. Also, Thomas and Angelina have a sale going on for an Advent Bundle of their popular webinars, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and The Poetry of Advent. Additionally, Kelly Cumbee will be teaching a webinar series called “Seeking the Discarded Image: Nature.” Commonplace Quotes: Thomas Merton recognized at once when he wrote in his journal for July 18, 1964, “I began it this morning, studying it as a tract on monastic life, the myth of pilgrimage, the quest for the impossible island, the earthly paradise, the ultimate ideal,” for it is above all liturgical prayer and liturgical time that provide the structure of the journey as it unfolds around the two key anchor points: the Easter cycle, spent in the environs of the island of sheep, and the Christmas cycle with the monastic community of Alba. Esther de Waal I never could believe that a man who did not find God in other places, as well as in the Bible, ever found Him there at all. To find God in other books enables us to see clearly that He is more in the Bible than in any other book or in all books put together. George MacDonald Nightingales by Robert Bridges Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,     And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom                         Ye learn your song: Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,     Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air                         Bloom the year long!     Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:     Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,                         A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,     No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,                         For all our art.     Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men     We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,                         As night is withdrawn From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,     Dream, while the innumerable choir of day                         Welcome the dawn. Book List:W The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther De Waal At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood by George MacDonald A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers Parents and Children by Charlotte Mason Adam Bede by George Eliot 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 Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks continue their series on George MacDonald’s Phantastes, covering chapters 10-14. Angelina and Thomas open the book chat talking about disorientation and how MacDonald is using the mirror images to help us enter into Anados’ feelings. Some of the topics covered in these chapters are disenchantment and demystifying the world, the child of mysterious origin, seeing and not seeing, romanticism and the dark imagination. Don’t forget to check out the Advent and Christmas resources our hosts have ready for your holiday season. As mentioned before, Cindy’s new edition of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah is available now, and you can access the replay of her special live event if you visit her website. Check our CindyRollins.net for more information. Also, Thomas and Angelina have a sale going on for an Advent Bundle of their popular webinars, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and The Poetry of Advent. Additionally, Kelly Cumbee will be teaching a webinar series called “Seeking the Discarded Image: Nature.” Commonplace Quotes: He extended the boundaries of the world, but he never shifted its center. Alfred Noyes "Absolute attention is prayer." When May Sarton quoted those words of Simone Weil in her journal, she went on to say, "I have used that sentence often in talking about poetry to students, to suggest that if one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is given." Simone Weil, May Sarton, Esther de Waal For repose is not the end of education; its end is a noble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urging on the motions of life, which had better far be accelerated into fever, then retarded into lethargy. George MacDonald The Palm and the Pine by Heinrich Heine Beneath an Indian palm a girl Of other blood reposes; Her cheek is clear and pale as pearl Amid that wild of roses. Beside a northern pine a boy Is leaning fancy-bound. Nor listens where with noisy joy Awaits the impatient hound. Cool grows the sick and feverish calm, Relaxed the frosty twine.– The pine-tree dreameth of the palm, The palm-tree of the pine. As soon shall nature interlace Those dimly-visioned boughs, As these young lovers face to face Renew their early vows. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) William Morris by Alfred Noyes The Well at the World’s End by William Morris The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther De Waal The Imagination: Its Functions and Its Culture by George MacDonald William Morris Textiles Coloring Book Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams The Four Men by Hilaire Belloc Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol The Arabian Nights translated by Sir Richard Burton The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne Frankenstein by Mary Shelley The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe The Winter’s Tale 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 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 back to The Literary Life Podcast and the second episode of our series on George MacDonald's Phantastes, covering chapters 5-9. Angelina and Thomas kick off the book chat sharing some thoughts on the Duessa-type character in this section. Cindy mentions the connection she made to James Russell Lowell's poem, "The Vision of Sir Launfal." They go on to discuss the parallels between this section and the Pygmalion myth. Other mythological references abound throughout the story, as we will see. Our hosts go deep exploring the themes of deception, the fall, doppelgangers and spiritual death in these chapters. Don’t forget to check out the Advent and Christmas resources our hosts have ready for your holiday season. As mentioned before, Cindy’s new edition of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah is available now, and she has a live celebration even happening on November 19, 2020. Check our CindyRollins.net for more information. Also, Thomas and Angelina have a sale going on for an Advent Bundle of their popular webinars, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and The Poetry of Advent. Additionally, Kelly Cumbee will be teaching a webinar series called “Seeking the Discarded Image: Nature.” Be back next week when we will cover chapters 10-14. Remember to join the discussion in our Literary Life Discussion Group. Commonplace Quotes: A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg School isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world. Richard Louv Milton’s point in Paradise Lost is that free man can be instructed only by the non-compulsive forms, whether vision, parable, or drama. Hence Paradise Lost is a series of interlocking visions, Adam warned by the cathartic contrapuntal vision of satanic fall, and fall through vision of Eve. To fall is to choose an illusion, not a wrong reason. Northrup Frye When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be by John Keats When I have fears that I may cease to be     Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,  Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,     Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;  When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,     Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,  And think that I may never live to trace     Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;  