The Literary Life Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Episode 149: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, Ch. 12-17 Nov 22, 2022

Show notes

Our hosts are back on The Literary Life podcast today to continue our series on Bram Stoker's Dracula. This week we are covering chapters 12-17, and in the introduction to this episode, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas discuss the purpose of the Gothic novel in reorienting us to realize there is more to the world than the physical and empirical. As they cover the plot in these chapters, other ideas shared are the effective blending of modern technology with ancient wisdom in fighting evil, the many mythological and fairy tale elements in this story, the contrast between the true woman and the false woman, the parallels to Paradise Lost, and so much more.

Sign up for the mailing list at HouseofHumaneLetters.com so you don't miss out on the upcoming Christmas sale. Kelly Cumbee will also be teaching a course on The Chronicles of Narnia and medieval cosmology in February, and registration is now open.

Now is the time to get your copy of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah in time for celebrating Advent with your family. You can also get a recording of the Advent to Remember webinar at MorningTimeforMoms.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

He was one of that not uncommon sort of men who, when they want something, must believe that they are right in wanting it.

Milton Waldman

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe– Sailed on a river of crystal light, Into a sea of dew. "Where are you going, and what do you wish?" The old moon asked of the three. "We have come to fish for the herring fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of silver and gold have we!" Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod.

Eugene Field, from "Wynkin, Blynken, and Nod"

During the period when the forces of Christianity were nearly spent and materialism had dislodged spiritual values, the Gothic novelists planned their novels with an awareness of the Deity and the consciousness of a just fate. The villains learn in due course that the wages of sin is death.

Devendra Varma Sonnet 71

by William Shakespeare

No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell. Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it, for I love you so That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe. O, if, I say, you look upon this verse When I, perhaps, compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse, But let your love even with my life decay, Lest the wise world should look into your moan And mock you with me after I am gone.

Book List:

Rod of Iron by Milton Waldman

The Gothic Flame by Devendra Varma

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 148: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, Ch. 8-11 Nov 15, 2022

Show notes

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast today and our series on Bram Stoker's Dracula. This week Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks cover chapters 8-11 of the book. Angelina explains both the "New Woman" and "Angel in the House" ideas of the Victorian era and makes some observations about Dr. Seward's interactions with Renfield in contrast to the nuns ministrations to Jonathan Harker. We are also introduced to Dr. Van Helsing in this section of the book as the foil for Dracula, and we quickly learn that he is more than just a medical man. Our hosts discuss Stoker's own medical knowledge and both the historical and metaphorical context of the blood transfusion procedures in these chapters.

Thomas will be offering a webinar on Henry VIII and his times, which you can register for at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Kelly Cumbee will also be teaching a course on The Chronicles of Narnia and medieval cosmology in February, and registration is now open.

Commonplace Quotes:

Once the imagination has been awakened, it is procreative. Through it we can give more than we were given, say more than we had to say. This is a beautiful double proposition, that art enlarges our repertoire for being, and that it further enables a giving onwards of that enriched utterance, that broadened perception.

Lewis Hyde

The passions are more powerful than the gods. If the gods speak, which they seldom do, the passions drown their voices.

Walter Savage Lander

The gods love blood.

Leconte de Lisle What can the world be to him who lives for thought, if there be no supreme and perfect Thought? None but such poor struggles after thought as he finds in himself? Take the eternal Thought from the heart of things, no longer can any beauty be real, no more can shape, motion, aspect of nature, have significance in itself or sympathy with human soul. George MacDonald A Dream Within a Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

Book List:

Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott

The Gifts of Reading by Robert Macfarlane

The Gift by Lewis Hyde

Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage Landor

A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 147: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, Ch. 3-7 Nov 08, 2022

Show notes

On The Literary Life Podcast this week, our hosts continue with part 2 of their series on Bram Stoker's Dracula. After sharing their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas begin discussing how to properly read Dracula and other books written in this tradition. (Hint: It's not the Freudian or psychoanalytical approach!) Angelina argues that Bram Stoker was trying, among other things, to reintroduce the traditional forms and metaphors into the modern era. Thomas shares the dark etymology of the name Dracula and how that relates to the image of Satan in this character. Cindy brings up Jonathan's memory of Mina when he is in his darkest moments and the power of love against evil.

