Episodes
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On The Literary Life Podcast this week, Angelina and Thomas wrap up their series on Anne BrontĂ«âs Agnes Grey. In this final episode on this beautiful Victorian novel, our hosts begin with their commonplace quotes which lead into the book discussion and the Victorian ideas about the supernatural. They talk about the major plot points here at the end of this book, contrasting the way Jane Austen dealt with these sorts of stories in contrast with Anne BrontĂ«âs treatment of Agnes Grey. Some highlights of the conversation include thoughts on the world of education, the rebirth and reversal scene, and the question of how this story rates in terms of art versus didacticism.
Check out the schedule for the podcastâs summer episodes on our Upcoming Events page.
Check out the brand new publishing wing of House of Humane Letters, Cassiodorus Press! You can sign up for that class or any of the HHL Summer Classes here. Sign up for the newsletter at HouseofHumaneLetters.comto stay in the know about all the exciting new things we have coming up!
Commonplace Quotes:Praise is a cripple; blame has wings to fly.
La louange est sans pieds et le blame a des ailes.
Victor HugoThe idea of the supernatural was perhaps at as low an ebb as it had ever beenâcertainly much lower than it is now. But in spite of this, and in spite of a certain ethical cheeriness that was almost de rigueurâthe strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They might have ghost stories, but not saintsâ stories. They could triple with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ritual and popular legend that has clustered round Christmas through all the Christian ages, it is a truly extraordinary thing to reflect that Dickens (wishing to have in The Christmas Carol a little happy supernaturalism by way of a change) actually had to make up a mythology for himself.
G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature A Selection from Rabbi Ben EzraBy Robert Browing
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!' Book List:Godâs Funeral by A. N. Wilson
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by John Bunyan
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and the continuation of our series on Anne BrontĂ«âs Agnes Grey. Angelina and Thomas open with their commonplace quotes which lead into the book discussion. Angelina kicks it off with a comparison between the work of the BrontĂ«s and Jane Austenâs writing which will continue throughout the conversation. Thomas and Angelina also look at the expectations of Victorians for courtship and marriage, the ways Anne BrontĂ« weaves this tale as a variation on other themes, the true woman versus the false woman, and more!
Check out the schedule for the podcastâs summer episodes on our Upcoming Events page.
In August, Angelina Stanford will guide us through the world of Harry Potter as she shows us its literary influences and its roots in the literary tradition. You can sign up for that class or any of the HHL Summer Classes here. Sign up for the newsletter at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to stay in the know about all the exciting new things we have coming up!
Commonplace Quotes:The ideal of education is that we should learn all that it concerns us to know, in order that thereby we may become all that it concerns us to be. In other words, the aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values. Values are facts apprehended in their relation to each other, and to ourselves. The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.
William Ralph Inge, from The Church in the WorldBut while Emily BrontĂ« was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and while Charlotte BrontĂ« was at best like that warmer and more domestic thing, a house on fireâthey do connect themselves with the calm of George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would have felt rather ill if they had seen the things they foreman. This notion of a hazy anticipation of after history has been absurdly overdone: as when men connect Chaucer with the Reformation; which is like connecting Homer with the Syracusan Expedition. But it is to some extent true that all these great Victorian women had a sort of unrest in their souls. And the proof of it is that⊠it began to be admitted by the great Victorian men.
G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature The RecommendationBy Richard Crashaw
These houres, and that which hovers oâre my End,
Into thy hands, and hart, lord, I commend.
Take Both to Thine Account, that I and mine
In that Hour, and in these, may be all thine.
That as I dedicate my devoutest Breath
To make a kind of Life for my lordâs Death,
So from his living, and life-giving Death,
My dying Life may draw a new, and never fleeting Breath. Book List:Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Missing episodes?
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On this weekâs episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina and Thomas continue their series of discussions on Anne BrontĂ«âs novel Agnes Grey. They open the conversation about this novel with some thoughts on the differences between Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre and Anne and Charlotte BrontĂ«. Angelina poses the question as to whether this novel crosses the line into didacticism or if it stays within the purpose of the story and the art.