And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,     That I shall never look upon thee more,  Never have relish in the faery power     Of unreflecting love—then on the shore  Of the wide world I stand alone, and think  Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv Notebooks on Renaissance Literature by Northrup Frye The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carol Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouquée Faust (Parts One and Two) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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 back to The Literary Life Podcast and the beginning of our series on George MacDonald’s Phantastes. Before our hosts, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas begin the book chat, though, we wanted to let you know about some Advent and Christmas resources ready for the upcoming holiday season. As mentioned before, Cindy’s new edition of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah is available now. Also, Thomas and Angelina have a sale going on for an Advent Bundle of their popular webinars, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and The Poetry of Advent. Cindy shares a little about her past reading of many of MacDonald’s books and the effect they had on her. Angelina and Cindy also give some pertinent biographical information about MacDonald and put him in his Victorian context. Angelina brings out the connections between Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and MacDonald’s Phantastes, including the questing element. In answer to Cindy’s question about the German word “Maerchen”, Thomas shares some ideas about what sorts of stories are included in that term. In this discussion, Angelina points out all the big themes of fairy tales and stories in general that we see right away in this story. Cindy highlights the role of the grandmother in this and other MacDonald stories. In light of the Faerie Queene connections, Thomas wonders if there will be a true woman and a false woman in this story. Angelina and Cindy go on to explore so many more of the ideas and themes presented in these chapters. Be back next week for chapters 5-9. Commonplace Quotes: There is no truth, however overpowering and clear, but men may escape from it by shutting their eyes. Cardinal John Henry Newman Hurry is a sort of violence on the soul. John Mark Comer I should have been shocked in my teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness. But now that I know, I there was no deception. The deception is all the other way round–in that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and Duty, which never lets us feel in our face the sweet air blowing from “the land of righteousness,” never reveals that elusive Form which if once seen mus inevitably be desire with all but sensuous desire–the thing (in Sappho’s phrase) “more gold than gold.” C. S. Lewis Maerchen by Walter de la Mare Soundless the moth-flit, crisp the death-watch tick; Crazed in her shaken arbour bird did sing; Slow wreathed the grease adown from soot-clogged wick: The Cat looked long and softly at the King. Mouse frisked and scampered, leapt, gnawed, squeaked; Small at the window looped cowled bat a-wing; The dim-lit rafters with the night-mist reeked: The Cat looked long and softly at the King. O wondrous robe enstarred, in night dyed deep: O air scarce-stirred with the Court’s far junketing: O stagnant Royalty — A-swoon? Asleep? The Cat looked long and softly at the King. Book List: Amazon affiliate links are used in this content. The Princess and The Goblin by George MacDonald Lilith by George MacDonald Hallelujah by Cindy Rollins The Christmas Stories and Poems of George MacDonald by George MacDonald The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer George MacDonald by C. S. Lewis The Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald Hard Times by Charles Dickens Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Adam Bede by George Eliot The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis The Purple Island by Phineas Fletcher 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 and Cindy Rollins tackle the topic of fairy stories, discussing the what, why and how of reading them. Angelina shares the distinctive characteristics of fairy stories in contrast to other types of stories, such as myths. They deal with the question of whether fairy tales are “escapist”, the influence of the Grimm brothers scholarly work on interpreting fairy stories, and allowing the story to unveil its deeper truths without forcing meaning onto it. Angelina gives an illustration of how to see the gospel messages in fairy tales by talking us through the story of Sleeping Beauty. She refutes the ideas that fairy tales are about human romance or are misogynistic. She also highlights some of the Enlightenment and Puritan responses to fairy tales that still linger with us today. Cindy and Angelina also discuss some common concerns such as the magical, weird, or scary aspects of fairy tales. Angelina also makes a distinction between folk tales, literary fairy tales, and cautionary tales. Be sure to be back next week for the beginning of our series on George MacDonald’s Phantastes. Commonplace Quotes: After a certain kind of sherry party, where there have been cataracts of culture but never on word or one glance that suggested a real enjoyment of any art, any person, or any natural object, my heart warms to the schoolboy on the bus who is reading Fantasy and Science Fiction rapt and oblivious of all the world beside.  C. S. Lewis Children are not deceived by fairy tales. They are often and gravely deceived by school stories. Adults are not deceived by science fiction. They can be deceived by stories in women’s magazines. C. S. Lewis Both fairy stories and realistic stories engage in wish fulfillment, but it is actually the realistic stories that are more deadly. Fairy stories do awaken desires in children, but most often it is not a desire for the fairy world itself. Most children don’t really want there to be dragons in modern England. Instead, the desire is for they know not what. This desire for something beyond does not empty the real world, but actually gives it new depths. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods. The reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. C. S. Lewis Ancient History by Siegfried Sassoon Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain,    Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees;   Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees,   He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain;   ‘He was the grandest of them all—was Cain!    ‘A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire;   ‘Swift as a stag; a stallion of the plain, ‘Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire.’ Grimly he thought of Abel, soft and fair— A lover with disaster in his face, And scarlet blossom twisted in bright hair.   ‘Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace? … ‘God always hated Cain’ … He bowed his head— The gaunt wild man whose lovely sons were dead. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) The World’s Last Night by C. S. Lewis An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” by C. S. Lewis The Princess and The Goblin by George MacDonald Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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, our hosts Angelina and Cindy chat with Cindy’s longtime friend and, according to her, the “smartest woman on the internet,” Wendi Capehart. Wendi is an adventurous mom of many and has lived throughout Asia. Now she lives the life of an at home librarian caring for her disabled daughter and spending time with her 15 grandchildren. She also serves on the AmblesideOnline Advisory board. Angelina starts off the conversation asking Wendi about her reading life beginning with her childhood memories of reading. Wendi talks a little about how books helped her survive and heal from the trauma of living in an abusive situation. They also discuss what the difference was for Wendi in leisurely reading and reading for school. Wendi shares some of the reasons she began homeschooling her own children, as well, and how she kept reading voraciously even after she became a mother. Angelina and Wendi talk about the brain and changing your reading habits to digest and enjoy more challenging books. Wendi shares how she built a library while one a military budget and moving frequently. They talked about too many things to mention in this summary, but you can scroll down for the many book titles mentioned in this episode! Commonplace Quotes: “We’re all fools,” said Clemens, “all the time. It’s just we’re a different kind each day. We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we’re not perfect and live accordingly.” Ray Bradbury Where science does not teach a child to wonder and admire it has perhaps no educative value. Charlotte Mason Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with tremendous difference–that it really happened–and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth, where the others are men’s myths. That is, the pagan stories are God expressing himself through the minds of poets, using such images as he found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through real things. C. S. Lewis If Only I Were King by A. A. Milne I often wish I were a King, And then I could do anything. If only I were King of Spain, I’d take my hat off in the rain. If only I were King of France, I wouldn’t brush my hair for aunts. I think, if I were King of Greece, I’d push things off the mantelpiece. If I were King of Norroway, I’d ask an elephant to stay. If I were King of Babylon, I’d leave my button gloves undone. If I were King of Timbuctoo, I’d think of lovely things to do. If I were King of anything, I’d tell the soldiers, “I’m the King!” Book List: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas Gene Stratton Porter The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton Jane Austen The Little Prince by Antione de Saint-Exupéry The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson The Heroes by Charles Kingsley The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham Kim by Rudyard Kipling The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis The Rescuers by Marjorie Sharp The Borrowers by Mary Norton Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome Booth Tarkington Ben Hur by Lew Wallace The Bears of Blue River by Charles Major Thornton W. Burgess 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 have our final installment of the series on C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Til We Have Faces. This week, our hosts finish up with Part 2, Chapters 1-4. Opening the conversation, Angelina shares some of her feelings on just having finished the book. She points out the importance of understanding the Cupid and Psyche myth. Cindy brings up the concept of a “sin-eater” in relation to Orual’s taking on of Psyche’s trials. They talk about the ways in which Orual begins to see more clearly and remember things differently at this point in the story. The theme of selfish love versus self-sacrificing love comes full circle as the book closes. Orual’s symbolic death and rebirth are key topics, and the allusions to Christ and the Gospel throughout this story are truly exciting. Join us next week for a special interview with Wendi Capehart on her literary life! Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: I can’t say I learned nothing, at St. Charles Borromeo. I learned bladder control; which is good for women, useful in later life. The second thing I learned was that I had got almost everything terribly wrong. Hilary Mantel We read Dante for his poetry and not for his theology because we have already met the theology elsewhere. W. H. Auden In the twinkling of an eye, in a time too small to be measured, and in any place, all that seems to divide us from God can flee away, vanish, leaving us naked before Him, like the first man, like the only man, as if nothing but He and I existed. And since that contact cannot be avoided for long, and since it means either bliss or horror, the business of life is to learn to like it. That is the first and greatest commandment. C. S. Lewis from “Autumn Journal” by Louis Macneice In a week I return to work, lecturing, coaching, As impresario of the Ancient Greeks Who wore the chiton and lived on fish and olives And talked philosophy or smut in cliques; Who believed in youth and did not gloze the unpleasant Consequences of age; What is life, one said, or what is pleasant Once you have turned the page Of love? The days grow worse, the dice are loaded Against the living man who pays in tears for breath; Never to be born was the best, call no man happy This side death. Conscious – long before Engels – of necessity And therein free They plotted out their life with truism and humour Between the jealous heaven and the callous sea. And Pindar sang the garland of wild olive And Alcibiades lived from hand to mouth Double-crossing Athens, Persia, Sparta, And many died in the city of plague, and many of drouth In Sicilian quarries, and many by the spear and arrow And many more who told their lies too late Caught in the eternal factions and reactions Of the city state. And free speech shivered on the pikes of Macedonia And later on the swords of Rome And Athens became a mere university city, And the goddess born of the foam Became the kept hetaera, heroine of Menander, And the philosopher narrowed his focus, confined His efforts to putting his own soul in order And keeping a quiet mind. And for a thousand years they went on talking, Making such apt remarks, A race no longer of heroes but of professors And crooked business men and secretaries and clerks Who turned out dapper little elegiac verses On the ironies of fate, the transience of all Affections, carefully shunning the over-statement But working the dying fall. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) Hallelujah by Cindy Rollins Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoire by Hilary Mantel The Dyer’s Hand by W. H. Auden The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs Descent into Hell by Charles Williams The Private Memoires and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg 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 back to The Literary Life Podcast! This week, our hosts are covering chapters 16-21 of C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Til We Have Faces. Also, to celebrate Cindy’s re-release of her book Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah, she is doing a social media giveaway over the next four weeks. To enter to win a copy, post about the book release with hashtag #hallelujahadvent. They begin the conversation about Til We Have Faces with an examination of Lewis’ personal journey and its similarity to Orual’s own in this story. This opens up a discussion of education, Lewis’s schooling, and Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. Angelina then goes on to talk about the three types of veils worn by Orual, and Cindy and Thomas explore the idea of veils and their role in relationship and power. Orual’s friendships with Bardia and the Fox further highlight her continued blindness to her own disordered affections. Join us next week for the last installment in our series on Til We Have Faces. The following episode will be a special interview with Wendi Capehart on her literary life! Commonplace Quotes: Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophesy, and religion. All is one. John Ruskin Since then I have always been addicted to something or other, usually something there’s no support group for. Semicolons, for instance, I can never give up for more than two hundred words at a time. Hilary Mantel The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side, a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other, a glib and shallow “rationalism.” Nearly all that I loved, I believed to be imaginary. Nearly all that I believed to be real, I thought grim and meaningless. C. S. Lewis Moonlight by Walter de la Mare The far moon maketh lovers wise In her pale beauty trembling down, Lending curved cheeks, dark lips, dark eyes, A strangeness not their own. And, though they shut their lids to kiss, In starless darkness peace to win, Even on that secret world from this Her twilight enters in. