On this week’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, our hosts have a converation about Simone Weil’s essay “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God“. Angelina Stanford opens this discussion talking about stories as a lens to see other perspectives, rather than our own. Thomas Banks gives some biographical information on Simone Weil. Cindy Rollins highlights the connections she made from this essay to Charlotte Mason and Stratford Caldecott, especially in regards to attention and remembrance. They talk about the problems of being counter-cultural in education, pride versus humility as an end of education, and training of the will. Cindy and Angelina emphasize the importance of the work of education over “making the grade.” Thomas reads a quote from Weil on keeping periods of focused work brief, and Cindy expounds on how this concept was also very important to Charlotte Mason. Angelina talks about her own conviction in reading Weil’s words about learning from those subjects which do not come easily for us. The conversation wraps up with our hosts talking about waiting on God instead of trying to force results, in all areas of our lives.  Until next time, check out our Upcoming Events page to view our summer schedule and see what we will be reading together next! Don’t forget to check out the summer courses and webinars that Angelina and Thomas have coming up over at HouseofHumaneLetters.com! Commonplace Quotes: When we think of a friend, we do not count that a lost thought, though the friend never knew of it. John Donne Oxford is, Lewis said, a “dangerous place for a book lover. Every second shop has something you want.” According to Warren Lewis, his brother soon learned to discipline such inclinations: “In his younger days he was something of a bibliophile, but in middle and later life very seldom bought a book if he could consult it in the Bodleian: long years of poverty, self-inflicted but grinding, had made this economical habit second nature to him—a fact that contributed, no doubt, to the extra-ordinarily retentive character of his memory.” Clyde Kilby Children are always seeking out new experiences, and they find them in stories when adults do not spoil these stories by superimposing concepts or rules over the narrative. Vigen Guroian Peace by Henry Vaughn My Soul, there is a country  Afar beyond the stars,  Where stands a winged sentry  All skillful in the wars;  There, above noise and danger  Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles,  And One born in a manger  Commands the beauteous files.  He is thy gracious friend  And (O my Soul awake!)  Did in pure love descend,  To die here for thy sake.  If thou canst get but thither,  There grows the flow’r of peace,  The rose that cannot wither,  Thy fortress, and thy ease.  Leave then thy foolish ranges,  For none can thee secure,  But One, who never changes,  Thy God, thy life, thy cure. Book List: (Affiliate links are used in this content.) C. S. Lewis: Images of His World by Douglas R. Gilbert and Clyde Kilby Tending the Heart of Virtue by Vigen Guroian Phantastes by George MacDonald Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott Range by David Epstein Love in the Void by Simone Weil Trojan Women by Euripedes 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, Cindy and Thomas wrap up their discussion of C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce with the final chapters 11-14. Before starting their talk about the book, Cindy shares about her upcoming Summer Discipleship Program, Morning Time for Moms. Angelina and Thomas also have some exciting summer courses coming up on Classical Greek Drama and Flannery O’Connor. Also, this Thursday, May 21, 2020, Thomas is giving a webinar on George Orwell. Cindy and Angelina talk about the dangers of familial love becoming the end-all-be-all, as well as Lewis’ exploration of Dante’s idea of sin. They go in depth with this exploration of sin as a distortion of something that might naturally seem good and the way Lewis pairs people to demonstrate that in these chapters. Angelina talks about the medieval view of ordered man versus the disordered man and how that relates to the man with the horse. They wrap up with the importance of stories in depicting truth in a veiled way, instead of only theological argument and discourse, in helping us live out our faith in a properly ordered way. Until next time, check out our Upcoming Events page to view our summer schedule and see what we will be reading together next! Commonplace Quotes: We chose from the library shelves any book of Tales for the Young, and took much pleasure in prophesying the events. We could rely on Providence to punish the naughty and bring to notice the heroism of the good, and generally grant an early death to both. Why was there a bull in a field? To gore the disobedient. Why did cholera break out? To kill the child who went down a forbidden street. The names told us much: Tom, Sam, or Jack were predestined to evil, while a Frank could do nothing but good. Henry was a bit uncertain: he might lead his little sister into that field with bravado, or he might attack the bull to save her life at the cost of his own. We had bettings of gooseberries on such points. M. V. Hughes Exaggeration is one of art’s great devices. J. B. Priestley Hell is inaccurate. Charles Williams There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods by Lord Byron There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal. Book List: Amazon affiliate links are used in this content. A London Child of the Seventies by M. V. Hughes Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry Paradise Lost by John Milton A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis A Woman of the Pharisees by François Mauriac Perelandra by C. S. Lewis That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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 The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks discuss chapters 7-10 of C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Angelina points out the way in which Lewis uses the “newcomer” character to explain the world he has created. They discuss the various personalities Lewis presents who choose not to take the journey to heaven, sharing how these sketches often hit a little too close to home. They also talk about the influence of George MacDonald on Lewis and his role in this story. Thomas helps us make some connections with Lewis and Virgil, as well as explaining some of the references made by MacDonald’s character. Cindy points out how our loves can be entryways into either heaven or hell. Join us again next week as we finish up our discussion of The Great Divorce together! (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) Commonplace Quotes: Meanwhile, you will write an essay on self-indulgence. There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit. Evelyn Waugh Shame belongs, rather, to the bookish recluse who knows not how to apply his reading to the good of his fellows or to manifest its fruit to the eyes of all. Cicero It is simply my lifelong experience—that men are more likely to hand over to others what they ought to do themselves, and women more likely to do themselves what others wish they would leave alone. Hence both sexes must be told “Mind your own business,” but in two different senses! C. S. Lewis To The Skylark by William Wordsworth Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will, Those quivering wings composed, that music still! Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; A privacy of glorious light is thine; Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home! Book List: Letters to an American Lady by C. S. Lewis Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh Pro Archia Poeta by Cicero Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams George MacDonald Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis Psychomachia by Prudentius Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor Satires of Circumstance by Thomas Hardy Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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 The Literary Life podcast today, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks discuss chapters 2-6 of C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Angelina reminds us as we begin this exploration of Lewis’ narrative not to read too much theology into the details of this dreamlike world he creates. Cindy points out the similarities between these chapters and his descriptions at the end of The Last Battle. Thomas highlights the passage on Napoleon from chapter 2, showing what Lewis envisioned hell to be like. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas talks about the description of the land near heaven, the various characters’ responses, as well as the weight of the actual environment and Lewis’ picture of those who people it. (Affiliate links are used in this content.) Commonplace Quotes: We long for paradise because we were created for paradise. We were created to live in an environment that cooperates with, not fights against, our desires. We were created for Eden, a place we’ve never been, and so we desire a perfect life full of healthy relationships. Julie Sparkman Anyone who puts himself forward to be elected to a position of political power is almost bound to be socially or emotionally insecure, or criminally motivated, or mad. Auberon Waugh “The secret is not to dream,” she whispered. “The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and now I am real. I know where I come from and where I’m going. You cannot fool me anymore. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.” Terry Pratchett The Stricken Deer by William Cowper I was a stricken deer, that left the herd Long since; with many an arrow deep infixt My panting side was charg’d, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by one who had himself Been hurt by th’ archers. In his side he bore, And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars. With gentle force soliciting the darts, He drew them forth, and heal’d, and bade me live. Since then, with few associates, in remote And silent woods I wander, far from those My former partners of the peopled scene; With few associates, and not wishing more. Here much I ruminate, as much I may, With other views of men and manners now Than once, and others of a life to come. I see that all are wand’rers, gone astray Each in his own delusions; they are lost In chace of fancied happiness, still wooed And never won. Dream after dream ensues, And still they dream that they shall still succeed, And still are disappointed; rings the world With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind, And add two-thirds of the remainder half, And find the total of their hopes and fears Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay As if created only like the fly That spreads his motley wings in th’ eye of noon To sport their season and be seen no more. Book List: Unhitching from the Crazy Train by Julie Sparkman Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard East of Eden by John Steinbeck The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis Tramp for the Lord by Corrie Ten Boom Paradise Lost by John Milton The Brook Kerith by George Moore Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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 The Literary Life podcast today, Cindy Rollins, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks begin their series on The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. Today you are going to get a crash-course in Medievalism through Lewis’ story, and we hope you will enjoy this book as much as our hosts do. Angelina kicks off the discussion even while sharing her commonplace quote, sharing some information about the epigraph and front matter. She gives us some historical context, both for where this books comes in Lewis’ own timeline, as well as some ideas of the journey of the soul and medieval dream literature. Thomas gives some background on Prudentius and his allegorical work The Psychomachia. Angelina goes into some comparisons between The Great Divorce and Dante’s Divine Comedy. Thomas talks about Nathanial Hawthorne’s short story The Celestial Railroad as a satire of Pilgrim’s Progress. Also, if you haven’t read and listened to E. M. Forster’s Celestial Omnibus, see Episode 17. As they get into discussing the Preface, Thomas give us some information on William Blake. We will be back next week with a discussion on Chapters 2-6. Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them. Man cannot discover them by his own powers and if he sets out to seek for them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will be unable to discern the falsity. Simone Weil No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it–no plan to retain this of that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather. George MacDonald A poet is not a man who says “look at me”, but rather a man who points at something and says “look at that.” C. S. Lewis MCMXIV by Philip Larkin Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist, and the pubs Wide open all day– And the countryside not caring: The place names all hazed over With flowering grasses, and fields Shadowing Domesday lines Under wheat’s restless silence; The differently-dressed servants With tiny rooms in huge houses, The dust behind limousines; Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word–the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again. Book List: Amazon affiliate links are used in this content. The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard The Aeneid by Virgil The Divine Comedy by Dante Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan The Holy War by John Bunyan Ourselves by Charlotte Mason A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake Paradise Lost by John Milton Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis Thanks to Our Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by New College Franklin. We want to encourage you to check out their 2020 Spring Preview Days happening online via Zoom conferencing. 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, our fearless hosts discuss Oscar Wilde’s unraveling of the tangle of plot points in Act 3 of The Importance of Being Earnest. Cindy Rollins talks about her reaction to Act 3 and how it gets resolved. Thomas Banks observes how Wilde sets up the conflict with the possibility to become a tragedy like Oedipus Rex instead of a comedy. Angelina Stanford talks about the theme of the identity quest, tokens of identity and foundlings in literature. The conversation, as in previous episodes, centers around the way Wilde pokes fun at Victorian ideals and cliches. Commonplace Quotes: Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one. Lord Chesterfield We must travel this path as lovers, amateurs, of the Word and of words because all things reveal themselves more truly to the eyes of love. Stratford Caldecott Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light, To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn and sentinel the night, To wrong the wronger till he render right; To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, And smear with dust their glittering golden towers. William Shakespeare Easter Wings by George Herbert Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,      Though foolishly he lost the same,            Decaying more and more,                  Till he became                        Most poore:                        With thee                  O let me rise            As larks, harmoniously,      And sing this day thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me. My tender age in sorrow did beginne      And still with sicknesses and shame.            