The Literary Life Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Episode 59: "Leaf by Niggle" by J. R. R. Tolkien, Part 2 Aug 11, 2020

Show notes

On this week's episode of The Literary Life with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks continue their discussion of J. R. R. Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle". If you missed the Back to School 2020 Conference when it was live, you can still purchase access to the recordings at CindyRollins.net. Angelina opens the book chat highlighting Tolkien's mirroring of Dante's Divine Comedy with Niggle's journey, and our hosts move through a recap of the story. The questions we should be asking as we read are whether this story deals with the recovery of our vision and whether it ends with a eucatastrophe.

Cindy brings out more of the autobiographical nature of this story for Tolkien. Angelina tosses around the idea that Parish and Niggle may be doubles and be a picture of Tolkien's two selves. Thomas talks about what Niggle has to do in the "purgatory" section of the story. They also talk about the themes of art and the artist, sub-creation, and redemption. Come back next week to hear a discussion about why we ought to read myths.

Commonplace Quotes:

It is when a writer first begins to make enemies that he begins to matter.

Hilton Brown

Kill that whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts—dull because their relations to each other, and the one life that works in them all, must remain undiscovered. Whoever would have his children avoid this arid region will do well to allow no teacher to approach them—not even of mathematics—who has no imagination.

George MacDonald

There were people who cared for him and people didn't, and those who didn't hate him were out to get him. . . But they couldn't touch him. . . because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deidre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees.

Joseph Heller On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet

by Samuel Johnson

Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts, or slow decline, Our social comforts drop away.

Well tried through many a varying year, See Levet to the grave descend; Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.

Yet still he fills Affection's eye, Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind; Nor, lettered Arrogance, deny Thy praise to merit unrefined.

When fainting Nature called for aid, And hovering Death prepared the blow, His vigorous remedy displayed The power of art without the show.

In Misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh, Where hopeless Anguish poured his groan, And lonely Want retired to die.

No summons mocked by chill delay, No petty gain disdained by pride, The modest wants of every day The toil of every day supplied.

His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And sure the Eternal Master found The single talent well employed.

The busy day, the peaceful night, Unfelt, uncounted, glided by; His frame was firm, his powers were bright, Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

Then with no throbbing fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.)

Rudyard Kipling by Hilton Brown

A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 58: "Leaf by Niggle" by J. R. R. Tolkien, Part 1 Aug 04, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to another episode of The Literary Life with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks. Both this week and next, our hosts will be discussing J. R. R. Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle". When this episode goes live, Cindy, Angelina and Thomas will be in the thick of the second annual Back to School Online Conference, happening August 3-8, 2020. It's not too late to register at CindyRollins.net for access both this week and later on!

Angelina sets the stage with a little historical background on Tolkien's writing of this story as well as some thoughts on allegory and how to read a fairy tale. She talks about this story as an exploration of the struggle of the ideals and demands of art against the demands of practical life and the question of whether or not art is useful. Cindy shares her ideas about the importance of the Inklings for Tolkien to get his work out into the world. Angelina shares about the type of journey on which the main character, Niggle, is called to go on in this story. As you read, we encourage you to look for how Tolkien harmonizes the different tensions within the story.

Commonplace Quotes:

Here are some of the points which make a story worth studying to tell to the nestling listeners in many a sweet "Children's Hour";––graceful and artistic details; moral impulse of a high order, conveyed with a strong and delicate touch; sweet human affection; a tender, fanciful link between the children and the Nature-world; humour, pathos, righteous satire, and last, but not least, the fact that the story does not turn on children, and does not foster that self-consciousness, the dawn of which in the child is, perhaps, the individual "Fall of Man."

Charlotte Mason

The essay began by noting that total war was underway, with fighting not only "in the field and on the sea and in the air," but also in "the realm of ideas." It said: "The mightiest single weapon this war has yet employed" was "not a plane, or a bomb or a juggernaut of tanks"–it was Mein Kampf. This single book caused an educated nation to "burn the great books that keep liberty fresh in the hearts of men." If America's goal was victory and world peace, "all of us will have to know more and think better than our enemies think and know," the council asserted. "This was is a war of books. . . Books are our weapons."