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) Hallelujah by Cindy Rollins Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoire by Hilary Mantel The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 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, our hosts discuss chapters 12-15 of C. S. Lewis' masterpiece Til We Have Faces. Don't forget that Thomas will be teaching a mini-class series on Shakespeare's Roman Plays in October. You can find out more and register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. We are giving away one spot in the class to someone who shares about the class publicly on social media and tag it #houseofhumaneletters. The winner will be announced on October 2, 2020 on the House of Humane Letters Facebook page! Angelina opens the discussions with the point that Lewis changes the story of Psyche throughout the book, especially in this section. Cindy shares how the last couple of chapters in this week's reading made her feel and the tension of wanting to choose sides. In these scenes, we see again the theme of disordered loves and the rift in the relationship between Orual and Psyche, as well as Orual's descent further into self-deception. Be back next time when we cover chapters 16-21. Commonplace Quotes: This is what I recommend to people who ask me how to get published. Trust your reader, stop spoon-feeding your reader, stop patronizing your reader, give your reader credit for being as smart as you at least, and stop being so bloody beguiling: you in the back row, will you turn off that charm. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Hilary Mantel He had an outstanding gift for attracting hatreds. Rene Pichon The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship, from a corkscrew to a cathedral, is to know what it is–what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used. C. S. Lewis The Laws of God, The Laws of Man by A. E. Houseman The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me; And if my ways are not as theirs Let them mind their own affairs. Their deeds I judge and much condemn, Yet when did I make laws for them? Please yourselves, say I, and they Need only look the other way. But no, they will not; they must still Wrest their neighbor to their will, And make me dance as they desire With jail and gallows and hell-fire. And how am I to face the odds Of man’s bedevilment and God’s? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made. They will be master, right or wrong; Though both are foolish, both are strong. And since, my soul, we cannot fly To Saturn nor to Mercury, Keep we must, if keep we can, These foreign laws of God and man. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoire by Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis Paradise Lost by John Milton God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis 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 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, we continue our series on C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Til We Have Faces, and our hosts discuss chapters 8-11 today. Before we get started, we want you to know there is still time to sign up for Cindy’s Morning Time Q&A on September 23. Register at CindyRollins.net today! Also, Thomas will be teaching a mini-class series on Shakespeare’s Roman Plays in October, and you can find out more and register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Angelina starts off the conversation asking for everyone’s impressions of this section of reading, and Thomas and Cindy bring up the melancholy nature of much of this story. Themes discussed in this episode include: seeing and not seeing, reason’s response to faith, the dream motif, the similarities with the story of Iphigenia, baptism and crossing the river, and the ways relationships change over time. Another topic our hosts highlight is the tension between mysticism and rationalism and the truth that transcends the inadequacy of these. Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: “Self-consciousness is a great barrier to faith. A. B. Simpson It is a mark of true folklore that even the tale that is evidently wild is eminently sane. G. K. Chesterton 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 Requiescat by Matthew Arnold Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too! Her mirth the world required; She bathed it in smiles of glee. But her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be. Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat and sound. But for peace her soul was yearning, And now peace laps her round. Her cabin’d, ample spirit, It flutter’d and fail’d for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies by Robert Kirk St. Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 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 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 our hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas discuss chapters 6-7 of C. S. Lewis’ mythical retelling Til We Have Faces. Before we get started, we want you to know about Cindy’s Morning Time Q&A on September 23. Register at CindyRollins.net. They open the discussion this week talking about Lewis’ writings on love and jealousy. Angelina points out similarities to this story and other classical myths and even Spenser’s Faerie Queene. They also talk about Orual’s desires as opposed to Psyche’s expectations. Cindy mentioned Peter Kreeft’s talk on Til We Have Faces a couple of times. Here is the link to that audio for those who are interested in listening to that. Commonplace Quotes: The stage is an epitome, a better likeness of the world, with the dull part left out. William Hazlitt The motto was Pax, but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Pax: peace, but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at nights, little comfort, sometimes scant food; beset with disappointments and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. “It is My own peace I give unto you.” Not, notice, the world’s peace. Rumer Godden If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. . . . I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; . . . I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same. C. S. Lewis A Woman Homer Sung by William Butler Yeats If any man drew near When I was young, I thought, “He holds her dear,’ And shook with hate and fear. But O! ’twas bitter wrong If he could pass her by With an indifferent eye. Whereon I wrote and wrought, And now, being grey, I dream that I have brought To such a pitch my thought That coming time can say, “He shadowed in a glass What thing her body was.’ For she had fiery blood When I was young, And trod so sweetly proud As ’twere upon a cloud, A woman Homer sung, That life and letters seem But an heroic dream. Book List: Affiliate links are used in this content. In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden Christian Behavior by C. S. Lewis The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis Oedipus Rex by Sophocles The Faerie Queene 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 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 back to our series on C. S. Lewis’ mythical retelling Til We Have Faces here on The Literary Life Podcast. Today Angelina, Cindy and Thomas discuss chapters 3-5. Angelina opens the book chat with an exploration of the tensions that are becoming evident in this first part of the book. Cindy talks about the character of the Fox and our changing perspective on him as the story develops. Thomas highlights the priest and the ways that we as moderns struggle with the religion presented here. Another topic expounded upon is the relationship between the sisters and the affects jealousy as the story progresses. Angelina also brings up the idea of terrifying holiness as presented in these chapters. Our hosts share their thoughts on the tension between the elevation of logic and reason and the devaluation of superstition and mystery. (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) Commonplace Quotes: Riddle: I have eaten the Muses, yet I have profited nothing. Answer: A bookworm. Symphosius He insists upon the point: under no circumstances will he leave his home or violate his routines in order to facilitate an investigation. The exceptions are few and remarkable. Instead of spreading the principles of order and justice throughout his society, Wolfe imposes them dogmatically and absolutely within the walls of his house–the brownstone on West Thrity-fifth Street–and he invites those who are troubled by an incomprehensible and threatening environment to enter the controlled economy of the house and to discover there the source of disorder in their own lives. The invitation is extended to readers as well as to clients. J. Kenneth Van Dover In our culture of betrayal, we are quick to impose our own views on layers of established systems. Thus, even a work of art is to be distrusted. Rather than trying to “under-stand” the work, we stand over it and dismiss it as unreadable. Or worse yet, we impose a critical ideology upon it without first allowing the work to affect us. Makoto Fujimura Selection from “Ode to Psyche” by John Keats Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane          In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,          Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees          Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,          The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress    With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,          With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,          Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same: And there shall be for thee all soft delight          That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,          To let the warm Love in! Book List: Refractions by Makoto Fujimura The Hundred Riddles of Symphosius by Symphosius At Wolfe’s Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout by J. Kenneth Van Dover Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis by Peter Schakel The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame   Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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 this week’s episode of The Literary Life, our hosts Angelina, Thomas and Cindy have a special guest on the podcast. Gina Dalfonzo is an author whose work has been featured in First Things, The Atlantic, Christianity Today, The Weekly Standard, National Review, The Gospel Coalition, and more! Gina has written a new book called Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis which is the topic of discussion on today’s episode. Angelina opens the conversation asking Gina to share how she came to write this book exploring the relationship between Lewis and Sayers. (Affiliate links are used in this content.) Other topics explored in this episode are the following: the influence of Oxford in Dorothy Sayers’ life and work, how Dorothy and Jack finally met one another, Lewis’ personal distaste for detective novels, and his praise for Sayers’ other work. They also talk at length about how Sayers and Lewis support each other in pushing the boundaries of their literary careers. Find Gina Dalfonzo: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ginadalfonzo.author Twitter: https://twitter.com/ginadalfonzo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gina.dalfonzo/ Dickensblog: https://dickensblog.typepad.com/ Commonplace Quotes: For life in general, there is but one decree: youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret. Benjamin Disraeli There’s always surrender to humiliation and crucifixion, an emptying, before the glory. There’s no way around it. For my own part, I wish there were. Emptiness comes before fullness. We have to empty ourselves of anything that crowds out the life or grace of God in our lives. When we cooperate with the Spirit in this way, we become receptacles of grace. Marlena Graves People of former times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral. Heinrich Heine When the pioneers of university training for women demanded that women should be admitted to the universities, the cry went up at once: “Why should women want to know about Aristotle?” The answer is NOT that all women wwould be the better for knowing about Aristotle–still less, as Lord Tennyson seemed to think, that they would be more companionable wives for their husbands if they did know about Aristotle–but simply: “What women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle. It is true that most women care nothing about him, and a great many male undergraduates turn pale and faint at the thought of him–but I, eccentric individual that I am, do want to know about Aristotle, and I submit that there is nothing in my shape or bodily functions which need prevent my knowing about him. Dorothy L. Sayers They Told Me Heraclitus by William Johnson Cory They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake; For Death, he taketh all away, but these he cannot take. Book List: Dorothy and Jack by Gina Dalfonzo The Gospel in Dickens by Gina Dalfonzo The Way Up is Down by Marlena Graves Writing for the Masses by Christine A. Colón The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay Are Women Human by Dorothy Sayers Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers Phantastes by George MacDonald Letters to an American Lady 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 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, we begin our new series on C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece, Til We Have Faces. (Affiliate links are used in this content.) This week, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks cover the first two chapters and share their observations as they reread this oftentimes challenging book. To help us gain a framework for this novel, Thomas summarizes the myth of Cupid and Psyche, the first telling of which is found in The Golden Ass by Apuleius. Angelina shares about some similarities in this myth with several familiar fairy tales. Cindy points out how Lewis changes some key pieces of the story to make it less mythical and more tethered to historical time and place. In opening the first chapter, Angelina tells her theory about this being a story about a character finding her identity as she looks back on her life. Our hosts talk about the strange nature of the paganism in Glome and also the interesting role of The Fox. They point out many of the classical Greek references that we need to pay attention to as we read