Thou didst so punish sinne,                  That I became                        Most thinne.                        With thee                  Let me combine,            And feel thy victorie:         For, if I imp my wing on thine, Affliction shall advance the flight in me. Book List: Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott Oedipus Rex by Sophocles The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Nigel by Arthur Conan Doyle Howards End by E. M. Forster Bleak House by Charles Dickens A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis Thanks to Our Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by New College Franklin. We want to encourage you to check out their 2020 Spring Preview Days happening online via Zoom conferencing. 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, Cindy, Thomas and Angelina cover Act 2 of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Angelina is excited to share her research on the connection between the work of Oscar Wilde and P. G. Wodehouse. Cindy brings up Booth Tarkington’s Penrod books as another example of witty, humorous literature. Thomas points out the importance of cultural lens for appreciating humor in art. They also talk about all the puns that Wilde gives his characters in this play. Angelina discusses the reformed rake motif in Victorian literature and how Wilde plays with this theme. Thomas gives a little background on the mentions of lending libraries and the three-volume novel. Cindy talks about the parallels between the Victorians’ high view of earnestness and our modern valuation of transparency. Angelina contrasts Oscar Wilde and his contemporary Thomas Hardy in the way that Wilde handles heavy topics with a light touch. They all agree that Wilde has an almost Shakespearean plot in complexity and manages to pull it all together at the end. Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: About the lack of religious education: of course you must be grieved, but remember how much religious education has exactly the opposite effect to that which was intended, how many hard atheists come from pious homes. May we not hope, with God’s mercy, that a similarly opposite effect may be produced in her case? Parents are not Providence: their bad intentions may be frustrated as their good ones. C. S. Lewis It is faintly amusing when one reads about society lapsing back into paganism. I, for one, would think it rather a picturesque incident if the Prime Minister were to sacrifice an ox in the temple of Venus. C. S. Lewis Hell is a state of mind – ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains. C. S. Lewis Ye Meaner Beauties by Sir Henry Wotton Ye meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; Ye common people of the skies, What are you when the sun shall rise? Ye curious chanters of the wood, That warble forth Dame Nature’s lays, Thinking your voices understood By your weak accents; what’s your praise When Philomel her voice shall raise? Ye violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud virgins of the year, As if the spring were all your own; What are you when the rose is blown? So, when my mistress shall be seen In form and beauty of her mind, By virtue first, then choice, a queen, Tell me, if she were not design’d Th’ eclipse and glory of her kind? Book List: (Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.) Letters to an American Lady by C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewi Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens Pamela by Samuel Richardson Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Tom Jones by Henry Fielding The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Psmith, Journalist by P. G. Wodehouse An Ideal Husband 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 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 dive into Act 1 of Oscar Wilde’s satirical play The Importance of Being Earnest. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share their commonplace quotes, which leads into a conversation on education before they begin talking about the play. Thomas talks about the name of the play as well as the name “Ernest” in context of this time period. Angelina highlights her excitement of noticing the connection between Wilde’s humor and P. G. Wodehouse. Angelina talks about the changing roles of social classes in the late Victorian age and how that comes into this story. Our hosts go through this first act and discuss the social conventions at which Wilde is poking fun. Commonplace Quotes: We find that the mind is better fed by digesting a page than by devouring a volume. Thomas Macaulay Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Oscar Wilde The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one. John Ruskin Kew Gardens by D. M. Black (in memory of Ian Armstrong Black, d. 1971) Distinguished scientist, to whom I greatly defer (old man, moreover, whom I dearly love), I walk today in Kew Gardens, in sunlight the colour of honey which flows from the cold autumnal blue of the heavens to light these tans and golds, these ripe corn and leather and sunset colours of the East Asian liriodendrons, of the beeches and maples and plum-trees and the stubborn green banks of the holly hedges – and you walk always beside me, you with your knowledge of names and your clairvoyant gaze, in what for me is sheer panorama seeing the net or web of connectedness. But today it is I who speak (and you are long dead, but it is to you I say it): ‘The leaves are green in summer because of chlorophyll and the flowers are bright to lure the pollinators, and without remainder (so you have often told me) these marvellous things that shock the heart the head can account for. But I want to sing an excess that is not so simply explainable, to say that the beauty of the autumn is a redundant beauty, that the sky had no need to be this particular shade of blue, nor the maple to die in flames of this particular yellow, nor the heart to respond with an ecstasy that does not beget children. I want to say that I do not believe your science although I believe every word of it, and intend to understand it; that although I rate that unwavering gaze higher than almost everything, there is another sense, a hearing, to which I more deeply attend. Thus I withstand and contradict you, I, your child, who have inherited from you the passion that causes me to oppose you.’ Book List: Amazon affiliate links are used in this content. The Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Macaulay The Modern Painters, Vol. 3 by John Ruskin Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis “A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated” by Oscar Wilde Hard Times by Charles Dickens The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton The Allegory of Love 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 today's episode of The Literary Life, our hosts, Cindy Rollins, Thomas Banks and Angelina Stanford introduce us to Oscar Wilde and our next literary selection, his satirical play The Importance of Being Earnest. They begin with a discussion on the purpose of art and literature in depicting truth without preaching it at us, making so many connections along the way. Thomas gives us a biographical sketch of Oscar Wilde, both his life and work. Angelina expands on the emphasis on respectability in Victorian society. Cindy talks about her first experience with reading Oscar Wilde and the accessibility of his plays. Commonplace Quotes: For your face I have exchanged all faces. Philip Larkin Just as conscience, or the moral sense, recognizes duty; just as the intellect deals with the truth; so is it the part of taste alone to form us of BEAUTY. And Poesy is the handmaiden but of Taste. Yet we would not be misunderstood. This handmaiden is not forbidden to moralize–in her own fashion. She is not forbidden to depict–but to reason and preach, of virtue. As, of this latter, conscience recognizes the obligation, so intellect teaches the expediency, while taste contents herself with displaying the beauty waging war with vice merely on the ground of its inconsistency with fitness, harmony, proportion–in a word with beauty. Edgar Allan Poe The diversity of Ruskin’s concerns was not simply the product of a restlessly questioning mind. He was convinced of the vital connections between things, as they bind and blend themselves together. The Intellectual separations that characterize the modern professionalization of knowledge seemed to him corrosive, a denial of what unites different levels of human experience—spiritual and aesthetic, political and scientific, historical and contemporary. His argument is always that knowledge connects. He wants readers to these connections, as clearly and comprehensively, as they can. This is an exercise in humility, since it confirms the imperfections and limitations of our vision, and the mystery of what lies beyond it. But the attempt to see clearly enables us to celebrate what is large than our own lives. His capacity for admiration makes him the most magnanimous of critics. It can also make him the angriest, the he witnesses the betrayal of human history and human potential. Ruskin’s intention is always to teach us to use our eyes, and these  remains the best reason or reading his work. He will show you how to look at the world afresh. Dinah Birch E Tenebris (Out of the Shadows) by Oscar Wilde Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee: The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, My heart is as some famine-murdered land, Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in Hell must lie If I this night before God’s throne should stand. ‘He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name From morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.’ Nay, peace, I shall behold before the night, The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame, The wounded hands, the weary human face. Book List: Amazon affiliate links are used in this content. Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John Little Pilgrim’s Progress by Helen Taylor The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde Esther Waters by George Moore Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy David Copperfield 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

In light of the recent changes to all our lives, The Literary Life crew is breaking from the previously announced schedule to discuss the importance of stories in times of crisis. But first, we want you to know about a special gift from Cindy Rollins. You can download a PDF copy of her Handbook of Morning Time for free by visiting her shop here. You can also purchase the replays of the Re-Enchanting the World online conference at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Angelina talks about the impulse of humanity to turn to stories during time of upheaval and plague. Cindy points out the need we have for an ordered universe, and that this is one of the things good books provide. Together with Thomas, they discuss how important it is to find stories that reassure us that there is order and redemption to come. They also give some recommendations for personal reading as well as family read-alouds for these challenging times. Finally, our hosts give us an update with how they are doing with their own 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge lists. If you would like more bonus content, especially our new monthly live chats called “All Fellows Eve”, become a Patreon supporter of The Literary Life! Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: An important part of a child’s education is storytelling, since good stories excite the imagination and strengthen the bond between parent and child. St. John Chrysostom It is in the essential nature of fashion to blind us to its meaning and the causes from which it springs. Edwin Muir Unless the writer has gone utterly out of his mind, his aim is still communication, and communications suggests talking inside community. Flannery O’Connor Sonnet 6 by William Shakespeare Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And guilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill, And simple truth miscall’d simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. Book List: Amazon affiliate links are used in this content. The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlock Glyer Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pierce The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tokien Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis The Kingfisher book of Tales from Russia by James Mayhew Little Pilgrim’s Progress by Helen Taylor Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vera Hodgson Cider for Rosie by Laurie Lee Plainsong by Kent Haruf Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 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 our discussion of the Art of Writing! If you missed last week’s discussion, you can go back and catch up here. We start off today with Angelina Stanford asking Karen Glass about the principles of good writing. Karen talks a bit about William Zinsser and his ideas about writing and education. Our hosts give some practical encouragement to the average homeschool parent listening to this conversation. Cindy highlights the value of waiting to teach specific skills until students are old enough to process them. Angelina, Cindy and Karen talk about narration in the Charlotte Mason education, its benefits and its challenges. They emphasize the importance of guiding children to think well instead of just learning mechanical skills devoid of context. Angelina brings up the sensitive topic of assessing and grading writing. Karen leaves us with a challenge to narrate this podcast discussion in writing in order to apply what you've learned!  Loving In Truth by Sir Philip Sydney Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain, Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,— I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay: Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows, And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: “Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.” Book List: Writing to Learn by William Zinsser 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, Cindy and Thomas sit down with Karen Glass for a conversation centering on the topic of writing. They discuss the problem of trying to teach writing in a formulaic way. They also talk about the challenge of helping students learn to think well in order to write well. Karen highlights narration as a tool to teach thinking well in the form of oral composition. Cindy digs into the idea of imitation as an integral part of the learning process. Angelina and Karen both emphasize the importance of addressing skill and form on an individual basis, depending on what your student needs to improve. Tune in again next week for Part 2 of this great conversation! Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes: To write or even speak English is not a science, but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up. George Orwell Rhetoric, or the art of writing, is not governed by arbitrary laws. Its rules are not statutes passed long ago by some assembly of critical scholars; they are merely common-sense principles derived from the observed practices of persons who have succeeded in writing well,–that is, from the method of good authors. Hence, when we study composition, we investigate these methods, in order to apply them in our own writing. from “Manual of Composition and Rhetoric” When a child is reading, he should not be teased with questions as to the meaning of what he has read, the signification of this word or that; what is annoying to older people is equally annoying to children. Charlotte Mason Follow Your Saint by Thomas Campion Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet; Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet. There, wrapp’d in cloud of sorrow, pity move, And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love: But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain, Then burst with sighing in her sight and ne’er return again. All that I sung still to her praise did tend, Still she was first; still she my songs did end; Yet she my love and music both doth fly, The music that her echo is and beauty’s sympathy. Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight: It shall suffice that they were breath’d and died for her delight. Book List: Amazon Affiliate links are used in this content. Manual of Composition and Rhetoric edited by Gardiner, Kittredge and Arnold Home Education by Charlotte Mason Know and Tell by Karen Glass On Writing Well by William Zinsser Writing to Learn by William Zinsser 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 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, Angelina and Cindy interview Karen Glass. Karen is part of the Advisory of AmblesideOnline. She has four children, ages 13 to 27, who have been homeschooled using Charlotte Mason’s methods from beginning to end. She has been studying and writing about Charlotte Mason and Classical Education for over twenty years, and has written Consider This to share the most important things she has discovered about the connection between them. We are giving away a copy of her newest book, In Vital Harmony, to 2 lucky listeners who share about this podcast episode on Facebook or Instagram using the hashtag #invitalharmony. After sharing their commonplace quotes, our hosts dive into this conversation with Karen about how she became a lover of books. She talks about her voracious reading as a child and teen. Karen also recounts how her mediocre education did not discourage her reading life but just gave her more time and reason to read. This leads into a meaty discussion among Karen, Cindy and Angelina about self-education, homeschooling and lifelong learning. Commonplace Quotes: Let us consider an apple. If we approach it synthetically, we take it as we find it–in its state of wholeness and completeness–and we eat it. Once eaten, it is digested, absorbed, and becomes a part of us. If we approach it analytically, we take it apart–not in a natural way, which is merely a smaller portion (here is half an apple!), but rather, here is the fiber, here are the vitamins, here is a bit of water, and some sugar. Suppose we ingest each bit–a spoonful of fiber, a vitamin pill, a swallow of sugar-and-water. On paper, we have consumed the same thing in both cases–equal portions of nutrition–but there is a very, very large difference. Only one of those meals tasted good and created an appetite for more. Karen Glass However difficult it may be to characterize correctly the medieval class system, it is even more difficult to grasp medieval thinking, which was broadly metaphorical and analogical, rather than merely logical and rational. Thomas Cahill Remember that the uttermost penalty was reserved for him who could say to his brother “Thou fool!” because contempt was the most un-godlike quality which man could display. Beware above all things lest a little knowledge only reinforce conceit and lead you into a false world where self is enthroned, far away from the true world which is illuminated by the love of God, manifested in the Person of the Incarnate Word. Mandell Creighton A Poison Tree by William Blake I was angry with my friend;  I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe:  I told it not, my wrath did grow.  And I waterd it in fears, Night & morning with my tears:  And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles.  And it grew both day and night.  Till it bore an apple bright.  And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine.  And into my garden stole,  When the night had veild the pole;  In the morning glad I see;  My foe outstretched beneath the tree. Book List: Amazon Affiliate links are used in this content. Consider This by Karen Glass Mind to Mind by Karen Glass Know and Tell by Karen Glass In Vital Harmony by Karen Glass Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill Thoughts on Education by Mandell Creighton Bedtime for Frances by Russel Hoban Petunia by Roger Duvoisin Dorrie’s Magic by Patricia Coombs Watership Down by Richard Adams The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkein The Family Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss Lovey by Mary MacCracken A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz The Philosophy of Christian School Education Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens Thomas Lynley Mysteries by Elizabeth George Jan Karon’s Mitford Series 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, we wrap up our discussion of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale with a look at Act 5. Our hosts, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks also announce our next book to read together, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Angelina notes that Act 5 is all about reconciliation and redemption. Thomas points out that Shakespeare had a challenge here in how to bring this play to a close with all those relationships resolved. Cindy brings up Paulina’s character and the significance of her name. Our hosts discuss the truth that though in an ultimate sense all will be made right, this play reminds us that in this life, there are some things that are not fully redeemed. They also talk about how Shakespeare plays with both the audience’s expectations and with the form in this act. Leontes’ imagination is also in need of redemption, and we see that happen here at the end of the play. Thomas makes the connection between the myth of Pygmalion, Euripedes’ Alcestis and A Winter’s Tale. The theme of resurrection is so prevalent in this final act, particularly in the case of Hermoine, but also in other characters and plot points. The winter is over, and spring has come to Sicily. The old order is not restored. A new order has been brought into being. Upcoming Events: We are excited to announce a new online conference coming on March 13-14, 2020. Our theme will be Re-enchanting the World: The Legacy of the Inklings. Our keynote speaker is Inklings scholar, Joseph Pearce. Go to Angelina and Thomas’ new website HouseofHumaneLetters.com for all the info and to register. Commonplace Quotes: An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as tears; and Shakespeare acted conformably to this ingenious maxim, without knowing it. William Hazlitt A work of art is a world unto itself, but all works of art belong to one world. Harold Goddard In all narration there is only one way to be clever, and that is to be exact. Robert Louis Stevenson Hermione in the House of Paulina by C. S. Lewis How soft it rains, how nourishingly soft and green Has grown the dark humility of this low house Where sunrise never enters, where I have not seen The moon by night nor heard the footfall of a mouse, Nor looked on any face but yours Nor changed my posture in my place of rest For fifteen years–oh how this quiet cures My pain and sucks the burning from my breast. It sucked out all the poison of my will and drew All hot rebellion from me, all desire to break The silence you commanded me. . . . Nothing to do, Nothing to fear or wish for, not a choice to make, Only to be; to hear no more Cock-crowing duty calling me to rise, But slowly thus to ripen laid in store In this dim nursery near your watching eyes. Pardon, great spirit, whose tall shape like a golden tower Stands over me or seems upon slow wings to move, Coloring with life my paleness, with returning power, By sober ministrations of severest love; Pardon, that when you brought me here, Still drowned in bitter passion, drugged with life, I did not know . . . pardon, I thought you were Paulina, old Antigonus’ young wife. Book List: Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays by William Hazlitt Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Poems 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

This week on The Literary Life, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas dive in to Act 4 of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. We are excited to announce a new online conference coming on March 13-14, 2020. Our theme will be Re-enchanting the World: The Legacy of the Inklings. Our keynote speaker is Inklings scholar, Joseph Pearce. Go to Angelina and Thomas’ new website HouseofHumaneLetters.com for all the info and to register. This act is jam packed with action and important plot points, but Cindy points out the connection between the shepherd and his son and the tale that Mamillius was telling Hermoine in an earlier act. Angelina brings up the juxtaposition of winter and spring in this play. She also talks about how Shakespeare departs from Aristotle’s “rules” for unity of time and place in playwriting. This act is all about redeeming what was lost, and it is also full of disguises. Thomas explains the connection between Perdita and Flora. Our hosts discuss the wedding customs of Shakespeare’s day as well as the festivities we see in this play. Thomas gives us a little overview of the myth of Persephone and how A Winter’s Tale alludes to this myth. Angelina also highlights the importance of the kiss in the fairy tale. Cindy encourages us to read and re-read because there is such depth in Shakespeare that we can never get to the bottom of it all. We are also invited to look for the mirrors of the characters and action in this act to things that happen in the first three acts. Angelina also instructs us on the two classic fairy tale story patterns and how A Winter’s Tale follows both of those patterns. The Winter’s Tale Show Schedule: February 25: Act V March: Live Q&A for Patreon Fellows Commonplace Quotes: She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me! William Wordsworth In the 12th-century Church of San Clemente in Rome, the brilliant mosaic apse over the main altar presents us with a view of reality that is both Cosmic and Eucharistic. The central image is of the crucified Christ, mildly accepting his suffering and death, his face full of peace. But spiraling forth from the foot of the cross, where it is watered by the blood of Christ, a stupendous acanthus bush curls outward and upward, encircling nearly a hundred separate images. The spiraling branches of the acanthus embrace even two pagan Roman gods, Baby Jupiter, formerly king of the gods, and Baby Neptune, formerly king of the deep, who rides a slippery looking dolphin. Even the ancient pagans have been redeemed, and their mythologies are usable by us. Thomas Cahill Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible. Lord Salisbury You Ask My Why, Tho’ Ill at Ease by Alfred, Lord Tennyson You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas. It is the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will; A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent: Where faction seldom gathers head, But by degrees to fullness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread. Should banded unions persecute Opinion, and induce a time When single thought is civil crime, And individual freedom mute; Tho’ Power should make from land to land The name of Britain trebly great— Tho’ every channel of the State Should fill and choke with golden sand— Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth, Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky, And I will see before I die The palms and temples of the South. Book List: Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber Pandosto by Robert Greene   Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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 The Literary Life podcast today, we join our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks to discuss Act 3 of The Winter's Tale by Williams Shakespeare. Before jumping into Shakespeare, though, our hosts are excited to announce a new online conference coming on March 13-14, 2020. Our theme will be Re-enchanting the World: The Legacy of the Inklings. Our keynote speaker is Inklings scholar, Joseph Pearce. Go to Angelina and Thomas' new website HouseofHumaneLetters.com for all the info and to register. After catching us up on the plot, Angelina asks Thomas to explain a little about the Oracles and Apollo and how they relate to this play. He also talks about the parallel between this play and the historical events surrounding Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Our hosts also bring out the importance of a legitimate heir to the throne in a monarchy. The idea of the consequence of an out of control imagination continue to be crucial in this act. They also talk about the sudden change in Leontes’ feelings and his repentance at the end of Act 3. Angelina points out that the structure of the play tells us that all this death and grief is not the climax of the story. Cindy brings up the Russian feel present in A Winter’s Tale. Thomas explores the characters of the shepherds and rustics in Shakespeare’s plays. They discuss the fairy elements as well as the gospel elements of the baby and the gold being found by the shepherds. Commonplace Quotes: “I think it was The Times Literary Supplement–and it had left me depressed. What struck me so forcibly, and not for the first time, was that a new book on any subject-history, philosophy, science, religion, or what have you–is always dealt with by a specialist in that subject. This may be fairest from the author’s point of view, but it conveys a disagreeable impression of watertight compartments… It wasn’t that people can think at once confidently and oppositely about almost anything that matters-though that, too, can sometimes be a sobering reflection. It wasn’t that they disagreed. I wished they did. What was biting me was the fact that these minds never met at all.” Owen Barfield 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 keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. Aldous Huxley A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep. W. H. Auden The Winter’s Tale Show Schedule: February 18: Act IV February 25: Act V March: Live Q&A for Patreon Fellows Paradise by George Herbert I BLESSE thee, Lord, because I G R O W Among thy trees, which in a R O W To thee both fruit and order O W. What open force, or hidden C H A R M Can blast my fruit, or bring me H A R M While the inclosure is thine A R M? Inclose me still for fear I S T A R T. Be to me rather sharp and T A R T, Than let me want thy hand and A R T. When thou dost greater judgements S P A R E, And with thy knife but prune and P A R E, Ev’n fruitful trees more fruitfull A R E. Such sharpness shows the sweetest F R E N D: Such cuttings rather heal than R E N D: And such beginnings touch their E N D. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Further Up and Further In by Joseph Pearce Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pearce The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis Worlds Apart by Owen Barfield The Two Cultures by C. P. Snow Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Wolf Hall Series by Hillary Mantel Silas Marner 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, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks are back to discuss Act 2 of The Winter’s Tale by Williams Shakespeare. After sharing their commonplace quotes, they begin with a brief recap of the plot. They highlight the story begun by Mamillius upon the entrance of Leontes in Act 2, Scene 1. Angelina explores the concept of Leontes as a tragic hero. Our hosts also get into the ideas of constancy versus inconstancy, lunacy and the Renaissance view of women as changeable. Shakespeare, on the other hand, portrays a man as the one who is changeable and the woman as constant. As we continue through this act, our hosts highlight Leontes’ illness and how it infects Mamillius. They also talk about Paulina as a sort of foil for Leontes, as well as her strength of character in the face of the king’s unreasonable behavior. Cindy points out the unthinkable nature of Leontes’ desire to burn his own wife and child. The Winter’s Tale Show Schedule: February 11: Act III February 18: Act IV February 25: Act V March: Live Q&A for Patreon Fellows Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Copyright ©1966 by Robert Hayden. Book List: Amazon Affiliate Links Range by David Epstein There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard by M. R. James Chanticleer and the Fox by Barbara Cooney The Aethiopica by Heliodorus 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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 talk about Act 1 of The Winter’s Tale by Williams Shakespeare. After sharing their commonplace quotes, our hosts begin by discussing the form of nearly ever Shakespeare play. They discuss the “problem” of the combination of tragic and comedic elements in this play. Other themes discussed are the presence of so many doubles in the characters, the way Shakespeare uses the setting, and how the kings represent their entire kingdoms. Cindy goes on to point out the way Leontes accepts the idea he has about Hermoine and Polixenes and runs with it. Angelina expounds on the way that people in Shakespeare’s time thought about having properly ordered mind versus one that is disordered. She and Thomas also highlight the way the Renaissance person saw disorder in the individual as connected to disorder in the universe. To close, Cindy also points out the way Shakespeare “plays” with words, so be watching for that as we read on! The Winter’s Tale Show Schedule: February 4: Act II February 11: Act III February 18: Act IV February 25: Act V March: Live Q&A for Patreon Fellows Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Milay Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate links) A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald Range by David Epstein The Meaning of Shakespeare, Vol. 2 by Harold Goddard The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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 first episode on Shakespeare’s play A Winter’s Tale. Hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins start off with some ideas of how to approach a Shakespeare play, especially if you feel new or intimidated by Shakespeare. Angelina talks about the use of poetry and prose in these plays, as well as the different types of plays within Shakespeare’s body of work. She also discusses the history and development of drama from the time of the Greeks to the Renaissance. James Banks joins the podcasts again to lend his perspective to our study of Shakespeare. He recommends the Oxford, Norton and Riverside editions for reading Shakespeare. He also encourages people to see screen adaptations, audio versions and, of course, watching a live play when possible. James also talks a little about the challenge of the older English language and how to deal with that as you read and listen. Our hosts also take a look at the culture and history surrounding Shakespeare and his theatre company. The Winter’s Tale Show Schedule: January 28: Act I February 4: Act II February 11: Act III February 18: Act IV February 25: Act V March: Live Q&A for Patreon Fellows In Memory of Yeats by W. H. Auden Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Home Education by Charlotte Mason A Christmas Dream and How it Came True by Louisa May Alcott Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by E. Nesbit Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser The Old Arcadia by Philip Sidney The Re-write (film) Shakespeare: a Critical Study of His Mind and Art by Edward Dowden Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays by William Hazlitt Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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, Angelina and Cindy interview James Banks. James is a civil servant, veteran, teacher, former academic and writer living in Austin, Texas. Prior to moving to the Lone Star State, he studied Renaissance Literature and taught at the University of Rochester. But it was only after leaving the academy that he rediscovered his passion for Shakespeare, Spenser, Chaucer and all things literary. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Weekly Standard, the Literati Quarterly, the Intercollegiate Review and elsewhere, but he is best known for being the brother of Thomas Banks and brother-in-law of Angelina Stanford. James talks about his childhood relationships with books and stories, and the massive leap he took from not being able to read to being a reader. He tells about his desire to be a teacher and his undergraduate experience. He also elaborates on how he came to his love of Shakespeare and Renaissance literature. James tells why he ended up leaving academia and how he rediscovered his love of literature. He also gives some examples of how he reads so much and makes the most of his time. The Cross of Snow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow In the long, sleepless watches of the night,    A gentle face — the face of one long dead —    Looks at me from the wall, where round its head    The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white    Never through martyrdom of fire was led    To its repose; nor can in books be read    The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West    That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines    Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast    These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes    And seasons, changeless since the day she died. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Big Wonderful Thing by Stephen Harrigan John Buchan by His Wife and Friends by Susan Tweedsmuir The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey Good Things Out of Nazareth: Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends The Shooting Party by Anton Chekhov The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh Cultural Amnesia by Clive James Pat Conroy The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare The Meaning of Shakespeare, Vol. 2 by Harold Goddard Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe Silas Marner by George Eliot The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper Anne Bradstreet Eudora Welty The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare P. G. Wodehouse The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll On the Edge by Edward St. Aubyn War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles The Adventures of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta The Aeneid by Virgil Selected Non-fictions by Jorge Luis Borges The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco Upcoming Book Discussions: Check the “Upcoming Book Discussions” tab to see what is coming your way on the podcast in 2020! 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

In this last episode of 2019, our Literary Life podcast hosts chat all about their past year in books, as well as what they hope to read in the coming year. Cindy, Angelina and Thomas begin by sharing some commonplace quotes from books they read in 2019. They discuss their strategies for planning their reading goals and how they curate their "to be read" lists. Each host also share some highlights from their year in books. Angelina then introduces The Literary Life Podcast 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge. She talks about how to approach this reading challenge. Then our hosts talk a little about each category in the challenge and give some of their possible book picks for 2020. Cindy mentions a list of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order. She also has a list of "Books for Cultivating Honorable Boys." Thanks to Our Sponsor: Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, New College Franklin is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. We seek to enrich and disciple students intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to guide them to wisdom and a life of service to God, neighbors, and creation In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,    The flying cloud, the frosty light:    The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new,    Ring, happy bells, across the snow:    The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind    For those that here we see no more;    Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause,    And ancient forms of party strife;    Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin,    The faithless coldness of the times;    Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood,    The civic slander and the spite;    Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease;    Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;    Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free,    The larger heart, the kindlier hand;    Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. Book List: (Affiliate links are used in this content.) Winter Hours by Mary Oliver Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays by William Hazlitt The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser Miracles by C. S. Lewis Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. Tolkein Leaf by Niggle by J. R. Tolkein Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev The Home of the Gentry by Ivan Turgenev The Killer and the Slain by Hugh Walpole Trent’s Last Case by E. C. Bentley Excellent Women by Barbara Pym The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham The Crane Wife by Sumiko Yagawa Susan Hill P. D. James Crow Lake by Mary Lawson Wendell Berry Rules of Civility by Amor Towles The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Oedipus Rex by Sophocles The Bacchae by Euripides Prince Albert by A. N. Wilson Marie Antoinette by Hilaire Belloc Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster A Little History of Literature by John Sutherland How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone Silence by Shusako Endo Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis Moby Dick by Herman Melville Paradise Regained by John Milton Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift Candide by Voltaire The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis Lyrical Ballads by Coleridge and Wordsworth The Hundredfold by Anthony Esolen Motherland by Sally Thomas The Autobiograhy of a Cad by A. G. Macdonell Elizabeth Goudge Miss Read Ellis Peters Edith Pargeter George Eliot Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte The Oxford Book of Essays How to Travel with a Salmon by Umberto Eco The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Crucible by Arthur Miller Savage Messiah by Jim Proser Becoming by Michelle Obama Abigail by Magda Szabo 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ 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, Angelina and Cindy interview Caitlin Bruce Beauchamp. In addition to being a homeschool graduate and a lover of the humanities, Caitlin is a busy wife and a mother of young children. In their conversation, Angelina, Cindy and Caitlin dive into the deep end from the start, discussing the purpose of beauty. They talk about Caitlin’s early reading life and how she came to love books. She shares how she had to learn some humility in her reading life as an adult. Angelina asks Caitlin how she finds the time to keep up her reading life amidst the responsibilities of mothering. Cindy and Caitlin talk about the importance of feeding your mind with other people’s ideas instead of taking the road to self-pity. The ladies discuss the timing of reading certain books to children and the great joy of watching children blossom as they listen to the right kinds of stories. Caitlin shares some of the books she reads to get out of a slump, as well as some other favorites and current reads. Listen to The Literary Life: In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago. Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ. Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day, Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him, whom angels fall before, The ox and ass and camel which adore. Angels and archangels may have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; But His mother only, in her maiden bliss, Worshiped the beloved with a kiss. What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart. Book List: (Affiliate links are used in this content.) The Reading Life by C. S. Lewis Poetics by Aristotle The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes Moby Dick by Herman Melville An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder The Happy Hollisters by Jerry West Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace Stories from The Faerie Queen by Jeanie Lang Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Silence by Shusako Endo Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery Middlemarch by George Eliot (the Audible version read by Juliet Stevenson) Light in August by William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane Elizabeth Goudge Plainsong by Kent Haruf Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ 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 on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. On The Literary Life Podcast today, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks go chapter by chapter through the end of the book. First we see that Catherine finally comes to the realization that people are a mixture of good and bad, not all angels or villains. Cindy and Angelina point out the ways that Catherine does not follow the typical behavior of a heroine in a sentimental novel but is actually more sensible. Our hosts discuss General Tilney’s character and the similarities he shares with the Thorpes. Thomas points out the parallel sleepless night scenes and that Catherine now doesn’t need imaginary fears because she has real dangers to worry about. Austen parodies several more themes of the sentimental novels in this section, culminating with Henry Tilney’s unromantic proposal and the rather ordinary way in which everything gets worked out. Our hosts chuckle over Austen’s way of poking fun at closing with a moral. Come back next week for a special Literary Life of…. episode on Christmas Eve. Join the Patreon community to take part in a Live Q&A on Northanger Abbey. Then join us in the new year for Shakespeare, and so much more! Thanks to Our Sponsor: Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, New College Franklin is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. We seek to enrich and disciple students intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to guide them to wisdom and a life of service to God, neighbors, and creation. The Clod and the Pebble by William Blake “Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.” So sung a little Clod of Clay Trodden with the cattle’s feet, But a Pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet: “Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another’s loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.” Book List: (Affiliate links are used in this content.) A Prayer for My Son by Hugh Walpole The Killer and The Slain by Hugh Walpole Mr. Standfast by John Buchan To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle Penseés by Blaise Pascal Camilla by Fanny Burney The History of Rassellas by Samuel Johnson 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

In this week's episode of The Literary Life, our host are back to discuss chapters 18-24 of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Cindy, Angelina and Thomas start out sharing the things that struck them as they read this particular section of the book. Angelina highlight's Catherine's growing ability to judge between appearances and reality. We see the great contrast between Henry Tilney with John Thorpe throughout these chapters, and we learn how different the abbey is from Catherine's sentimental expectations. Another point that Angelina brings to the forefront is that Catherine is looking for hidden dangers, but she doesn’t see the real, ordinary dangers of people like the Thorpes. Cindy highlights the way Austen points to some problems with equating English-ness with Christianity and exceptionalism. Thomas underlines Henry Tilney’s own moment of naïveté about what evils actually do exist, even in his own family. Throughout this whole section, one main theme is the undeceiving of Catherine, and this is a big turning point for her. Thanks to Our Sponsor: Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, New College Franklin is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. We seek to enrich and disciple students intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to guide them to wisdom and a life of service to God, neighbors, and creation. Penelope by Elizabeth Jennings Weave on Penelope, you must, Waiting for your lover who Travels half the world. No lust Only love abides in you. The suitors come. You cast them off. Let your faithful weaving go On and on until your love Can return and cherish you. Book List: Waiting on the Word by Malcolm Guite Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift Love and Friendship (film) Lady Susan by Jane Austen I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Adam Beede by George Eliot Atonement by Ian McEwan The Lord of the Flies by William Golding Persuasion 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ 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, Cindy, Angelina and Thomas dig into chapters 11-17 of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Today’s conversation gets into the subtext surrounding what was expected of young ladies to be acceptable in society. A major theme in this book, and particularly in these chapters, is Catherine’s learning to discern between what is simply appearance and what is reality. We learn even more in these chapters how inconstant and deceptive the Thorpes are, especially in contrast to the Tilneys. Angelina highlights some of the scenes Austen uses to illustrate when it is right for Catherine to buck the rules of propriety as opposed to Isabella’s impropriety at the wrong time. Thomas brings up the question of what reasons we have thus far to like Henry Tilney even though we do not know overly much about him yet. Cindy points out some of Austen’s ideas on education and the similarities to Charlotte Mason’s principles. Thanks to Our Sponsor: Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, New College Franklin is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. We seek to enrich and disciple students intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to guide them to wisdom and a life of service to God, neighbors, and creation. Also, be sure to check out Thomas Banks’ webinar, The Poetry of Advent, taking place on December 4, 2019. Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins to a young child Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wíll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It ís the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson Assessments and Anticipations by William Ralph Inge A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters by John Gregory A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ 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 Stanford and Cindy Rollins, along with Thomas Banks, are discussing chapters 4-10 of Northanger Abbey. They start out talking about Jane Austen’s light touch and her gentle satirical way of pointing out the pros and cons of the novel. Angelina and Thomas bring up some of the historical and social context for this setting in Regency period Bath. They contrast the proper social code with the way the Thorpes behave and with Catherine Morland’s naïvetè and innocence. Cindy laughs about the way in which Jane Austen pokes fun at the novel’s form while writing a novel herself. After the critics’ early disgust for the novel, Jane Austen elevated the form to the point that they finally had to recognize the novel as a worthy work of literature. Cindy also brings up the idea that Austen may have partly written this novel because she wanted to talk with others about all these books that she references. They chat about all the things that occurred in history that led up to the availability of the novel to the masses, and to women in particular. Angelina observes that Austen plays with the tropes within a realistic situation in contrast to the over-the-top situations presented in sensational novels of the period. They wrap up the conversation with highlights about the different characters and what we can be looking for in the next several chapters. Thanks to Our Sponsor: Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, New College Franklin is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. We seek to enrich and disciple students intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to guide them to wisdom and a life of service to God, neighbors, and creation. Also, be sure to check out Thomas Banks’ webinar, The Poetry of Advent, taking place on December 4, 2019. Love and Live by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester All my past life is mine no more, The flying hours are gone, Like transitory dreams giv’n o’er, Whose images are kept in store By memory alone. The time that is to come is not; How can it then be mine? The present moment’s all my lot; And that, as fast as it is got, Phyllis, is only thine. Then talk not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows; If I, by miracle, can be This live-long minute true to thee, ’Tis all that Heav’n allows. Book List: Summer Lightning by P. G. Wodehouse Pamela by Samuel Richardson Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Becoming Jane (film) Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham Lady Susan by Jane Austen Love and Friendship (film) 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ 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 pleased to begin talking about Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. For this introduction episode Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford are joined by Thomas Banks. Together they discuss the advent of the novel as a form, as well as some predecessors of Austen. Angelina points out Austen's satirical voice in poking fun at the sentimental novel in the first few chapters. She also encourages us to look for the real life dangers the main characters encounter in contrast to those sensations of the popular sentimental or Gothic novel. Furthermore, we ought to notice who is reading various genres of literature and what that says about those characters. Cindy and Angelina also talk about Jane Austen's writing and her economy of style and the lasting quality of her books. Along with criticism of sensationalism, Austen also adds a healthy dose of criticism of the education given young women in her day. We also learn that this is a novel of development as we watch Catherine Moorland learn her way around the world.  Thanks to Our Sponsors- Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, New College Franklin is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. We seek to enrich and disciple students intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to guide them to wisdom and a life of service to God, neighbors, and creation. Also, be sure to check out Cindy's new Patreon page, Morning Time for Moms discipleship group, as well as Thomas and Angelina's webinar sessions on Dicken's A Christmas Carol. The Dying Christian to His Soul by Alexander Pope Vital spark of heav’nly flame! Quit, O quit this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying, O the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life. Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister Spirit, come away! What is this absorbs me quite? Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? Tell me, my soul, can this be death? The world recedes; it disappears! Heav’n opens on my eyes! my ears With sounds seraphic ring! Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Grave! where is thy victory? O Death! where is thy sting? Book List: (Affiliate Links) Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle Tom Jones by Henry Fielding Pamela by Samuel Richardson Fanny Burney Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliff Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth The Castle of Ontranto by Horace Walpol Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg Othello by William Shakespeare Twelfth Night 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ 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, Angelina and Cindy interview poet, author and mother, Sally Thomas. You can find Sally and some of her writing at www.sally-thomas.com. Sally talks about her early reading life beginning with her memories of her family members reading themselves and to her. Cindy and Angelina ask her about her early forays into storytelling and writing. They discuss how literature and story are for everyone, including scientists and mathematicians, not just those who already have a bent toward reading. Sally shares about the influential teachers she had who fed her love of the written word. Angelina asks about how Sally approaches the balance between the reading life and the writing life. They also discuss how the seasons of Sally's family life shifted her focus somewhat away from active writing but were still fruitful in other ways. Cindy asks what Sally likes to read as a diversion, and Angelina brings up the topic of how to deal with a reading slump. They wrap up their chat reveling in the reward of homeschooling and teaching their own children, and what a joy it is both to raise readers but to become better readers themselves. Upcoming Events: Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks will be presenting a 3-day webinar series on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol on November 12-14. Register here to get lifetime access to the sessions. Angelina will also be in Austin, TX at Christ Church on November 25, 2019. More information is available here. My Father Drawing in an Upstairs Room by Sally Thomas Outside, on a live stirring backdrop of broad-handed green, The black cat on her branch spreads her back toes and licks, licks, between. He looks musingly at her, and through her, as if right now he Saw some mystery imposed on — or being born from — the tree. On the table, five charcoal-drawn children roughhouse in a whiteness You might see as empty. You might discern in it the likeness Of a person who waits and observes, is as happy to wait Forever for something to happen beyond these five straight Black figures like capering trees in a cosmos of snow. In my mind the catalpa leaves roofing the morning still glow Sun-heavy, alive. These five children he’s caught in their white Fleet-foot moment perdure, as all shadows survive on daylight. He’s looking at them, as in this long instant I’ve seen him. Once more the cat spreads her black toes, once more licks between them. Copyright 2018, Sally Thomas. Used by permission. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Fallen Water by Sally Thomas Richeldis of Walsingham by Sally Thomas Sound and Sense by Laurence Perrine The Intellectual Life by Sertillanges All the Silver Pennies The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw Beowulf Paradise Lost by John Milton Marianne Moore Elizabeth Bishop The Book of the Red King by Marly Youmans Mr. Either/Or by Aaron Poochigian Pattiann Rogers The Wheel on the School by Meinert DeJong Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters Sharon Kay Penman Excellent Women by Barbara Pym Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty The Lost Words by Robert McFarlane Landmarks by Robert McFarlane 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.