Molly Guptill Manning, quoting from the essay "Books and the War"

In everything I have sought peace and not found it, save in a corner with a book.

Thomas à Kempis Milton

by Edward Muir

Milton, his face set fair for Paradise, And knowing that he and Paradise were lost In separate desolation, bravely crossed Into his second night and paid his price. There towards the end he to the dark tower came Set square in the gate, a mass of blackened stone Crowned with vermilion fiends like streamers blown From a great funnel filled with roaring flame. Shut in his darkness, these he could not see, But heard the steely clamour known too well On Saturday nights in every street in Hell. Where, past the devilish din, could Paradise be? A footstep more, and his unblinded eyes Saw far and near the fields of Paradise.

Book List:

Formation of Character by Charlotte Mason

When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis

Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer

Smith of Wooten Major by J. R. R. Tolkien

Farmer Giles of Ham by J. R. R. Tolkien

Letters from Father Christmas by J. R. R. Tolkien

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

Spirits in Bondage by C. S. Lewis

Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 57: On Fairy Stories by J. R. R. Tolkien Jul 28, 2020

Show notes

Today on The Literary Life podcast, we will be discussing J. R. R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories". Tune in again over the next two weeks as we continue the conversation with Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle". Cindy, Angelina and Thomas are also excited to announce the second annual Back to School Online Conference, happening August 3-8, 2020. Register today at CindyRollins.net for access both live and later.

Angelina sets the stage for this discussion by orienting us to the context for the essay by Tolkien as a critique of what is considered a fairy story. She points out the difference between cautionary tales like those by Charles Perrault and the German folk and fairy tales collected by the Grimm Brothers. Our hosts highlight Tolkien's definition of true fairy stories, ones that take place in the "perilous realm" and involve a journey element. He critiques Andrew Lang as including many stories as fairy tale that are not truly fairy stories. They also discuss topics from the essay including sub-creation, magic and spells, suspension of disbelief, and children's responses to fairy stories.

Commonplace Quotes:

One should forgive one's enemies, but only after they are hanged.

Heinrich Heine

The German folk soul can again express itself. These flames do not only illuminate the final end of the old era. They also light up the new. Never before have the young men had so good a right to clean up the debris of the past. If the old men do not understand what is going on, let them grasp that we young men have gone and done it. The old goes up in flames. The new shall be fashioned from the flame of our hearts.

Joseph Goebbles

Human beings are not human doings.

Nigel Goodwin Into My Heart an Air That Kills

by A. E. Houseman

Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows; What are those far remembered hills, What spires, what towns are those?

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot go again.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links)

When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning

Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer

The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

Phantastes by George MacDonald

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 56: The Literary Life of Emily Raible Jul 21, 2020

Show notes

Today on The Literary Life Podcast, our hosts Angelina and Cindy chat with Emily Raible. First, though, they announce our #20for2020LitLife reading challenge giveaway winners! If you were one of our winners, please email Cindy at Rollinsfamily11(at)gmail(dot)com to give her your contact information and get your prize! Also, coming up August 3-7, 2020, we will be having our second annual Back to School Online Conference. This year's featured speaker will be Karen Glass. Register at CindyRollins.net to get access live or later!

Our guest today is Lit Life "superfan" Emily Raible. Emily is a homeschool mom, an avid reader, birdwatcher, baker and probably Angelina's most loyal student. In telling the story of her reading life, Emily talks about her childhood and how she was not a reader as a young person. She shares how she finally started getting interested in reading through Janette Oke and Hardy Boys books. Then she tells about borrowing books from a local family's home library and starting to fall in love with true classics.

After getting married to an avid reader, Emily started going through her husband's own library during her long hours at home alone. Even after she became of lover of reading, Emily still didn't define herself as a real reader. Emily shares her journey to becoming a homeschooling parent, how she learned about Charlotte Mason and classical education, and her first time meeting Angelina and Cindy. They continue the conversation expanding on the feast of ideas, what it means to be a "reader," and how we learn and enter into the literary world throughout our lives.

