The Literary Life Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Episode 119: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Acts I and II Jan 25, 2022

Show notes

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast and our series on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. After kicking off the episode with their commonplace quotes, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas start digging into the play itself. Thomas brings up the importance of the timing of this story being midsummer. Angelina gives a little background into the names and characters in this play as well as some of the major ideas we can be looking for in the story.

In February Angelina will be offering a webinar on Jonathan Swift: Enemy of the Enlightenment. Check it out at HouseofHumaneLetters.com.

Join us this spring for our next Literary Life Conference "The Battle Over Children's Literature" featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian. The live online conference will take place April 7-9, 2022, and you can go to HouseofHumaneLetters.com for more information.

Commonplace Quotes:

Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.

John Dryden, in a letter to Jonathan Swift

It would be difficult indeed to define wherein lay the peculiar truth of the phrase "merrie England", though some conception of it is quite necessary to the comprehension of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In some cases at least, it may be said to lie in this, that the English of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, unlike the England of today, could conceive of the idea of a merry supernaturalism.

G. K. Chesterton

And yet, there are people who say that Shakespeare always means, "just what he says." He thinks that to find over and under meanings in Shakespeare's plays is to take unwarranted liberties with them, is like a man who holds the word "spring" must refer only to a particular period of the year, and could not possibly mean birth, or youth or hope. He is a man who has never associated anything with anything else. He is a man without metaphors, and such a man is no man at all, let alone a poet.

Harold Goddard Advice to Lovers

by Robert Graves

I knew an old man at a Fair Who made it his twice-yearly task To clamber on a cider cask And cry to all the yokels there:-- "Lovers to-day and for all time Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: Love is not kindly nor yet grim But does to you as you to him. "Whistle, and Love will come to you, Hiss, and he fades without a word, Do wrong, and he great wrong will do, Speak, he retells what he has heard. "Then all you lovers have good heed Vex not young Love in word or deed: Love never leaves an unpaid debt, He will not pardon nor forget." The old man's voice was sweet yet loud And this shows what a man was he, He'd scatter apples to the crowd And give great draughts of cider, free. Book List:

"Battle of the Books" by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 118: An Intro to Shakespeare and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Jan 18, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to this new season of The Literary Life podcast! This week we bring you an introduction both to William Shakespeare and his play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas seek to give new Shakespeare readers a place from which to jump into his work and more experienced readers eyes to see more layers in his stories. Cindy begins with some perspective on how to start cultivating a love for Shakespeare. Angelina shares her "hot take" on whether you should read the play or watch the play. They suggest some books for further digging into Shakespeare's works, and Angelina gives an overview of the format of his comedies. Thomas goes into some detail about Roman comedy.

Next week we will be back with a discussion of Acts I and II of the play. Also, if you would like to join the free live read-along over at HouseofHumaneLetters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

If certain tendencies within our civilization were to proceed unchecked, they would rapidly take us towards a society which, like that of a prison, would be both completely introverted and completely without privacy. The last stand of privacy has always been, traditionally, the inner mind….It is quite possible, however, for communications media, especially the newer electronic ones, to break down the associative structures of the inner mind and replace them by the prefabricated structures of the media . A society entirely controlled by their slogans and exhortations would be introverted because nobody would be saying anything: there would only be echo, and Echo was the mistress of Narcissus….the triumph of communication is the death of communication: where communication forms a total environment, there is nothing to be communicated.

Northrop Frye

No writer can persist for five hundred pages in being funny at the expense of someone who is dead.

Harold Nicolson

Originality was a new and somewhat ugly idol of the nineteenth century.

Janet Spens Unwisdom

by Siegfried Sassoon

To see with different eyes From every day, And find in dream disguise Worlds far away— To walk in childhood's land With trusting looks, And oldly understand Youth's fairy-books— Thus our unwisdom brings Release which hears The bird that sings In groves beyond the years. Book List:

"The Practice of Biography" by Harold Nicolson

The Modern Century by Northrop Frye

An Essay on Shakespeare's Relation to Tradition by Janet Spens

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

Stage Fright on a Summer Night by Mary Pope Osborne

Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories by Leon Garfield

Stories from Shakespeare by Marchette Chute

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

Shakespeare's Problem Plays by E. M. Tillyard

Shakespeare's Early Comedies by E. M. Tillyard

Shakespeare's History Plays by E. M. Tillyard

Great Stage of Fools by Peter Leithardt

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 117: Our 2021 Literary Life Reading Wrap-up Dec 14, 2021

Show notes

On this week's episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share a wrap up of their year in reading–their favorite books of the year, their most hated books read in 2021, and how they each did with covering the categories of the #LitLife192021 Reading Challenge. They also talk a little about how they will be approaching their reading for next year.