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/ 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, Angelina and Cindy are once again joined by Thomas Banks. They discuss the last two chapters and the epilogue of An Experiment in Criticism. The first topic of conversation is Lewis' comments on poetry, including the un-literary reading of poetry and the importance of the sound of poetry. Angelina highlights Lewis' take on reading "bad books," and Cindy points out his warning against de-bunking. Thomas gives us some history on the reference to F. R. Leavis and his literary criticism. Angelina dives into her favorite part of this section, all about what makes good literary criticism. She recaps Lewis' own list of the types of literary commentators and historians who have helped him in his own reading. Angelina and Thomas both mention some of their favorite resources, including George Lyman Kittredge, Northrup Frye, J. W. MacKail and Dorothy Sayers. Another important point is to look for resources that point back to the text, not outside of the text. Cindy and Angelina clear up some confusion about marginalia and what types of notes can help or hinder us in our reading. Finally, in discussing the epilogue, our hosts reiterate the purpose of reading as widening our souls and freeing ourselves to experience another person's perspective. Cindy asks if we will read with hubris, or humility? That makes all the difference. Be sure to check out Thomas Banks' next webinar, "Poetry and Classical Myth: The Influence of Greek and Roman Myth on English Poetry." The live stream will be on October 17, 2019, but the replay will be available soon afterward. Also, for our Patreon Fellows, please join us for a live private Q&A session on An Experiment in Criticism on October 23, 2019! Listen to The Literary Life: A Cat by Edward Thomas She had a name among the children; But no one loved though someone owned Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime And had her kittens duly drowned. In Spring, nevertheless, this cat Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales, And birds of bright voice and plume and flight, As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails. I loathed and hated her for this; One speckle on a thrush’s breast Was worth a million such; and yet She lived long, till God gave her rest. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) The Porch and the Cross by Kevin Vost A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle The Great Tradition by F. R. Leavis The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Phillip and Carol Zaleski The Mother Tongue by Kittredge & Arnold Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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's episode is a continuation of Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford's discussion of An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis. They start with an exploration of the difference between loving a book and evaluating a book as a work of art, followed by an explanation of Lewis' idea that works of art do not teach us. Angelina goes in depth about why it is not our job as readers to find the "nugget of truth" in a book. Cindy brings up Lewis' point about "using" literature as an academic tool, versus "receiving" literature as a work of art. In covering chapter 9, Angelina and Cindy dig into the dangers of rushing to express an opinion about what we read, rather than getting ourselves out of the way when approaching a book. Cindy points to the many similarities between what Lewis says in these chapters and what Charlotte Mason says about true education. Be sure to check out Thomas Banks' next webinar, "Poetry and Classical Myth: The Influence of Greek and Roman Myth on English Poetry." The live stream will be on October 17, 2019, but the replay will be available soon afterward. Rose-Cheeked Laura by Thomas Campion Rose-cheek'd Laura, come, Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's Silent music, either other Sweetly gracing. Lovely forms do flow From concent divinely framed; Heav'n is music, and thy beauty's Birth is heavenly. These dull notes we sing Discords need for helps to grace them; Only beauty purely loving Knows no discord, But still moves delight, Like clear springs renew'd by flowing, Ever perfect, ever in them- Selves eternal. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Seeking God by Esther de Waal The Great Code by Northrop Frye Wuthering Heights by Emily Brönte Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Angelina and Cindy open today's discussion of C. S. Lewis' An Experiment in Criticism with a recap of the terms that Lewis defines in chapters 5-7, starting with myth. They talk about what it means to have an "extra-literary" experience and how to cultivate the proper attitude of a good reader. Next Cindy and Angelina dig into the definition and benefits of literary fantasy versus the dangers of morbid fantasy. They talk about our deep need for stories of "the other" and have experiences with people and places that are not the same as our own. Another big topic of conversation is the idea of literature being escapist, particularly fantasy and fairy stories. Angelina and Cindy talk about several things related to this idea: belief and disbelief, fiction versus nonfiction, and the wonder of childhood. Cindy brings up Lewis' comments on the comic and what relation that has to the current popularity of the graphic novel. Angelina also explains why we shouldn't be looking to directly relate to a character in a novel in order to get something out of the book. A Moment by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge The clouds had made a crimson crown Above the mountains high. The stormy sun was going down In a stormy sky. Why did you let your eyes so rest on me, And hold your breath between? In all the ages this can never be As if it had not been. Book List: Amazon Affiliate Links This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan Phantastes by George MacDonald Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis The Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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 kicks off our fall series, “How to Read a Novel”, starting with C. S. Lewis’ An Experiment in Criticism. Next, we will dive into Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, applying the principles we have learned as we read. Angelina and Cindy discuss Lewis’ approach to literature and the point of this book being a critique more of readers than of books. Some main ideas they bring out of the first chapter are the importance of rereading, the fact that real readers will carve out time for books, how books have the power to change us, and the way readers can’t help but talk about books. Cindy highlights the connection between Lewis critique of the literati and Mr. Bons in “The Celestial Omnibus.” Angelina talks about the challenge of keeping the love of literature for those whose profession it is to teach it, especially in the modern American university culture. Our hosts discuss the idea of reading to improve oneself as opposed to submitting to the experience of reading a challenging book. Angelina makes the point that it is about motive and whether or not you are trying to control the outcome. The benefits are the byproducts. From chapter 3, Angelina and Cindy contemplate how we approach art and the need to get ourselves out of the way so that we can enter the work of art. Finally, they cover the five characteristics of the unliterary reader according to Lewis. The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy “Had he and I but met             By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet             Right many a nipperkin! “But ranged as infantry,             And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me,             And killed him in his place. “I shot him dead because —             Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was;             That’s clear enough; although “He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,             Off-hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps —             No other reason why. “Yes; quaint and curious war is!             You shoot a fellow down You’d treat if met where any bar is,             Or help to half-a-crown.” Book List: This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett Paradise Lost by John Milton Bleak House by Charles Dickens Phantastes by George MacDonald A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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 of our summer series on short stories and essays! Today your hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins are joined once again by Thomas Banks for their discussion of Samuel Johnson's essay "The Vulture." Before getting into the meat of the essay, Angelina talks about why she disagrees with her own commonplace quote on the purpose of poetry. In the process, she gives us a brief history of literary periods from the classical to the neoclassical and enlightenment. Thomas shares some more biographical information on Samuel Johnson and his work. Cindy highlights both the important place and the danger of satire, which is a popular neoclassical form and the one used in Johnson's essay. The discussion ends with thoughts on why Johnson's essay was finally not included with the others in The Idler collection, as well as what his purpose may have been in writing "The Vulture." Be sure to tune in again on September 17, 2019 for "The Literary Life of Greg Wilbur," followed by three weeks of episodes on C. S. Lewis' An Experiment in Criticism. Our fall novel will be Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Upcoming Events: September 19: How to Love Poetry Webinar with Thomas Banks A Farewell to Arms by George Peele His golden locks Time hath to silver turn'd; O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing! His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurn'd, But spurn'd in vain; youth waneth by increasing: Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen; Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green. His helmet now shall make a hive for bees; And, lovers' sonnets turn'd to holy psalms, A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms: But though from court to cottage he depart, His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart. And when he saddest sits in homely cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song,-- 'Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well, Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.' Goddess, allow this aged man his right To be your beadsman now that was your knight. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham Little Britches by Ralph Moody The History of Rasselas by Samuel Johnson Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift Bird Life in Wington by John Calvin Reid The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins are joined once more by Thomas Banks for their discussion of “The Celestial Omnibus” by E. M. Forster. Angelina and Cindy tell why they love this short story so much and how it encapsulates their own ideas about literature. Thomas gives us some biographical background on E. M. Forster. We get a brief look at the plot of the story, as well as some discussion of how allegorical Forster makes this story. Angelina highlights the idea presented in “The Celestial Omnibus” that what we see in fairy land is more real than what we see in our own world. Other themes our hosts bring up include modern educational theory, wonder and innocence, using poetry versus enjoying it, and literary critique contrasted with experiencing literature. Their conversation hinges around the contrast between Mr. Bons’ pride and pretension and the boy’s humility and sincerity. This story embodies everything that The Literary Life podcast is all about, so we hope you enjoy both the story and this episode! Summer of the Short Story: Ep 18: “Vulture on War” by Samuel Johnson Upcoming Events: September 22: How to Love Poetry Webinar with Thomas Banks Port of Aerial Embarkation by John Ciardi There is no widening distance at the shore— The sea revolving slowly from the piers— But the one border of our take-off roar And we are mounted on the hemispheres. Above the waning moon whose almanac We wait to finish continents away, The Northern stars already call us back, And silence folds like maps on all we say. Under the sky, a stadium tensed to cry The ringside savage thrumming of the fights, We watch our engines, taut and trained for sky, Arranged on fields of concrete flowered with lights. Day after day we fondle and repeat A jeweler’s adjustment on a screw; Or wander past the bulletins to meet And wander back to watch the sky be blue. Somehow we see ourselves in photographs Held in our hands to show us back our pride When, aging, we recall in epitaphs The faces just behind and to each side. The nights keep perfect silence. In the dark You feel the faces soften into sleep, Or tense upon the fraught and falling arc Of fear a boy had buried not too deep. Finally we stand by and consciously Measure the double sense of all our talk, And, everyman his dramatist, anxiously Corrects his role, his gesture, and his walk. Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton Mental Efficiency by Arnold Bennett How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett Howards End by E. M. Forster Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis Religio Medici by Thomas Browne 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