Commonplace Quotes:

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Samuel Johnson

For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness the universe. In the fabric of habit in which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer.

And now it is all gone–like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of what these men were when they were alive; and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation of mediæval age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world.

James Anthony Froude

A man no more creates the forms of which he would reveal his thoughts, than he creates thoughts themselves. For what are the forms by means of which a man may reveal his thoughts? Are they not those of nature?…What springs there is the perception that this or that form is already an expression of this or that phase of thought or of feeling. For the world around him is an outward figuration of the condition of his mind; an inexhaustible storehouse of forms whence he may choose exponents…The meanings are in those forms already, else they could be no garment of unveiling.

George MacDonald A Selection from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

I looked upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away; I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay.

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust.

Book List:

A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald

The History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth by James Anthony Froude

The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis

Studies in Words by C. S. Lewis

Wilkie Collins

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 146: Introduction to "Dracula" by Bram Stoker, Ch. 1 & 2 Nov 01, 2022

Show notes

On this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford is joined as always by Thomas Banks and Cindy Rollins for the opening of their series on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Today our hosts focus on the background and historical context for this piece of literature, as well as going over the highlights of the first two chapters. They talk about the question of the role of the monster in literature in modernity versus its historical interpretation. Understanding the form of the Gothic novel and the time period in which this book was written are important aspects of approaching Dracula.

Keep listening next week for more about how to read this book. We will be covering chapters 3-7.

Get the latest news from House of Humane Letters by signing up for their e-newsletter today!

Commonplace Quotes:

And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere modernity cannot kill.

Bram Stoker

That children should have the peace of God as a necessary condition of growth is a practical question. If we believe it is their right, not to be acquired by merit nor lost by demerit, we shall take less upon ourselves and understand that it is not we who pasture the young souls. The managing mother who interferes with every hour and every occupation of her child's life, all because it is her duty, would tend to disappear. She would see with some amusement why it is that the rather lazy, self-indulgent mother, is often blessed with very good children. She, too, will let her children be, not because she is lazy, but being dutiful, she sees that, give children opportunity and elbow room, and they are likely to become natural persons, neither cranks nor prigs. And here is the hope for society–children so brought up are hardly likely to become managing persons in their turn, inclined to intrude upon the lives of others and be rather intolerable in whatever relation.

Charlotte Mason

Men of science spend much time and effort in the attempt to disentangle words from their metaphorical and traditional associations. The attempt is bound to prove vain, since it runs counter to the law of humanity.

Dorothy Sayers Ghosts

by Elizabeth Jennings

Those houses haunt in which we leave Something undone. It is not those Great words or silence of love

That spread their echoes through a place And fill the locked-up, unbreathed gloom. Ghosts do not haunt with any face

That we have known; they only come With arrogance to thrust at us Our own omissions in a room.

The words we would not speak they use, The deeds we dared not act they flaunt, Our nervous silences they bruise;

It is our helplessness they choose And our refusals that they haunt.

Book List:

The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

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

Wake Not the Dead by Johann Ludwig Tieck

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Vampyre by John Polidori

Varney the Vampire by James Malcolm Rymer

Carmilla by Sheridan Lefanu

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 145: The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: A Conversation with Jason M. Baxter Oct 18, 2022

Show notes

On The Literary Life Podcast this week, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks sit down for a special conversation with Jason Baxter, author of The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis. Jason is a speaker, writer, and college professor who writes primarily on medieval thought and is especially interested in Lewis' ideas. You can find out more about him and his books at JasonMBaxter.com.

Our hosts and Jason discuss a wide range of ideas, including the values of literature, the sacramental view of reality, why it is important to understand medieval thought, the "problem" of paganism in Lewis' writings, and how to approach reading ancient and medieval literature.

Be back next week when we will begin digging into Bram Stoker's Dracula together and learning more about this late Victorian Gothic novel. It's not what you might think!

Get the latest news from House of Humane Letters by signing up for their e-newsletter today!