In discussing the education of Agnesâ charges in these chapters, Angelina has a chance to expand upon the upbringing of Victorian young women. She and Thomas discuss the position of the curate and Agnesâ spiritual seriousness, as well as the characters of Weston and Hatfield as foils for each other. Thomas closes out the conversation with a question as to whether Agnes Grey is as memorable a character as Jane Eyre or Catherine Earnshaw and why that is.
Check out the schedule for the podcastâs summer episodes on our Upcoming Events page.
In July, Dr. Jason Baxter will be teaching a class titled âDostoyevskyâs Icon: Brothers Karamazov, The Christian Past, and The Modern Worldâ, and you can sign up for that or any of the HHL Summer Classes here. Sign up for the newsletter at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to stay in the know about all the exciting new things we have coming up!
Commonplace Quotes:In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts/ Is not the exactness of peculiar parts;/ âTis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,/ But the joint force and full result of all.
Alexander Pope, from âAn Essay on CriticismâIn any case, it is Charlotte BrontĂ« who enters Victorian literature. The shortest way of stating her strong contribution is, I think, this: that she reached the highest romance through the lowest realism. She did not set out with Amadis of Gaul in a forest or with Mr. Pickwick in a comic club. She set out with herself, with her own dingy clothes and accidental ugliness, and flat, coarse, provincial household; and forcibly fused all such muddy materials into a spirited fairy-tale.
G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature My Heart Leaps UpBy William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the man;
And I wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. Book List:Ten Novels and Their Authors by W. Somerset Maugham
1984 by George Orwell
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Charlotte Mason
Hugh Walpole
George Eliot
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Today on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks begin a new book discussion series covering Anne BrontĂ«âs Victorian novel Agnes Grey. This week they are giving an introduction to the social and literary climate in which Anne was writing, as well as discussing chapters 1-5 of the book.
Thomas shares a little information on Utilitarianism, and Angelina talks about how this affected the literature of the Victorian period. She also points out that the Brontës were writing in the medieval literary tradition rather than the didactic or realistic style, and as such we should look for symbols and metaphors in their journey of the soul. Thomas and Angelina explore the background of the Brontë sisters, discuss the position of the governess in this time period, and compare Agnes Grey to other governess novels.
Diving into the first five chapters of this book, Angelina and Thomas look at the life of young Agnes Grey and at her family. In treating the characters in the early chapters, they talk about Agnes Greyâs first forays into the life of the governess, the horrid children in her care, their irresponsible parents, and more.
Check out the schedule for the podcastâs summer episodes on our Upcoming Events page. If you havenât heard about Cindy Rollinsâ upcoming Summer Discipleship series, you can learn more about that over at MorningTimeforMoms.com.
In June Mr. Banks will be teaching a 5-day class on St. Augustine, and in July Dr. Jason Baxter will be teaching a class on Dostoevsky. Also, donât miss the launch the HHL publishing wing, Cassiodorus Press! Sign up for the newsletter at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to stay in the know about all the exciting new things we have coming up!
Commonplace Quotes:Truth is the trial of itself,/ And needs no other touch.
Ben JonsonThe previous literary life of this country had left vigorous many old forces in the Victorian time, as in our time. Roman Britain and MediĂŠval England are still not only alive but lively; for real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root. Even when we improve we never progress. For progress, the metaphor from the road, implies a man leaving his home behind him: but improvement means a man exalting the towers or extending the gardens of his home.
G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature GanymedeBy W. H. Auden
He looked in all His wisdom from the throne
Down on that humble boy who kept the sheep,
And sent a dove; the dove returned alone:
Youth liked the music, but soon fell asleep.
But He had planned such future for the youth:
Surely, His duty now was to compel.
For later he would come to love the truth,
And own his gratitude. His eagle fell.