The topic of today's discussion on The Literary Life is George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." Angelina and Cindy kick off the conversation about how much they each identify with Orwell's description of his childhood. In his story of learning to write, we see many aspects of a good education, even his inclination to imitate other authors. An important point Angelina brings up is Orwell's own struggle against the calling he felt to write, in contrast to having an ambition to do so. Angelina brings up a related story about musician Gregory Alan Isakov, and Cindy reiterates the idea of why we need leisure in order to find our vocation. Cindy and Angelina also bring out some of the qualities Orwell possessed that make a good writer. Maturity as a human being and as a master of a craft are crucial to certain forms of writing, as Orwell points out about his own work. Other topics of conversation include truth-telling in writing, the motives for writing according to Orwell, and the growing process of writers. Summer of the Short Story: Ep 17: "The Celestial Omnibus" by E. M. Forster Ep 18: "Vulture on War" by Samuel Johnson Live Bonus Episode on Patreon: "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flanner O'Connor on August 22, 2019 Upcoming Events: August 26-29: Back to School Webinar with Cindy Rollins, Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks and Adrienne Freas September 22: How to Love Poetry Webinar with Thomas Banks Veni, Creator Spiritus by John Dryden Creator Spirit, by whose aid The world's foundations first were laid, Come, visit ev'ry pious mind; Come, pour thy joys on human kind; From sin, and sorrow set us free; And make thy temples worthy Thee. O, Source of uncreated Light, The Father's promis'd Paraclete! Thrice Holy Fount, thrice Holy Fire, Our hearts with heav'nly love inspire; Come, and thy Sacred Unction bring To sanctify us, while we sing! Plenteous of grace, descend from high, Rich in thy sev'n-fold energy! Thou strength of his Almighty Hand, Whose pow'r does heav'n and earth command: Proceeding Spirit, our Defence, Who do'st the gift of tongues dispence, And crown'st thy gift with eloquence! Refine and purge our earthly parts; But, oh, inflame and fire our hearts! Our frailties help, our vice control; Submit the senses to the soul; And when rebellious they are grown, Then, lay thy hand, and hold 'em down. Chase from our minds th' Infernal Foe; And peace, the fruit of love, bestow; And, lest our feet should step astray, Protect, and guide us in the way. Make us Eternal Truths receive, And practise, all that we believe: Give us thy self, that we may see The Father and the Son, by thee. Immortal honour, endless fame, Attend th' Almighty Father's name: The Saviour Son be glorified, Who for lost Man's redemption died: And equal adoration be, Eternal Paraclete, to thee. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset Animal Farm 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins discuss Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace." Also, don't forget to register for the Back to School online conference on August 26-29, 2019 with Cindy and Angelina, as well as Thomas Banks and Adrienne Freas! Before getting into the short story discussion, Cindy and Angelina chat about what a "commonplace book" is and how they each go about recording quotes and thoughts, including the QuoteBlock app. First off, Angelina gives us a little background on the author Guy de Maupassant and some information on French naturalism. Then she digs into her thoughts on how this story is a fairy tale in reverse and what that might mean in context. Cindy points out the perfection of de Maupassant's writing and his economy of style. They also bring up some of the formal elements of the story, particularly the key role the reversal takes in the plot. The main themes they find in "The Necklace" touch on common human struggles with ambition, discontentment, loss, suffering and gratitude. Summer of the Short Story: Ep 16: "Why I Write" by George Orwell Ep 17: "The Celestial Omnibus" by E. M. Forster Ep 18: "Vulture on War" by Samuel Johnson Live Bonus Episode on Patreon: "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flanner O'Connor On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer by John Keats Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset In This House of Brede by Rumor Godden 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford are joined by a special guest, Angelina's husband, Thomas Banks! This week's selection for our summer series is Joseph Addison's "The Adventures of a Shilling." This episode is packed with book references, so scroll down for links to the titles mentioned! The conversation today kicks off with an attempt at defining the "essay" form and giving a brief history on its development. Thomas shares a little background information on Joseph Addison and his writing, as well as several other essayists who came before and after Addison. Thomas also talks about why essays are a significant part of his reading life. The conversation also spins off into a discussion of the importance of how we spend our leisure time. Finally, our hosts chat about this week's essay, which gives highlights of England's history from the perspective of a silver coin. Addison's tale is full of humor and satire, as well as layers of social commentary and pathos. Don't forget to register for the Back to School online conference coming up on August 26-29, 2019 so you don't miss out on this awesome opportunity to "repair the ruins" of your own education. Summer of the Short Story: Ep 15: "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant Ep 16: "Why I Write" by George Orwell Ep 17: "The Celestial Omnibus" by E. M. Forster Ep 18: "Vulture on War" by Samuel Johnson When I Consider How My Light Is Spent by John Milton When I consider how my light is spent,    Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,    And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present    My true account, lest He returning chide;    "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need    Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best    Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,    And post o'er land and ocean without rest;    They also serve who only stand and wait." Book List: (Amazon Affiliate Links) Lives of the Poets by Samuel Johnson The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Dove Descending by Thomas Howard Four Quartets by T. S. Elliot The Essays by Sir Frances Bacon The Essays: A Selection by Michel de Montaigne The Defendant by G. K. Chesterton The Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas de Quincy Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper Cato: A Tragedy by Joseph Addison Gulliver's Travels and The Battle of the Books by Jonathon Swift Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, Cindy and Angelina discuss Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Garden Party.” Before starting today’s episode, we want to encourage you to register for the Back to School online conference coming up on August 26-29, 2019! After a great chat over their commonplace quotes, Angelina and Cindy dig into this week’s short story, “The Garden Party.” They start with how Cindy found this story and the connections she was making to Little Women. Angelina gives a brief biographical sketch of Katherine Mansfield and highlights how Mansfield’s own illness and death give us insight into how she deals with death in this story. Angelina walks us through how she looks at the use of figurative language and images, such as the Garden of Eden. They also touch on “The Garden Party” having the same structure of moving toward a moment of epiphany that we saw in “Araby.” Cindy brings up the disconnect between the world of the women at home and the working people outside the home, as well as between the classes in this story. They talk about the importance of Laura’s new hat as a symbol of one type of person she can become. Another image that Angelina and Cindy take a look at is the descent from the garden into darkness. They discuss the parallels from the beginning of the story and the end of the story, as well as Laura’s movement from innocence to experience, from blindness to sight. Summer of the Short Story: Ep 14: “Adventures of a Shilling” by Joseph Addison Ep 15: “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant Ep 16: “Why I Write” by George Orwell Ep 17: “The Celestial Omnibus” by E. M. Forster Ep 18: “Vulture on War” by Samuel Johnson The Truly Great by Stephen Spender I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire, Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song. And who hoarded from the Spring branches The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms. What is precious, is never to forget The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth. Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light Nor its grave evening demand for love. Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit. Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields, See how these names are fêted by the waving grass And by the streamers of white cloud And whispers of wind in the listening sky. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre. Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour. Copyright © 1955 by Stephen Spender. Source: Collected Poems 1928-1953 Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast today, Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins discuss G. K. Chesterton’s essay “A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls.” Before diving in to today’s episode, don’t forget to register for the amazing Back to School online conference coming up on August 26-29, 2019! Angelina opens with a brief history of the Victorian era and the more prevalent availability of the novel to the masses. She also gives several examples of the “penny dreadful.” Cindy and Angelina discuss why they agree with Chesterton that people need these simple, even formulaic stories. They remind us that childhood is a time for good books, not a time to worry about reading all the “Great Books.” Another topic that Cindy and Angelina chat about is the importance of developing imagination. They talk about the truth that fiction and story-telling are necessary parts of human culture. Cindy highlights the importance of the heroic adventure stories for boys. Angelina brings out the point that the elite critic is out of touch with the masses who long for stories of good winning over evil. The penny dreadful should not be judged as art, since that was never what it was intended to be. Summer of the Short Story: Ep 13: “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield Ep 14: “Adventures of a Shilling” by Joseph Addison Ep 15: “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant Ep 16: “Why I Write” by George Orwell Ep 17: “The Celestial Omnibus” by E. M. Forster Ep 18: “Vulture on War” by Samuel Johnson Bavarian Gentians by D. H. Lawrence Not every man has gentians in his house in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom, ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze, black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue, giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale lamps give off light, lead me then, lead me the way. Reach me a gentian, give me a torch let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness. even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness was awake upon the dark and Persephone herself is but a voice or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom, among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and groom. Book List: Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason War and Peace by Leo Tolsto The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis G. A. Henty books Dave Dawson War Adventure Series 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford open our Summer of the Short Story series with a discussion of “Araby” by James Joyce. Cindy and Angelina also announce an encouraging Back to School online conference coming up on August 26-29, 2019. In delving into “Araby,” Angelina talks about the history and development of the short story form. Cindy gives a little of her own background with reading James Joyce and why she loves his short stories. Angelina and Cindy also discuss the essential “Irishness” of this story and all the tales in The Dubliners. Angelina walks us through the story, highlighting the kinds of questions and things we should look for when reading closely. Themes discussed in this story include: blindness and sight, light and darkness, romanticism, religious devotion, the search for truth, money, courtly love, and the knight’s quest. Summer of the Short Story: Ep 12: “A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls” by G. K. Chesterton Ep 13: “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield Ep 14: “Adventures of a Shilling” by Joseph Addison Ep 15: “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant Ep 16: “Why I Write” by George Orwell Ep 17: “The Celestial Omnibus” by E. M. Forster Ep 18: “Vulture on War” by Samuel Johnson Huxley Hall by John Betjemen In the Garden City Cafe‚ with its murals on the wall Before a talk on “Sex and Civics” I meditated on the Fall. Deep depression settled on me under that electric glare While outside the lightsome poplars flanked the rose-beds in the square. While outside the carefree children sported in the summer haze And released their inhibitions in a hundred different ways. She who eats her greasy crumpets snugly in the inglenook Of some birch-enshrouded homestead, dropping butter on her book Can she know the deep depression of this bright, hygienic hell? And her husband, stout free-thinker, can he share in it as well? Not the folk-museum’s charting of man’s Progress out of slime Can release me from the painful seeming accident of Time. Barry smashes Shirley’s dolly, Shirley’s eyes are crossed with hate, Comrades plot a Comrade’s downfall “in the interests of the State”. Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime-juice minus gin, Quite can drown a faint conviction that we may be born in Sin Book List: (Affiliate Links) To Pause on the Threshold by Esther de Waal The Dubliners by James Joyce Ulysses by James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 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: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