Commonplace Quotes:

My part has been merely that of Walter Scott's Old Mortality, who busied himself in clearing the moss, and bringing back to light the words, on the gravestones of the dead who seemed to him to have served humanity. This needs to be done and redone, generation after generation, in a world where there persists always a strong tendency to read newer writers, not because they are better, but because they are newer. The moss grows fast, and ceaselessly.

F. L. Lucas

It is the memory of time that makes us old; remembering eternity makes us young again.

Statford Caldecott

It is my settled conviction that in order to read old Western literature aright, you must suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits you have acquired in reading modern literature.

C. S. Lewis, from "De Descriptione Temporum"

What then is the good of–what is even the defense for–occupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feeling which we should try to avoid in our own person?…The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves…[In] reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

C. S. Lewis Victory

by C. S. Lewis

Roland is dead, Cuchulain's crest is low, The battered war-rear wastes and turns to rust, And Helen's eyes and Iseult's lips are dust And dust the shoulders and the breasts of snow.

The faerie people from our woods are gone, No Dryads have I found in all our trees, No Triton blows his horn about our seas And Arthur sleeps far hence in Avalon.

The ancient songs they wither as the grass And waste as doth a garment waxen old, All poets have been fools who thought to mould A monument more durable than brass.

For these decay: but not for that decays The yearning, high, rebellious spirit of man That never rested yet since life began From striving with red Nature and her ways.

Now in the filth of war, the baresark shout Of battle, it is vexed. And yet so oft Out of the deeps, of old, it rose aloft That they who watch the ages may not doubt.

Though often bruised, oft broken by the rod, Yet, like the phoenix, from each fiery bed Higher the stricken spirit lifts its head And higher-till the beast become a god.

Book List:

Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott

An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis

The Art of Living: Four Eighteenth Century Minds by F. L. Lucas

Transposition by C. S. Lewis

The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis

Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

The Divine Comedy by Dante

Nicholas of Cusa

The Life of St. Francis of Assisi by St. Bonaventure

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Confessions by St. Augustine

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 144: "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens, Bk. 3, Ch. 4-End Oct 11, 2022

Show notes

On this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, our hosts wrap up their series on Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Angelina opens the conversation about the book by highlighting Dickens' masterful ability to tie up all the loose ends in his stories. They cover not only the major plot points here at the end of the book, but talk about the craft of Dickens and continue to teach us how to read this type of story. We see each character's full arc and the positive changes that come when people choose repentance versus the fate of those who remain stubbornly on the road to destruction.

Join us next time for a special conversation with Jason Baxter, author of The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis.

After that, we will be digging into Bram Stoker's Dracula together and learning more about this late Victorian Gothic novel. It's not what you might think!

Head over to MorningTimeforMoms.com to get signed up for Dawn Duran's webinar on "A Reasoned Patriotism," taking place later this week!

Get the latest news from House of Humane Letters by signing up for their e-newsletter today!

Commonplace Quotes:

It is not the business of poetry to go about distributing tracts.

Andrew Lang

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people of very ordinary literary ability that they could write excellent continuations of The Screwtape Letters.

Fred Sanders

In the Bible, the opposite of Sin, with a capital 'S,' is not virtue – it's faith: faith in a God who draws all to himself in his resurrection.

Robert Farrar Capon

Reviewers who have not had time to reread Milton have failed for the most part to digest your criticism of him, but it is a reasonable hope that of those who heard you in Oxford, many will understand henceforward that when the old poets made some virtue their theme they were not teaching but adoring, and that what we take for the didactic is often the enchanted.

C. S. Lewis Say not the Struggle nought Availeth

by Arthur Hugh Clough

Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright.

Book List:

The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

Between Noon and Three by Robert Farrar Capon

A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis

The Gifts of Reading by Robert MacFarlane

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 143: "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens, Bk. 3, Ch. 1-3 Oct 04, 2022

Show notes

On The Literary Life this week our hosts cover the next section of Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Angelina opens the conversation highlighting the structure of the book and the storytelling devices Dickens uses in this book. Cindy talks about the failure of educational systems in general, and the confrontation between Louisa and her father. Thomas shares a little about Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarian economic theory in relation to Hard Times. One of the main points they discuss in today's episode is the importance of motherhood and the quiet work that goes on in the family unit.