It did not work. His conversation bored
The boy who yawned and whistled and made faces,
And wriggled free from fatherly embraces;
But with the eagle he was always willing
To go where it suggested, and adored
And learnt from it so many ways of killing. Book List:George MacDonald
Charles Dickens
Lewis Carroll
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Adam Bede by George Eliot
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier
The Infernal World of Bramwell Brontë by Daphne Du Maurier
Thomas Hardy
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Esther Waters by George Moore
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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This week on The Literary Life, we bring you another episode in our âBest ofâ series with a throwback to one of our 2021 Summer of the Short Story shows. In this episode, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas talk about E. M. Forsterâs short story âThe Machine Stops.â If you are interested in more E. M. Forster chat, you can go listen to our hosts discuss âThe Celestial Omnibusâ in Episode 17. Angelina points out how this story made her think of Dante. Thomas and Cindy share their personal reactions to reading âThe Machine Stops.â They marvel at how prescient Forster was to imagine a world that comes so close to our current reality. They also discuss how to stay human in an increasingly de-humanizing world.
Past events mentioned in this episode replay:
Back to School 2021 Conference: Awakening
Cindyâs new edition of Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love
Cindyâs Charlotte Mason podcast The New Mason Jar
Commonplace Quotes:Imagination, in its earthbound quest,
Seeks in the infinite its finite rest.
Walter de la Mare (from âBooksâ) from âThe Hollow Menâby T. S. Eliot
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead manâs hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In deathâs other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.The eyes are not here
Book List:
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of deathâs twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.Two Stories and a Memory by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison
1984 by George Orwell
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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On todayâs episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina and Thomas wrap up their series on the satirical comedy Tartuffe by Jean-Baptiste Moliere. If you want to listen in to the read along of this play, you can view replays on the readings on the House of Humane Letters YouTube channel. Angelina and Thomas start off the conversation on the play reviewing the idea of enchantment and the classical structural elements of this play as suggested by Aristotle. We finally meet Tartuffe himself, and Angelina and Thomas both cringe and laugh at his over-the-top antics.
Check out the schedule for the podcastâs summer episodes on our Upcoming Events page.
In June Mr. Banks will be teaching a 5-day class on St. Augustine, and in July Dr. Jason Baxter will be teaching a class on Dostoevsky. Angelina will also be teaching a class on Harry Potter in August! Also, donât miss the launch the HHL publishing wing, Cassiodorus Press! Sign up for the newsletter at HouseofHumaneLetters.comto stay in the know about all the exciting new things we have coming up!
Commonplace Quotes:MoliereâŠreached perfection through a strange apprenticeship of vagabondage following an excellent middle-class birth among the tradesmen of Paris, imprisoned for debt, tramping the roads with the strolling players, starting his own small theater and failing, meeting men of every kindâŠIn that knowledge he became a master.
Hilaire Belloc, from Monarchy: A Study of Louis XIVA man is angry at a libel because it is false but at a satire because it is true.
G. K. ChestertonFools are my theme. Let satire be my song.
Lord Byron The Burial of MoliereBy Andrew Lang
âDark and amusing he is, this handsome gallant, Of chamois-polished charm, Athlete and dancer of uncommon talentâ Is there cause for alarm In his smooth demeanor, the proud tilt of his chin, This cavaliere servente, this Harlequin? âGentle and kindly this other, ardent but shy, With an intelligence Who would not glory to be guided byâ And would it not make sense To trust in someone so devoted, so Worshipful as this tender, pale Pierrot? âSince both of them delight, if I must choose I win a matchless mate, But by that very winning choice I loseâ I pause, I hesitate, Putting decision off,â says Columbine, âAnd while I hesitate, they both are mine.â Book List:An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
Don Juan by Moliere
Don Juan by Lord Byron
Enthusiasm by Ronald Knox
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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This week on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks delve into a new literary series as we read the comedic play Tartuffe by Jean-Baptiste Moliere. If you want to listen in to the read along of this play, you can view replays on the readings on the House of Humane Letters YouTube channel. Thomas begins the conversation on this play by setting up the cultural and literary context in which Moliere was working, as well as some more biographical background on the author and actor himself. Angelina points out some differences between satire and didacticism. She and Thomas also talk about the influence of Roman comedy in Moliereâs playwriting.