Stay tuned next week when we will be discussing Tolkein's essay "On Fairy Stories", followed by a conversation about his short story "Leaf by Niggle" for the next two weeks.

Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes:

But the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see, if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing.

G. K. Chesterton

Time can be both a threat and a friend to hope. Injustice, for example, has to be tediously dismantled, not exploded. This is often infuriating, but it is true.

Makoto Fujimura

The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and story-teller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched, who looked then and saw men as if they were trees but walking. This is the beginning of vision, and it is an invitation to deeper and stranger visions than we shall have to learn to accept if we are to realize a truly Christian literature.

Flannery O'Connor Armies in the Fire

by Robert Louis Stevenson

The lamps now glitter down the street; Faintly sound the falling feet; And the blue even slowly falls About the garden trees and walls.

Now in the falling of the gloom The red fire paints the empty room: And warmly on the roof it looks, And flickers on the back of books.

Armies march by tower and spire Of cities blazing, in the fire;— Till as I gaze with staring eyes, The armies fall, the lustre dies.

Then once again the glow returns; Again the phantom city burns; And down the red-hot valley, lo! The phantom armies marching go!

Blinking embers, tell me true Where are those armies marching to, And what the burning city is That crumbles in your furnaces!

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links)

Tremendous Trifles by G. K. Chesterton

Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura

Rascal by Sterling North

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Poppy Ott by Leo Edwards

Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Howards End by E. M. Forster

The Divine Comedy by Dante (trans. by Dorothy Sayers)

Illiad and Odyssey by Homer

Dorothy L. Sayers

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Why Should Businessmen Read Great Literature? by Vigen Guroian

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

Arabian Nights

Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers

Confessions by Augustine

Beatrix Potter Treasury

Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Babe the Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith

Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 55: 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge Check-In Jun 30, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to our 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge Check-In episode! Before we dig into the content, Angelina announces Thomas' next webinar coming up this summer, "The Fable: From Aesop to Brer Rabbit." Sign up at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out when registration opens!

After a brief discussion on the merits of reading fiction, our hosts begin listing what they have read in each category of the 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge so far. This episode is brimming over with book references, so be sure to scroll down to the book list any titles you might have missed!

Enter our 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge giveaway! Take a photo of your reading stack or your printed list with titles you are reading and post it to Instagram or Facebook with the tag #20for2020LitLife. We will announce our winners on the next episode of the podcast! We can't wait to see what you are reading for the challenge!

Commonplace Quotes:

To know God therefore as He is, is to frame the most beautiful idea in all worlds. He delighteth in our happiness more than we, and is of all others the most lovely object.

Thomas Traherne

And often my father would read us things that he loved, without a single word of 'explanation'. Of these the Ancient Mariner stands out beyond the rest. O happy living things! Why do people murder them by explanations?

M. V. Hughes

The mere fact that a story is a work of fiction, however, does not prevent its having a deep and significant truth of its own. We find, then, that the distinction between true stories and works of pure imagination, though convenient, is not quite essential. For fiction may be just as true, in the higher sense of the word, as history, or travel or any other record of actual experience.

George Lyman Kittredge I Remember, I Remember

by Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember, The roses, red and white, The vi'lets, and the lily-cups, Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum on his birthday,— The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember, Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heav'n Than when I was a boy.

Book List:

Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.

A London Child of the Seventies by M. V. Hughes

Centuries of Meditations by Thomas Traherne

The Mother Tongue by George Lyman Kittredge

The Darkest Hour (film)

The Winter's Tale by Shakespeare

Two Gentlemen of Verona by Shakespeare

The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare

Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare

The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

MacBeth by Shakespeare

A Question of Proof by Nicholas Blake

Simon Serraille Mystery Series by Susan Hill

Ian Rutledge Mystery Series by Charles Todd

The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill

Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliot Chaze

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Koshka's Tales: Stories from Russia by James Mayhew

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Munich by Robert Harris

Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Taras Bulba by Nicolai Gogol