Head over to MorningTimeforMoms.com to get signed up for Dawn Duran's webinar on "A Reasoned Patriotism."

Commonplace Quotes:

Persuasion enters like a sunbeam, quietly and without violence.

Jeremy Taylor

To me the greatness of the story, the horror of the story, and the threat to humanity the story portrays lie in the fact that Frankenstein has usurped the power, not of God, but of women. He has made a man without a mother. His science has eliminated the principle of femininity from the creation of human life.

Through the miracle of science a woman can now medicate her body so that men may use it for pleasure without consequence or attachment.

Andrew Klavan

In the first place, we naturally wish to help the students in studying those parts of the subject where we have most help to give and they need help most. On recent and contemporary literature their need is least and out help least. They ought to understand it better than we, and if they do not then there is something radically wrong either with them or with the literature. But I need not labour the point. There is an intrinsic absurdity in making current literature a subject of academic study, and the student who wants a tutor's assistance in reading the works of his own contemporaries might as well ask for a nurse's assistance in blowing his own nose.

C. S. Lewis, from "Our English Syllabus" Death and the Lady

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

TURN in, my lord, she said ; As it were the Father of Sin I have hated the Father of the Dead, The slayer of my kin ; By the Father of the Living led, Turn in, my lord, turn in. We were foes of old ; thy touch was cold, But mine is warm as life ; I have struggled and made thee loose thy hold, I have turned aside the knife. Despair itself in me was bold, I have striven, and won the strife. But that which conquered thee and rose Again to earth descends ; For the last time we have come to blows. And the long combat ends. The worst and secretest of foes, Be now my friend of friends.

Book List:

Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor

The Truth and the Beauty by Andrew Klavan

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 142: "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens, Book 2, Ch. 6-9 Sep 27, 2022

Show notes

Welcome back to The Literary Life this week and the continuation of our series on Hard Times by Charles Dickens. After some autumnal chit-chat, our hosts Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas dive into the plot of the end of Book 2. They open discussing Stephen's fate and Tom Gradgrind's destructive, devouring nature. They highlight Mrs. Sparsit and her similarities to a harpy and other imagery surrounding her denoting evil. Some other ideas discussed are good intentions with bad results, the concept of the fallen woman in Victorian times, Louisa's homecoming and confession, and the failure of a formula in imparting virtue.

Head over to MorningTimeforMoms.com to get signed up for Dawn Duran's webinar on "A Reasoned Patriotism."

Commonplace Quotes:

Beware of the superficial knowledge of cold facts. Beware of sinful ratiocination, for it kills the heart, and when heart and mind have died in a man, there art cannot dwell.

Caspar David Friedrich

I don't think they are noticeably worse at reading or writing than they were all those decades ago, though they're less likely to have a lot of experience with the standard academic essay (introduction, three major points, conclusion) — which I do not see as a major deficiency. That kind of essay was never more than a highly imperfect tool for teaching students how to read carefully and write about what they have read, and, frankly, I believe that over the years I have come up with some better ones.

Alan Jacobs, from Snakes and Ladders

The hours of unsponsored, uninspected, perhaps even forbidden, reading, the ramblings, and the "long, long thoughts" in which those of luckier generations first discovered literature and nature and themselves are a thing of the past.

C. S. Lewis, from "Lilies that Fester" A Daughter of Eve

by Christina Rossetti

A fool I was to sleep at noon, And wake when night is chilly Beneath the comfortless cold moon; A fool to pluck my rose too soon, A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept; Faded and all-forsaken, I weep as I have never wept: Oh it was summer when I slept, It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:— Stripp'd bare of hope and everything, No more to laugh, no more to sing, I sit alone with sorrow.

Book List:

The World's Last Night: and Other Essays by C. S. Lewis

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Esther Waters by George Moore

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

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

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

Episode 141: "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens, Book 2, Ch. 1-5 Sep 20, 2022

Show notes

The Literary Life Podcast's new episode this week continues our series on Hard Times by Charles Dickens. After Angelina ties up a few loose ends from Book 1, Thomas leads us into Book 2 and introduces us to Mr. Harthouse. Cindy highlights the dangers of not allowing children learn self-government as illustrated in the character of Tom Gradgrind. They then look again at Stephen Blackpool and his position as the martyr in the story. Our hosts also discuss Dickens' focus on demonstrating the problems facing people in his day, not moralizing or trying to present solutions.