Angelina introduces Act 1 with a question of how Moliere shows the audience what to think of Tartuffe before the character himself ever comes on stage. Thomas talks a little about the characters we first meet, and Angelina highlights the references to enchantments as they read through key portions of these opening scenes. Join us again next week when we will finish up this entertaining play!
If you werenât able to join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imaginationâ, you can still purchase the recordings and find out what you missed! Also, donât miss the launch the HHL publishing wing, Cassiodorus Press! Sign up for the newsletter at HouseofHumaneLetters.com to stay in the know about all the exciting new things we have coming up!
Commonplace Quotes:He had the comic vision of himself as well as of the rest of humanity. He might mock the vices of the world, but he could also mock himself for hating the world, in the spirit of a superior person, on account of its vices.
Robert Lynn, from his essay âMoliereâ in Books and AuthorsWe think old books are strange; but we are the aliens.
Dr. Jason Baxter The Burial of MoliereBy Andrew Lang
Deadâhe is dead! The rouge has left a trace
On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear,
Even while the people laughed that held him dear
But yesterday. He died,âand not in grace,
And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace
To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear,
And gold must win a passage for his bier,
And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.Ah, Moliere, for that last time of all,
Book List:
Manâs hatred broke upon thee, and went by,
And did but make more fair thy funeral.
Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily,
Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall,
For torch, the stars along the windy sky!Menaechmi, or The Twin-Brothers by Plautus
Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Welcome to a new episode of The Literary Life podcast and an interview with special guest Dr. Vigen Guroian, retired professor of Religious Studies and Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia and author of twelve book and numerous scholarly articles. Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks discuss with Dr. Guroian the new edition of his book, Tending the Heart of Virtue. They start out talking about how the first edition of this book came about, which leads into a discussion about the current approach to fairy tales and childrenâs stories in both academia and the publishing industry.
Other topics of conversation include the problem with reducing stories down to a moral, story as mystery, the place of fairy tales in classical education, and the Biblical literacy of the authors of fairy tales. Dr. Guroian also shares his thoughts on people like John Ruskin and Rudyard Kipling. Finally, he shares some suggestions on finding good editions of fairy tale collections. (Scroll down for links to his book recommendations.)
Commonplace Quotes:It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.
C. S. Lewis, from Reflections on the PsalmsReason is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.
C. S. LewisInertia has served them so well that they did not know how to relinquish it.
E. M. Forster, from Pharos and PharillonâHappy children,â say I, âwho could blunder into the very heart of the will of God concerning them, and do the thing at once that the Lord taught them, using the common sense which God had given and the fairy tale nourished!â The Lord of the promise is the Lord of all true parables and all good fairy tales.
George MacDonald, from The Elect Lady The SpringBy Thomas Carew
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream Upon the silver lake or crystal stream; But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth, And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble-bee. Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring In triumph to the world the youthful Spring. The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May. Now all things smile, only my love doth lour; Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold. The ox, which lately did for shelter fly Into the stall, doth now securely lie In open fields; and love no more is made By the fireside, but in the cooler shade Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep Under a sycamore, and all things keep Time with the season; only she doth carry June in her eyes, in her heart January. Book List:Tending the Heart of Virtue, 2nd Edition by Dr. Vigen Guroian
Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis
Pharos and Pharillon by E. M. Forster
The Elect Lady by George MacDonald
The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin
The Lost Princess or The Wise Woman by George MacDonald
The Victorian Fairy Tale Book ed. by Michael Patrick Hearn
The Classic Fairy Tales ed. by Iona and Peter Opie
The Classic Fairy Tales ed. by Maria Tatar
Brothers Grimm: Selected Tales trans. by David Luke
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm trans. by Jack Zipes
Hans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories trans. by Erik Christian Haugaard
Den Lille Havfrue og andre historier/The Little Mermaid and Other Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, trans. by Tony J. Richardson
Hans Christian Anderson: Fairy Tales trans. by Tina Nunnally
âFairy Tale Warsâ by Vigen Guroian
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Today on The Literary Life Podcast, we bring you another episode in our âBest ofâ series in which Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks discuss the importance of reading old books. They begin the conversation by addressing head on the idea that old books are irrelevant. They touch on the fact that when we use the phrase âold booksâ we mean not just any piece of literature from the past, but those which have stood the test of time.