Download the Two for '22 adult reading challenge PDF here, and the kids' reading challenge PDF here.

The Literary Life Commonplace Books published by Blue Sky Daisies are back with new covers for 2022! Also, check out the Christmas sale at HouseofHumaneLetters.com!

Coming up on The Literary Life podcast in the new year, we have Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream coming up in January and after that, Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Then we will be reading The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim and Charles Dickens' Hard Times later in the year. Our children's classic novel this year will be The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

Commonplace Quotes:

Literature's world is a concrete human world of immediate experience. The poet uses images and objects and sensations much more than he uses abstract ideas. The novelist is concerned with telling stories, not with working out arguments.

Northrop Frye

The moon is the only one of the heavenly bodies that, whilst rising resplendently like the other luminaries, nevertheless changes and waxes and wanes as we do.

Malcolm Guite

I almost think that the same skin

For one without has two or three within.

Lord Byron, from "Don Juan" The Poetry of Shakespeare

by George Meredith

Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; – Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays; Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it; Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great human heart.

Book List:

Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins

The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye

Faith, Hope, and Poetry by Malcolm Guite

David's Crown by Malcolm Guite

Savior of the World by Charlotte Mason

The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side by Agatha Christie

Anthony Horowitz

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Wintering by Katherine May

The Narnian by Alan Jacobs

In the Year of Our Lord 1943 by Alan Jacobs

Elizabeth Goudge

Assignment in Brittany by Helen Macinnes

Look Back with Love by Dodie Smith

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley

The Atonement by Ian McEwan

Desmond MacCarthay

David Cecil

Letters by a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens

Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells

The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Odd Women by George Gissing

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley

Corsets and Codpieces by Karen Bowman

*The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall (not recommended)

*Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt (not recommended)

MacBeth by William Shakespeare

As the Indians Left It by Robert Sparks Walker

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Lady Susan by Jane Austen

Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth

A Hobbit, A Wardrobe and A World War by Joseph Laconte

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Neil Gaiman

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Nina Balatka by Anthony Trollope

Christmas at Thompson Hall by Anthony Trollope

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 116: The "Two for '22" Literary Life Reading Challenge Dec 07, 2021

Show notes

"Two for '22" Literary Life Reading Challenge! This coming year Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are challenging us to read books in 11 categories, but choose 2 books in each category, with a bit of a twist. In today's episode they briefly go over each category and give a few examples of books would fit into those categories. They also take us through the Kids' "Two for '22" Reading Challenge topics. Next time we will be back with a wrap-up episode for our 19 for 2022 Reading Challenge.

The Literary Life Commonplace Books published by Blue Sky Daisies are back with new covers for 2022!

Coming up on The Literary Life podcast in the new year, we have Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dreamcoming up in January and after that, Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis. Then we will be reading The Enchanted Aprilby Elizabeth von Arnim and Charles Dickens' Hard Times later in the year. Our children's classic novel this year will be The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

Commonplace Quotes:

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful. One must sense him everywhere, but not see him.

Gustave Flaubert

There reigns thro' all the blank verse poems such a perpetual trick of moralizing every thing–which is very well, occasionally–but never to see or describe any interesting appearance in nature, without connecting it by dim analogies with the moral world, proves faintness of Impression. Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that everything has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life.

Malcolm Guite

The principle behind modern methods of reading is stated in the form: if there is to be a meaning, it shall be ours.

C. S. Lewis There is No Frigate Like a Book

by Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul –

Book List:

Faith, Hope and Poetry by Malcolm Guite

The Allegory of the Faerie Queene by Pauline Parker

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

The Splendid Century by W. H. Lewis

The Fellowship by Philip and Carol Zaleski

Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Goyer

Tolkein and The Great War by John Garth

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

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey

Elizabeth the Great by Elizabeth Jenkins

The Daughter of Time by Josephine They

Elizabeth von Arnim

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

J. K. Rowling/Roberth Galbraith

A Collection of Essays by George Orwell

Essays of G. K. Chesterton by G. K. Chesterton

David Bentley Hart

In a Cardboard Belt! by Joseph Epstein

Padraic Colum

The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Bill Peet: An Autobiography by Bill Peet

Kingfisher Book of Russian Tales by James Mayhew

Paul Galdone

The Cooper Kids Adventure Series by Frank Peretti

Harriet the Spy Series by Louise Fitzhugh

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 115: In Search of the Austen Adaptation – Pride and Prejudice Nov 30, 2021

Show notes

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

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

Commonplace Quotes:

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

Desmond MacCarthy

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

Virginia Woolf

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

G. K. Chesterton

Never judge a book by its movie.