this story. Tune in next week for a special interview episode with the author of Dorothy and Jack, Gina Dalfonzo. Following that, we will be back with chapters 3-5 of Till We Have Faces. Commonplace Quotes: A good carpenter is known by his chips. Jonathan Swift All too often, the legends old men tell are closer to the truth than the facts young professors tell. The wildest fairy tales of the ancients are far more realistic than the scientific phantasms imagined by moderns. Hilaire Belloc Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes… Elizabeth Barrett Browning Song by John Donne Go and catch a falling star,     Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are,     Or who cleft the devil’s foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy’s stinging,             And find             What wind Serves to advance an honest mind. If thou be’st born to strange sights,     Things invisible to see, Ride ten thousand days and nights,     Till age snow white hairs on thee, Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me, All strange wonders that befell thee,             And swear,             No where Lives a woman true, and fair. If thou find’st one, let me know,     Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go,     Though at next door we might meet; Though she were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter,             Yet she             Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three. 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 and Cindy Rollins are having a conversation about why everyone ought to read myths. Angelina begins by explaining what a myth is in terms of literary genre. She talks about the characteristics that run through myths, such as explanations of origins and natural phenomena, common characters, and a universe that hangs together. Cindy poses a question about why we have come to interpret the word myth to mean something untrue since the time of the Enlightenment. Angelina helps parents feel more confident about their children’s ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy. Cindy talks about how knowing mythology is a key to understanding other stories and literature. Unfolding a portion of church history, Angelina explains how early Christians wrestled with pagan stories and Old Testament stories at the same time. When we go looking only for morality tales in the Bible, Cindy points out, then we miss the main idea. Getting a bit more practical, Angelina gives some examples of the role of pre-Christian storytellers who pointed to the Truth. Be sure to be back next week for the beginning of our series on Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, in which we will be covering chapters 1 and 2. (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) Commonplace Quotes: The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God. Everything of man must have been of God first; and it will help much towards our understanding of the imagination and its functions in man if we first succeed in regarding aright the imagination of God, in which the imagination of man lives and moves and has its being. George MacDonald Those who do not know that this great myth became fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied. But Christians also need to be reminded–we may thank Corineus for reminding us–that what became fact was a myth, that it carries with it into the world of fact all the properties of a myth. God is more than a god, not less; Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about “parallels” and “pagan Christs”: they ought to be there–it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic–and is not the sky itself a myth–shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: perfect myth and perfect fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher. C. S. Lewis from “Mythopoeia” by J. R. R. Tolkien The heart of Man is not compound of lies, but draws some wisdom from the only Wise, and still recalls him. Though now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned, his world-dominion by creative act: not his to worship the great Artefact, Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we’re made. Book List: A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald “Myth Became Fact” by C. S. Lewis The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis Wings and the Child by Edith Nesbit Paradise Lost by John Milton The Aeneid by Virgil The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri 50 Famous Stories by James Baldwin English Literature for Boys and Girls by H. E. Marshall D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths Tanglewood Tales and A Wonder Book by Nathaniel Hawthorn Til We Have Faces 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 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 this week’s episode of The Literary Life with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks continue their discussion of J. R. R. Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle“. If you missed the Back to School 2020 Conference when it was live, you can still purchase access to the recordings at CindyRollins.net. Angelina opens the book chat highlighting Tolkien’s mirroring of Dante’s Divine Comedy with Niggle’s journey, and our hosts move through a recap of the story. The questions we should be asking as we read are whether this story deals with the recovery of our vision and whether it ends with a eucatastrophe. Cindy brings out more of the autobiographical nature of this story for Tolkien. Angelina tosses around the idea that Parish and Niggle may be doubles and be a picture of Tolkien’s two selves. Thomas talks about what Niggle has to do in the “purgatory” section of the story. They also talk about the themes of art and the artist, sub-creation, and redemption. Come back next week to hear a discussion about why we ought to read myths. Commonplace Quotes: It is when a writer first begins to make enemies that he begins to matter. Hilton Brown Kill that whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts—dull because their relations to each other, and the one life that works in them all, must remain undiscovered. Whoever would have his children avoid this arid region will do well to allow no teacher to approach them—not even of mathematics—who has no imagination. George MacDonald There were people who cared for him and people didn’t, and those who didn’t hate him were out to get him. . . But they couldn’t touch him. . . because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deidre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. Joseph Heller On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet by Samuel Johnson Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine,     As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts, or slow decline,     Our social comforts drop away. Well tried through many a varying year,     See Levet to the grave descend; Officious, innocent, sincere,     Of every friendless name the friend. Yet still he fills Affection’s eye,     Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind; Nor, lettered Arrogance, deny     Thy praise to merit unrefined. When fainting Nature called for aid,     And hovering Death prepared the blow, His vigorous remedy displayed     The power of art without the show. In Misery’s darkest cavern known,     His useful care was ever nigh, Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan,     And lonely Want retired to die. No summons mocked by chill delay,     No petty gain disdained by pride, The modest wants of every day     The toil of every day supplied. His virtues walked their narrow round,     Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And sure the Eternal Master found     The single talent well employed. The busy day, the peaceful night,     Unfelt, uncounted, glided by; His frame was firm, his powers were bright,     Though now his eightieth year was nigh. Then with no throbbing fiery pain,     No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain,     And freed his soul the nearest way. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) Rudyard Kipling by Hilton Brown A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald Catch-22 by Joseph Heller When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis Paradise Lost by John Milton Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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 another episode of The Literary Life with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks. Both this week and next, our hosts will be discussing J. R. R. Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle". When this episode goes live, Cindy, Angelina and Thomas will be in the thick of the second annual Back to School Online Conference, happening August 3-8, 2020. It's not too late to register at CindyRollins.net for access both this week and later on! Angelina sets the stage with a little historical background on Tolkien’s writing of this story as well as some thoughts on allegory and how to read a fairy tale. She talks about this story as an exploration of the struggle of the ideals and demands of art against the demands of practical life and the question of whether or not art is useful. Cindy shares her ideas about the importance of the Inklings for Tolkien to get his work out into the world. Angelina shares about the type of journey on which the main character, Niggle, is called to go on in this story. As you read, we encourage you to look for how Tolkien harmonizes the different tensions within the story. Commonplace Quotes: Here are some of the points which make a story worth studying to tell to the nestling listeners in many a sweet “Children’s Hour”;––graceful and artistic details; moral impulse of a high order, conveyed with a strong and delicate touch; sweet human affection; a tender, fanciful link between the children and the Nature-world; humour, pathos, righteous satire, and last, but not least, the fact that the story does not turn on children, and does not foster that self-consciousness, the dawn of which in the child is, perhaps, the individual “Fall of Man.” Charlotte Mason The essay began by noting that total war was underway, with fighting not only “in the field and on the sea and in the air,” but also in “the realm of ideas.” It said: “The mightiest single weapon this war has yet employed” was “not a plane, or a bomb or a juggernaut of tanks”–it was Mein Kampf. This single book caused an educated nation to “burn the great books that keep liberty fresh in the hearts of men.” If America’s goal was victory and world peace, “all of us will have to know more and think better than our enemies think and know,” the council asserted. “This was is a war of books. . . Books are our weapons.” Molly Guptill Manning, quoting from the essay “Books and the War” In everything I have sought peace and not found it, save in a corner with a book. Thomas à Kempis Milton by Edward Muir Milton, his face set fair for Paradise, And knowing that he and Paradise were lost In separate desolation, bravely crossed Into his second night and paid his price. There towards the end he to the dark tower came Set square in the gate, a mass of blackened stone Crowned with vermilion fiends like streamers blown From a great funnel filled with roaring flame. Shut in his darkness, these he could not see, But heard the steely clamour known too well On Saturday nights in every street in Hell. Where, past the devilish din, could Paradise be? A footstep more, and his unblinded eyes Saw far and near the fields of Paradise. Book List: Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis Planet Narnia by Michael Ward The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer Smith of Wooten Major by J. R. R. Tolkien Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte Spirits in Bondage by C. S. Lewis Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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, we will be discussing J. R. R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories“. Tune in again over the next two weeks as we continue the conversation with Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle“. Cindy, Angelina and Thomas are also excited to announce the second annual Back to School Online Conference, happening August 3-8, 2020. Register today at CindyRollins.net for access both live and later. Angelina sets the stage for this discussion by orienting us to the context for the essay by Tolkien as a critique of what is considered a fairy story. She points out the difference between cautionary tales like those by Charles Perrault and the German folk and fairy tales collected by the Grimm Brothers. Our hosts highlight Tolkien’s definition of true fairy stories, ones that take place in the “perilous realm” and involve a journey element. He critiques Andrew Lang as including many stories as fairy tale that are not truly fairy stories. They also discuss topics from the essay including sub-creation, magic and spells, suspension of disbelief, and children’s responses to fairy stories. Commonplace Quotes: One should forgive one’s enemies, but only after they are hanged. Heinrich Heine The German folk soul can again express itself. These flames do not only illuminate the final end of the old era. They also light up the new. Never before have the young men had so good a right to clean up the debris of the past. If the old men do not understand what is going on, let them grasp that we young men have gone and done it. The old goes up in flames. The new shall be fashioned from the flame of our hearts. Joseph Goebbles Human beings are not human doings. Nigel Goodwin Into My Heart an Air That Kills by A. E. Houseman Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows; What are those far remembered hills, What spires, what towns are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot go again. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum David Copperfield by Charles Dickens The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis Phantastes by George MacDonald Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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, our hosts Angelina and Cindy chat with Emily Raible. First, though, they announce our #20for2020LitLife reading challenge giveaway winners! If you were one of our winners, please email Cindy at Rollinsfamily11(at)gmail(dot)com to give her your contact information and get your prize! Also, coming up August 3-7, 2020, we will be having our second annual Back to School Online Conference. This year’s featured speaker will be Karen Glass. Register at CindyRollins.net to get access live or later! Our guest today is Lit Life “superfan” Emily Raible. Emily is a homeschool mom, an avid reader, birdwatcher, baker and probably Angelina’s most loyal student. In telling the story of her reading life, Emily talks about her childhood and how she was not a reader as a young person. She shares how she finally started getting interested in reading through Janette Oke and Hardy Boys books. Then she tells about borrowing books from a local family’s home library and starting to fall in love with true classics. After getting married to an avid reader, Emily started going through her husband’s own library during her long hours at home alone. Even after she became of lover of reading, Emily still didn’t define herself as a real reader. Emily shares her journey to becoming a homeschooling parent, how she learned about Charlotte Mason and classical education, and her first time meeting Angelina and Cindy. They continue the conversation expanding on the feast of ideas, what it means to be a “reader,” and how we learn and enter into the literary world throughout our lives. Stay tuned next week when we will be discussing Tolkein’s essay “On Fairy Stories“, followed by a conversation about his short story “Leaf by Niggle” for the next two weeks. Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: But the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see, if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing. G. K. Chesterton Time can be both a threat and a friend to hope. Injustice, for example, has to be tediously dismantled, not exploded. This is often infuriating, but it is true. Makoto Fujimura The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and story-teller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched, who looked then and saw men as if they were trees but walking. This is the beginning of vision, and it is an invitation to deeper and stranger visions than we shall have to learn to accept if we are to realize a truly Christian literature. Flannery O’Connor Armies in the Fire by Robert Louis Stevenson The lamps now glitter down the street; Faintly sound the falling feet; And the blue even slowly falls About the garden trees and walls. Now in the falling of the gloom The red fire paints the empty room: And warmly on the roof it looks, And flickers on the back of books. Armies march by tower and spire Of cities blazing, in the fire;— Till as I gaze with staring eyes, The armies fall, the lustre dies. Then once again the glow returns; Again the phantom city burns; And down the red-hot valley, lo! The phantom armies marching go! Blinking embers, tell me true Where are those armies marching to, And what the burning city is That crumbles in your furnaces! Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Tremendous Trifles by G. K. Chesterton Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura Rascal by Sterling North Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Poppy Ott by Leo Edwards Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare The Once and Future King by T. H. White The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan Agatha Christie James Patterson Tom Clancy Harry Potter series Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Mansfield Park by Jane Austen Howards End by E. M. Forster The Divine Comedy by Dante (trans. by Dorothy Sayers) Illiad and Odyssey by Homer Dorothy L. Sayers The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf Why Should Businessmen Read Great Literature? by Vigen Guroian The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy Arabian Nights Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Confessions by Augustine Beatrix Potter Treasury Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Babe the Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem 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 our 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge Check-In episode! Before we dig into the content, Angelina announces Thomas’ next webinar coming up this summer, “The Fable: From Aesop to Brer Rabbit.” Sign up at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out when registration opens! After a brief discussion on the merits of reading fiction, our hosts begin listing what they have read in each category of the 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge so far. This episode is brimming over with book references, so be sure to scroll down to the book list any titles you might have missed! Enter our 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge giveaway! Take a photo of your reading stack or your printed list with titles you are reading and post it to Instagram or Facebook with the tag #20for2020LitLife. We will announce our winners on the next episode of the podcast! We can’t wait to see what you are reading for the challenge! Commonplace Quotes: To know God therefore as He is, is to frame the most beautiful idea in all worlds. He delighteth in our happiness more than we, and is of all others the most lovely object. Thomas Traherne And often my father would read us things that he loved, without a single word of ‘explanation’. Of these the Ancient Mariner stands out beyond the rest. O happy living things! Why do people murder them by explanations? M. V. Hughes The mere fact that a story is a work of fiction, however, does not prevent its having a deep and significant truth of its own. We find, then, that the distinction between true stories and works of pure imagination, though convenient, is not quite essential. For fiction may be just as true, in the higher sense of the word, as history, or travel or any other record of actual experience. George Lyman Kittredge I Remember, I Remember by Thomas Hood I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away! I remember, I remember, The roses, red and white, The vi’lets, and the lily-cups, Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum on his birthday,— The tree is living yet! I remember, I remember, Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow! I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now ’tis little joy To know I’m farther off from heav’n Than when I was a boy. Book List: Amazon affiliate links are used in this content. A London Child of the Seventies by M. V. Hughes Centuries of Meditations by Thomas Traherne The Mother Tongue by George Lyman Kittredge The Darkest Hour (film) The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona by Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare MacBeth by Shakespeare A Question of Proof by Nicholas Blake Simon Serraille Mystery Series by Susan Hill Ian Rutledge Mystery Series by Charles Todd The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill Dorothy Sayers Agatha Christie Ngaio Marsh Margery Allingham The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliot Chaze The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher Koshka’s Tales: Stories from Russia by James Mayhew Plainsong by Kent Haruf Munich by Robert Harris Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett Taras Bulba by Nicolai Gogol This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon Penhally by Caroline Gordon The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie Jeremy Taylor by Hugh Williamson Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor Swinburne by Harold Nicolson Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon The Terrible Speed of Mercy by Jonathan Rogers The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers The Path of Loneliness by Elisabeth Elliot Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis Anatomy of Criticism by Northrup Frye Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Ibn Fadlan and The Land of Darkness by Ibn Fadlan The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima An Anthology of Invective and Abuse by Hugh Kingsmill Penmarric by Susan Howatch The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spencer The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde The Clouds by Aristophanes Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor Love in the Void by Simone Weil The Fine Art of Reading by David Cecil Abigail by Magda Szabo The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaula The Turmoil (Growth Trilogy #1) by Booth Tarkington The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington Middlemarch by George Eliot Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge To Bless The Space Between Us by John O’Donohue The Word in the Wilderness by Malcolm Guite Tenebrea by Geoffrey Hill Along Came a Spider by James Patterson Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 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