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers

Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling

The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon

Penhally by Caroline Gordon

The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie

Jeremy Taylor by Hugh Williamson

Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor

Swinburne by Harold Nicolson

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon

The Terrible Speed of Mercy by Jonathan Rogers

The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers

The Path of Loneliness by Elisabeth Elliot

Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis

Anatomy of Criticism by Northrup Frye

Bandersnatch by Diana Pavlac Glyer

The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer

The Personal Heresy by C. S. Lewis and E. M. Tillyard

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki

Ibn Fadlan and The Land of Darkness by Ibn Fadlan

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima

An Anthology of Invective and Abuse by Hugh Kingsmill

Penmarric by Susan Howatch

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spencer

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The Clouds by Aristophanes

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor

Love in the Void by Simone Weil

The Fine Art of Reading by David Cecil

Abigail by Magda Szabo

The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaula

The Turmoil (Growth Trilogy #1) by Booth Tarkington

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge

To Bless The Space Between Us by John O'Donohue

The Word in the Wilderness by Malcolm Guite

Tenebrea by Geoffrey Hill

Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Support The Literary Life:

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

Connect with Us:

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

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

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

Episode 54: Our Favorite Poems Jun 23, 2020

Show notes

This week on The Literary Life, our hosts talk about their favorite poems and poets. Cindy starts off by sharing the early influences on her developing a love of poetry. Thomas also shares about his mother reading poetry to him as a child and the poetry that made an impression on him as a child. Angelina talks about coming to poetry later in life and how she finally came to love it through learning about the metaphysical poets.

Cindy and Thomas talk about the powerful effect of reading and reciting poetry in meter. Thomas also brings up the potential of hymn texts as beautiful, high-ranking poetry. From classic to modern, they share many poems and passages from their most beloved poetry, making this a soothing, lyrical episode. If you want to learn more, check out Thomas' webinar How to Love Poetry.

Next week our hosts will be checking in with their 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge progress, and we hope you will share your progress on Instagram and Facebook, too. Hint: there will be giveaways!

Affiliate links are used in this content.

Commonplace Quotes:

The knowledge-as-information vision is actually defective and damaging. It distorts reality and humanness, and it gets in the way of good knowing.

Esther Lightcap Meek

Perhaps it would be a good idea for public statues to be made with disposable heads that can be changed with popular fashion. But even better would surely be to make statues without any heads at all, representing simply the "idea" of a good politician.

Auberon Waugh

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock–to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you use large and startling figures.

Flannery O'Connor Reading in War Time

by Edwin Muir

Boswell by my bed, Tolstoy on my table; Thought the world has bled For four and a half years, And wives' and mothers' tears Collected would be able To water a little field Untouched by anger and blood, A penitential yield Somewhere in the world; Though in each latitude Armies like forest fall, The iniquitous and the good Head over heels hurled, And confusion over all: Boswell's turbulent friend And his deafening verbal strife, Ivan Ilych's death Tell me more about life, The meaning and the end Of our familiar breath, Both being personal, Than all the carnage can, Retrieve the shape of man, Lost and anonymous, Tell me wherever I look That not one soul can die Of this or any clan Who is not one of us And has a personal tie Perhaps to someone now Searching an ancient book, Folk-tale or country song In many and many a tongue, To find the original face, The individual soul, The eye, the lip, the brow For ever gone from their place, And gather an image whole.

Book List:

A Little Manual for Knowing by Esther Lightcap Meek

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake

The Book of Virtues by William Bennett

Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc

When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne

Now We are Six by A. A. Milne

Emma by Jane Austen

Oxford Book of English Verse

Immortal Poems of the English Language ed. by Oscar Williams

Motherland by Sally Thomas

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

Episode 53: The Trojan Women, Part 2 Jun 16, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to the second part of our discussion of Euripides' The Trojan Women here on The Literary Life podcast. This week Angelina, Cindy and Thomas really get into the meat of the play. If you missed last week's introduction episode, you will want to go back and listen to that first to set the stage, so to speak. Cindy and Angelina talk about how much emotion is evoked by Euripides' portrayal of these women and their situation. Thomas brings in some of the surrounding myths that connect to the characters in this play, as well.