Anonymous False Though She Be

by William Congreve

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

The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 114: The Literary Life of Dr. Carolyn Weber Nov 23, 2021

Show notes

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we are excited to bring you a much anticipated interview with Dr. Carolyn Weber, author of the popular memoir, Surprised by Oxford. She is also currently a professor at New College Franklin. To keep up with Carolyn, visit carolynweber.com or follow her on Facebook. Angelina and Cindy kick off the conversation by asking Carolyn about her childhood and how she came to love reading. They talk about her experience in school education and whether that differed from her personal reading life. Carolyn talks about her love of teaching and her immersive literary education experience at Oxford. She also expands on the way that reading the Bible for the first time opened her eyes to so many more of the truths in the literature she had read.

Commonplace Quotes:

Unexpectedly, it was Oxford that taught me it was okay to be both feminine and smart, that intelligence was, as a friend put it, a "woman's best cosmetic."

Carolyn Weber

I'm like an addict when it comes to books. Compelled to read, understand, savor, wrangle with, be moved by, learn to live from these silent companions who speak so loudly. Surely some language must have a word for such a "book junkie"?

Carolyn Weber

We must not, that is, try to behave as though the Fall had never occurred nor yet say that the Fall was a Good Thing in itself. But we may redeem the Fall by a creative act.

Dorothy Sayers Batter my heart, three-person'd God

by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. Book List:

Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber

Holy Is the Day by Carolyn Weber

The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv

Mousekins books by Edna Miller

Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell

Paradise Lost by John Milton

The Crosswicks Journals by Madeleine L'Engle

Elizabeth Goudge

Frederick Buechner

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass by Adrian Plass

A Small Cup of Light by Ben Palpant

Letters from the Mountain by Ben Palpant

Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon

Come Away, My Beloved by Frances J. Roberts

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 113: "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen, Vol. 3, Ch. 9-17 Nov 16, 2021

Show notes

Welcome to the final episode in our series covering Mansfield Park by Jane Austen here on The Literary Life podcast. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas dive right into the book chat today in order to cover as much as possible as they wrap up Fanny Price's story. Angelina brings out the parallels to Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. Cindy talks about how Julia and Maria's upbringing is instructive for parents. Another topic is how, in a way, the characters continue their roles from "Lover's Vows" in real life unless they repent. Our hosts also highlight Fanny's journey toward finding a home throughout this story.

Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! Also, check out the House of Humane Letters newsletter to get in on the read-a-long of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

To view the schedule for upcoming episodes, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more!

Commonplace Quotes:

To educate means to help the human soul enter into the totality of the real.

Luigi Giussani, from the forward to Beauty for Truth's Sake

The man who is endowed with logical astuteness is very apt to keep himself in practice by taking up indefensible positions for the fun of defending them.

G. M. Young

Information can thrill, but only once.

Wendell Berry Amoretti Sonnet XXII

by Edmund Spenser

This holy season, fit to fast and pray, Men to devotion ought to be inclin'd: Therefore I likewise on so holy day, For my sweet saint some service fit will find. Her temple fair is built within my mind, In which her glorious image placed is, On which my thoughts do day and night attend, Like sacred priests that never think amiss. There I to her as th' author of my bliss, Will build an altar to appease her ire: And on the same my heart will sacrifice, Burning in flames of pure and chaste desire: The which vouchsafe, O goddess, to accept, Amongst thy dearest relics to be kept. Book List:

Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins

The Risk of Education by Luigi Giussani

Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott

Daylight and Champaign by G. M. Young

A Preface to the Faerie Queene by Graham Hough

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason

Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 112: "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen, Vol. 3, Ch. 1-8 Nov 09, 2021

Show notes

Welcome back for another installment in our series covering Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share their commonplace quotes which leads them into discussing Fanny's character in contrast to the heroine of a gothic novel. They talk about what makes a good marriage in the Regency period and Jane Austen's own personal life, as well as the contrast between the household of Sir Thomas compared to Fanny's own family home.

Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! Also, check out the House of Humane Letters newsletter to stay in the know about our upcoming read-a-long of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more!

Commonplace Quotes:

Fear the man who says he knows how things should be. He doesn't

Alexander Galich

Things were easier for us. We were brought up on stories with happy endings and on the Prayer Book.

C. S. Lewis

One of the most dangerous of literary ventures is the little, shy, unimportant heroine whom none of the other characters value. The danger is that your readers may agree with the other characters. Something must be put into the heroine to make us feel that the other characters are wrong, that she contains the depths they never dreamed of. That is why Charlotte Brontë would have succeeded better with Fanny Price. To be sure, she would have ruined everything else in the book; Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris would have been distorted from credible types of pompous dullness, lazy vapidity and vulgar egoism into fiends complete with horns, tails and rhetoric. But through Fanny there would have blown a storm of passion which made sure that we at least would never think her insignificant.