In this episode of The Literary Life, Cindy and Angelina interview their long time friend and fellow reader, Kelly Cumbee. Kelly is a wife and homeschooling mother of seven who has given herself a highly literary education. Together they discuss how Kelly started reading at a very young age and the kinds of books she loved as a child. Kelly talks about her love for Edmund Spenser and how she began reading Spenser with her children. Angelina asks about Kelly's background and how she makes connections throughout her conversations and her reading. Another topic of conversation is how Kelly made time for books throughout the different seasons of life and how she didn't really start reading "hard books" until later in life. They wrap up the conversation discussing what Kelly is currently reading and with more encouragement to read widely and make connections. Summer of the Short Story: Ep 11: "Araby" by James Joyce Ep 12: “A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls” by G. K. Chesterton Ep 13: “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield Ep 14: “Adventures of a Shilling” by Joseph Addison Ep 15: “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant Ep 16: “Why I Write” by George Orwell Ep 17: “The Celestial Omnibus” by E. M. Forster Ep 18: “Vulture on War” by Samuel Johnson Amoretti XXIII by Edmund Spenser Penelope for her Ulisses sake, Deviz’d a Web her wooers to deceave: In which the worke that she all day did make The same at night she did again unreave: Such subtile craft my Damzell doth conceave, Th’ importune suit of my desire to shonne: For all that I in many dayes doo weave, In one short houre I find by her undonne. So when I thinke to end that I begonne, I must begin and never bring to end: For with one looke she spils that long I sponne, And with one word my whole years work doth rend. Such labour like the Spyders web I fynd, Whose fruitless worke is broken with least wynd.   Book List: (affiliate links) A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry The Secular Scripture by Northrop Frye Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham The Space Trilogy (The Ransom Trilogy) by C. S. Lewis Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis Realm of Numbers by Isaac Asimov I, Robot by Isaac Asimov   Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins discuss Dorothy L. Sayers’ essay “Are Women Human?“ They explore the ideas that Sayers wrestles with in the essay, including: the Victorian view of women, the significance of the industrial revolution, the human need for meaningful occupation, and the early feminist movement and women’s suffrage. Angelina and Cindy also discuss the history of women’s work inside and outside of the home and how they have been impacted by industry and our production-consumption culture. They take a fascinating look at the effects of the Enlightenment on women in the modern western world, as well as the problem of over-generalization and categorizing people according to classes. Finally, Cindy and Angelina highlight the importance of asking yourself the question: “Who am I supposed to be as a mother and a woman?” Upcoming Events and Shows: June 20: Live Q&A Session on the Patreon page for “Fellows” July 9: The Literary Life of Kelly Cumbee July 16: Araby by James Joyce (The Summer of the Short Story) Villon by Siegfried Sassoon They threw me from the gates: my matted hair  Was dank with dungeon wetness; my spent frame  O’erlaid with marish agues: everywhere  Tortured by leaping pangs of frost and flame,  So hideous was I that even Lazarus there In noisome rags arrayed and leprous shame,  Beside me set had seemed full sweet and fair,  And looked on me with loathing.  But one came  Who laid a cloak on me and brought me in  Tenderly to an hostel quiet and clean; Used me with healing hands for all my needs.  The mortal stain of my reputed sin,  My state despised, and my defilèd weeds,  He hath put by as though they had not been. Book List: New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton Seeking God by Esther De Waal Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers Thanks to our Sponsor: The Literary Life Podcast is brought to you New College Franklin. Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, NCF is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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 hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins are covering the final chapters of Gaudy Night, starting with chapter 16. They also announce the opening of the Patreon community called "Friends and Fellows" where they will be offering a wealth of additional content. In this episode, Cindy and Angelina explore the ideas in these last chapters of the book, including the fact that this is more a novel of manners than it is a thriller. Other topics of discussion include the development of Lord Peter's character, the vampire motif present throughout the novel, and the significance of the sonnet form and musical counterpoint references in this book. Angelina wonders at the brilliance of Sayers and the way she weaves the head versus heart theme into the text. Cindy brings up the problem of principle and passion, and the loss of metaphor in our culture. Of course, no discussion of the end of Gaudy Nightwould be complete without mentioning the proposal, and Angelina delves into the meaning of the Latin words used by Lord Peter. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers "The Summer of the Short Story" series Heureux, Qui Comme Ulysse by Joachim du Bellay, translated by Richard Wilbur Happy the man who, journeying far and wide As Jason or Ulysses did, can then Turn homeward, seasoned in the ways of men, And claim his own, and there in peace abide! When shall I see the chimney-smoke divide The sky above my little town: ah, when Stroll the small gardens of that house again Which is my realm and crown, and more beside? Better I love the plain, secluded home My fathers built, than bold façades of Rome; Slate pleases me as marble cannot do; Better than Tiber's flood my quiet Loire, Those little hills than these, and dearer far Than great sea winds the zephyrs of Anjou. Book List: (affiliate links) The Defense of Poesy by Sir Philip Sydney Mere Motherhood Newsletters by Cindy Rollins Crow Lake by Mary Lawson Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

In this episode of The Literary Life, Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford discuss chapters 8-15 of Dorothy L. Sayers' book Gaudy Night. In addition to reviewing the plot points of interest in these chapters, Cindy and Angelina focus in on the interweaving of plot, theme, and setting in Gaudy Night. They talk about how Oxford is more than just a place in which the story is told, but is almost a character itself, as well as being the place where Lord Peter and Harriet can meet as equals. Another recurring topic is the continuing conversation about what it means to be a woman and an intellectual, as well as how marriage changes both men and women. In these chapters, we see more of Harriet and Lord Peter's relationship, and we get to know Lord Peter in a fuller light. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 8 (June 4): Gaudy Night, ch 16-23, complete Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. Book List: The Getaway Car by Ann Patchett (included in This is the Story of a Happy Marriage)   Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, your hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins sit down for a chat with their friend and fellow reader, Mary Jo Tate. As well as being an avid reader, Mary Jo is an author, editor, teacher, book collector and single mother to 4 young men. A veteran homeschooler, Mary Jo is the author of Flourish: Balance for Homeschool Moms, and you can learn more about her and her work at FlourishAtHome.com. In this interview, Angelina and Cindy talk with Mary Jo about her own background as a reader, beginning with her childhood memories of books. They discuss the influence of family, librarians and teachers on the life of a young reader. Mary Jo talks about different seasons of her reading life and gives some advice for the busy, exhausting time as a mother of young children. Another topic of discussion is how Mary Jo's education and profession grew out of her love of literature. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 7 (May 28): Gaudy Night ch 8-15 Episode 8 (June 4): Gaudy Night, ch 16-23, complete Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Out of the Ashes by Anthony Esolen One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis Andrew Lang's Fairy Books The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald At Home in Mitford by Jan KaronS Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson It little profits that an idle king,  By this still hearth, among these barren crags,  Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole  Unequal laws unto a savage race,  That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.  I cannot rest from travel: I will drink  Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd  Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those  That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when  Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades  Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;  For always roaming with a hungry heart  Much have I seen and known; cities of men  And manners, climates, councils, governments,  Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;  And drunk delight of battle with my peers,  Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.  I am a part of all that I have met;  Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'  Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades  For ever and forever when I move.  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!  As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life  Were all too little, and of one to me  Little remains: but every hour is saved  From that eternal silence, something more,  A bringer of new things; and vile it were  For some three suns to store and hoard myself,  And this gray spirit yearning in desire  To follow knowledge like a sinking star,  Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.           This is my son, mine own Telemachus,  To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—  Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil  This labour, by slow prudence to make mild  A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees  Subdue them to the useful and the good.  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere  Of common duties, decent not to fail  In offices of tenderness, and pay  Meet adoration to my household gods,  When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.           There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:  There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,  Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—  That ever with a frolic welcome took  The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed  Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;  Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;  Death closes all: but something ere the end,  Some work of noble note, may yet be done,  Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.  The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:  The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep  Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,  'T is not too late to seek a newer world.  Push off, and sitting well in order smite  The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths  Of all the western stars, until I die.  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.  Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'  We are not now that strength which in old days  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;  One equal temper of heroic hearts,  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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, Angelina and Cindy discuss the next few chapters of Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. In this episode, Angelina explores the question of why all the epigraphs opening each chapter are from Renaissance writers. Aside from recapping plot points, Cindy and Angelina also chat about the following topics: the unnatural nature of the crime and of the cloistered atmosphere; the gothic themes present in this novel; Harriet's lack of self-awareness; further contemplations on love and marriage. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 7 (May 28): Gaudy Night ch 8-15 Episode 8 (June 4): Gaudy Night ch 16-23, complete Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Lot's Wife by Anna Akhmatova (trans. by Richard Wilbur) The just man followed then his angel guide Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright; But a wild grief in his wife's bosom cried, Look back, it is not too late for a last sight Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn, And the tall house with empty windows where You loved your husband and your babes were born. She turned, and looking on the bitter view Her eyes were welded shut by mortal pain; Into transparent salt her body grew, And her quick feet were rooted in the plain. Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not The least of our losses, this unhappy wife? Yet in my heart she will not be forgot Who, for a single glance, gave up her life. Book List: Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (1967 film adaptation) Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers   Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ 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 List: (affiliate links) Gaudy Night, Strong Poison, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers Seeking God by Esther de Waal and Kathleen Norris The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis Essays by Dorothy Sayers: Are Women Human?, The Mind of the Maker,  and Letters to a Diminished Church   Connect with us! Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/   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 poem: A Slice of Wedding Cake by Robert Graves   Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls Married impossible men? Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out, And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.   Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic, Foul-tempered or depraved (Dramatic foils chosen to show the world How well women behave, and always have behaved).   Impossible men: idle, illiterate, Self-pitying, dirty, sly, For whose appearance even in City parks Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.   Has God's supply of tolerable husbands Fallen, in fact, so low? Or do I always over-value woman At the expense of man? Do I? It might be so.

Today’s Book List: (affiliate links) The World’s Last Night and Lilies That Fester by C.S. Lewis The Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise, and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers Nancy Drew #45: The Spider Sapphire Mystery by Carolyn Keene The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald Knox Multiple novels by Agatha Christie Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins The Albert Campion series by Margery Allingham The Roderick Alleyn series by Ngaio Marsh The Flavia de Luce series by Allen Bradley The Inspector Appleby Mystery series by Michael Innes The Daughter of Time and Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey Murder Fantastical by Patricia Moyes The Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) Multiple novels by Alexander McCall Smith Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie King The Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny Brave New World by David Archer The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters The Adam Dalgliesh Series by P.D. James   Connect with us! Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/   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 poem: The Listeners by Walter De La Mare   ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,      Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses      Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret,      Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time;      ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller;      No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,      Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners      That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight      To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,      That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken      By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness,      Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,      ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even      Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,      That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners,      Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house      From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,      And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward,      When the plunging hoofs were gone.