Head over to MorningTimeforMoms.com to get signed up for Dawn Duran's webinar on "A Reasoned Patriotism."

You can also get the replay of Angelina's mini-class on The Taming of the Shrew at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

It is ill for a country, Gentlemen – I fear we must acknowledge it – when her destiny passes into the guidance of professors.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, from "Studies in Literature"

It is the old story. Utilitarian education is profoundly immoral in that it defrauds a child of the associations which should give him intellectual atmosphere.

Charlotte Mason

That evil may spring from the imagination, as from everything except the perfect love of God cannot be denied. But infinitely worse evils would be the result of its absence. Selfishness, avarice, sensuality, cruelty, would flourish tenfold; and the power of Satan would be well established ere some children had begun to choose. Those who would quell the apparently lawless tossing of the spirit, called the youthful imagination, would suppress all that is to grow out of it. They fear the enthusiasm they never felt; and instead of cherishing this divine thing, instead of giving it room and air for healthful growth, they would crush and confine it–with but one result of their victorious endeavors–imposthume, fever, and corruption. And the disastrous consequences would soon appear in the intellect likewise which they worship. Kill that whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts–dull because their relations to each other, and the one life that works in them all, must remain undiscovered. Whoever would have his children avoid this arid region will do well to allow no teacher to approach them–not even of mathematics–who has no imagination.

George MacDonald The Golf Links

by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn

The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play.

Book List:

Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason

A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 140: "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens, Book 1, Ch. 11-16 Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

Today on The Literary Life Podcast, our hosts continue their series on Charles Dickens' Hard Times. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas open the conversation with their commonplace quotes, which all lead into the discussion of Hard Times. They start out highlighting once again the fairytale and allegory aspects of this story, including the setting of Coketown. Together they talk about the two sides of Sissy Jupe's education, along with the situations and portrayals of the other key characters in this section. A large part of the discussions centers around the ideas of input and output versus sowing and reaping.

Purchase the recordings of our 2022 Back to School Conference at MorningTimeforMoms.com. That is also where you can get signed up for Dawn Duran's webinar on "A Reasoned Patriotism."

You can also get the replay of Angelina's mini-class on The Taming of the Shrew at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

The ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, have made a name.

Andrew Lang, from "How to Fail in Literature"

To taboo knowledge is not to secure innocence. We must remember that ignorance is not innocence, and also that ignorance is the parent of insatiable curiosity.

Charlotte Mason

Early in 1851, Dickens suggested in Household Words that a second exhibition be held of "England's sins and negligences." When he finally went to the Crystal Palace, he described it as "terrible duffery." He wrote in July 1851, "I find I am used up by the exhibition. I don't say there is nothing in it. There is too much. I have only been twice. So many things bewildered me. I have a natural horror of sights, and the fusion of so many sights in one has not decreased it. I'm not sure that I have seen anything but the fountain and perhaps the Amazon. It is a dreadful thing to be obliged to be false, but when anyone says, 'Have you seen…?' I say, 'Yes', because if I don't he'll explain it, and I can't bear that.

Julia Baird, quoting Charles Dickens from "Ode On a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy"

by Thomas Hood

Ah me! those old familiar bounds! That classic house, those classic grounds My pensive thought recalls! What tender urchins now confine, What little captives now repine, Within yon irksome walls?

Ay, that's the very house! I know Its ugly windows, ten a-row! Its chimneys in the rear! And there's the iron rod so high, That drew the thunder from the sky And turn'd our table-beer!

There I was birch'd! there I was bred! There like a little Adam fed From Learning's woeful tree! The weary tasks I used to con!— The hopeless leaves I wept upon!— Most fruitless leaves to me!—

The summon'd class!—the awful bow!— I wonder who is master now And wholesome anguish sheds! How many ushers now employs, How many maids to see the boys Have nothing in their heads!

Book List:

Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason

The Ink Black Heart (Cormoran Strike Book 6) by Robert Galbraith

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

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