C. S. Lewis Something Nasty in the Bookshop

by Kingsley Amis

Between the Gardening and the Cookery Comes the brief Poetry shelf; By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology Offers itself. Critical, and with nothing else to do, I scan the Contents page, Relieved to find the names are mostly new; No one my age. Like all strangers, they divide by sex: Landscape Near Parma Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex, So does Rilke and Buddha. "I travel, you see", "I think" and "I can read" These titles seem to say; But I Remember You, Love is my Creed, Poem for J., The ladies' choice, discountenance my patter For several seconds; From somewhere in this (as in any) matter A moral beckons. Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart Or squash it flat? Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; Girls aren't like that. We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff Can get by without it. Women don't seem to think that's good enough; They write about it. And the awful way their poems lay them open Just doesn't strike them. Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them. Deciding this, we can forget those times We stayed up half the night Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes, And couldn't write.

Book List:

Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Pamela by Samuel Richardson

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Jane Austen by Peter Leithart

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 111: "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen, Vol. 2, Ch. 6-13 Nov 02, 2021

Show notes

On The Literary Life Podcast this week, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas are back to discuss the next several chapters of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. They pick back up with the continuation of the Cinderella theme in these chapters, and much of the conversation centers around the Crawfords and their ambitions and schemes. Once again, Fanny is demonstrated to be the embodiment of temperance.

Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in!

To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more!

Commonplace Quotes:

Lewis learnt that focusing on the state of his own mind was precisely the wrong way to obtain the imaginative pleasures that he had been seeking for ten years and more.

Michael Ward

Through seas of knowledge we our course advance, Discov'ring still new worlds of ignorance; And these discov'ries make us all confess That sublunary science is but guess; Matters of fact to man are only known, And what seems more is mere opinion; The standers-by see clearly this event; All parties say they're sure, yet all dissent; With their new light our bold inspectors press, Like Ham, to show their fathers' nakedness, By who example after ages may Discover we more naked are than they.

Sir John Denham, "The Progress of Learning"

The Inklings is now really very well provided, with Fox as chaplain, you as army, Barfield as lawyer, Havard as doctor–almost all the estates, except of course, anyone who could actually produce a single necessity of life: a loaf, a boot, or a hut.

C. S. Lewis Sly Thoughts

by Coventry Patmore

"I saw him kiss your cheek!"—"T'is true." "O Modesty!"—"'T was strictly kept: He thought me asleep; at least, I knew He thought I thought he thought I slept."

Book List:

Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel's Messiah by Cindy Rollins

After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man by Michael Ward

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

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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!

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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!

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Episode 110: "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe Oct 26, 2021

Show notes

On this special Halloween episode of The Literary Life, Angelina (Harriet Vane), Cindy (Professor MacGonagall), and Thomas (Lord Peter Wimsey), talk about Edgar Allan Poe's tale, "The Masque of the Red Death." If you are a Patron, you can watch this episode and see our hosts in their costumes as they discuss the story!

Angelina begins the chat with a little background on Edgar Allan Poe and his thoughts on the imagination and why he wrote the way he did, as well as connections with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Thomas points out the connection between this story and Boccaccio's Decameron. Highlights of the discussion include Poe's use of medieval motifs, the imagery and symbolism in Poe's writing, the modern person's avoidance of considering death, and Poe's idea of life as a play within a play.

Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in!

Next week we will continue our series on Mansfield Park. To view the schedule for the episodes in the series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more!

Commonplace Quotes:

I am more concerned by what "the Bomb" is doing already. One meets young people who make the threat of it a reason for poisoning every pleasure and evading every duty in the present. Didn't they know that, bomb or no bomb, all men die, many in horrible ways? There is no good moping and sulking about it.

C. S. Lewis

There are certain evil men who would be less dangerous if there were not some scrap of virtue in them.

La Rochefoucauld

This handmaiden (poesy) is not forbidden to moralize in her own fashion. She is not forbidden to depict but to reason and preach of virtue.

Edgar Allan Poe, from his review of Longfellow's Ballads Sonnet – To Science

by Edgar Allan Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Source: The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946)

Book List:

Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis

Maxims and Reflections by François de La Rochefoucauld

"The Philosophy of Composition" by Edgar Allan Poe

The Murders in the Rue Morge by Edgar Allan Poe

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccacio

Comus by John Milton

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The Castle of Utronto by Horace Walpole

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Oxford Book of English Verse ed. by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

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