Angelina and Cindy highlight the characteristics of Hecuba and Andromache amidst such trying circumstances. In discussing Helen's role in the play, Cindy mentions a short story C. S. Lewis wrote about Helen of Troy called "After Ten Years." It can be found in The Dark Tower: and Other Stories and Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. Our hosts share their emotional responses to the utter heartbreak of the mothers on top of the demise of Troy itself.

(Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.)

Commonplace Quotes:

There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.

Vladimir Lenin

While affording some secrets of 'the way of the will' to young people, we should perhaps beware of presenting the ideas of 'self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control.' All adequate education must be outward bound, and the mind which is concentrated upon self-emolument, even though it be the emolument of all the virtues, misses the higher and the simpler secrets of life. Duty and service are the sufficient motives for the arduous training of the will that a child goes through with little consciousness.

Charlotte Mason

Perhaps the surest measure of O'Connor's sense of calling was her willingness to be misunderstood.

Jonathan Rogers All the World's a Stage

by William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms; And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin'd, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Book List:

The Trojan Women by Euripides

Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason

The Terrible Speed of Mercy by Jonathan Rogers

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Agamemnon by Aeschylus

Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripedes

The Illiad by Home

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Trojan Women (film) starring Katharine Hepburn

The Dark Tower: and Other Stories by C. S. Lewis

Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories 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

Episode 52: Intro to Greek Drama and The Trojan Women Jun 09, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to the first episode in our series on Greek drama and The Trojan Women by Euripides. Classicist Thomas Banks will be leading the discussion with Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins asking questions and adding their own thoughts along the way. If you enjoy these podcasts, you can also check out the HouseofHumaneLetters.com for the summer intensive on Classical Greek Drama.

Thomas begins with some background on the development on Greek drama in history. He also explains the role of the chorus in typical Greek plays in contrast to how Euripides uses it in this play. He then gives us a little biographical information on Euripides and places him, along with the other Greek dramatists, in the context of history. He also talks about the questions of theodicy that come up in The Trojan Women and other of Euripides' works. Thomas points out some resources to give readers background on Greek mythology and characters you will see in these plays. He continues with a brief overview of the Trojan War. Our host wrap up with some thoughts on the prologue of The Trojan Women.

Commonplace Quotes:

This the story of my life, that while I lived it weighed upon me and pressed against me and filled all my senses to overflowing and now is like a dream dreamed…..This is my story, my giving of thanks.

Wendell Berry

Sophocles is wise, Euripedes is wiser, but Socrates is wisest of them all.

The Oracle of Delphi

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

L. P. Hartley The Wife of Flanders

by G. K. Chesterton

Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered, Where I had seven sons until to-day, A little hill of hay your spur has scattered. . . . This is not Paris. You have lost your way.

You, staring at your sword to find it brittle, Surprised at the surprise that was your plan, Who, shaking and breaking barriers not a little, Find never more the death-door of Sedan —

Must I for more than carnage call you claimant, Paying you a penny for each son you slay? Man, the whole globe in gold were no repayment For what you have lost. And how shall I repay?

What is the price of that red spark that caught me From a kind farm that never had a name? What is the price of that dead man they brought me? For other dead men do not look the same.

How should I pay for one poor graven steeple Whereon you shattered what you shall not know? How should I pay you, miserable people? How should I pay you everything you owe?

Unhappy, can I give you back your honour? Though I forgave, would any man forget? While all the great green land has trampled on her The treason and terror of the night we met.

Not any more in vengeance or in pardon An old wife bargains for a bean that's hers. You have no word to break: no heart to harden. Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links)

Trojan Women by Euripides

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles

The Oresteia by Aeschylus

The Bacchae by Euripides

Mythology by Edith Hamilton

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

Episode 51: Discussing Simone Weil's Essay on Education Jun 02, 2020

Show notes

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

Episode 50: The Great Divorce, Ch. 11-14 May 19, 2020

Show notes

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

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