Itâs not too late to join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imaginationâ happening this week! During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
Commonplace Quotes:So, when his Folly opens
Rudyard Kipling
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.I am informed by philologists that the ârise to powerâ of these two words, âproblemâ and âsolutionâ as the dominating terms of public debate, is an affair of the last two centuries, and especially of the nineteenth, having synchronised, so they say, with a parallel ârise to powerâ of the word âhappinessââfor reasons which doubtless exist and would be interesting to discover. Like âhappinessâ, our two terms âproblemâ and âsolutionâ are not to be found in the Bibleâa point which gives to that wonderful literature a singular charm and cogency. . . . On the whole, the influence of these words is malign, and becomes increasingly so. They have deluded poor men with Messianic expectations . . . which are fatal to steadfast persistence in good workmanship and to well-doing in general. . . . Let the valiant citizen never be ashamed to confess that he has no âsolution of the social problemâ to offer to his fellow-men. Let him offer them rather the service of his skill, his vigilance, his fortitude and his probity. For the matter in question is not, primarily, a âproblemâ, nor the answer to it a âsolutionâ.
L. P. Jacks, Stevenson LecturesMost of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.
C. S. Lewis To Walter de la Mareby T. S. Elliot
The children who explored the brook and found
A desert island with a sandy cove
(A hiding place, but very dangerous ground,For here the water buffalo may rove,
The kinkajou, the mungabey, abound
In the dark jungle of a mango grove,And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree â
The guardians of some long-lost treasure-trove)
Recount their exploits at the nursery teaAnd when the lamps are lit and curtains drawn
Demand some poetry, please. Whose shall it be,
At not quite time for bed?âŠOr when the lawn
Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return
Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn,
The sad intangible who grieve and yearn;When the familiar is suddenly strange
Or the well known is what we yet have to learn,
And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change;When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance,
Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range
At witchesâ sabbath of the maiden aunts;When the nocturnal traveller can arouse
No sleeper by his call; or when by chance
An empty face peers from an empty house;By whom, and by what means, was this designed?
The whispered incantation which allows
Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?By you; by those deceptive cadences
Wherewith the common measure is refined;
By conscious art practised with natural ease;By the delicate, invisible web you wove â
Book List:
The inexplicable mystery of sound.The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindyâs own Patreon page also!
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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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 Thomasâ webinar How to Love Poetry.
We hope you will join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â You can visit the HHL Facebook page or Instagram to find the post to share and enter our giveaway for a $20 discount code! During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
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 MeekPerhaps 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 âideaâ of a good politician.
Auberon WaughWhen 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 shockâto the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you use large and startling figures.
Flannery OâConnor Reading in War Timeby Edwin Muir
Boswell by my bed,
Book List:
Tolstoy on my table;
Thought the world has bled
For four and a half years,
And wivesâ and mothersâ 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:
Boswellâs turbulent friend
And his deafening verbal strife,
Ivan Ilychâs 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.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 ed. by Arthur Quiller-Couch
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 âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindyâs own Patreon page also!
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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In anticipation of our upcoming sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination,â this week we are re-airing a previous episode with Jason Baxter, our conferenceâs special keynote speaker. 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 Lewisâ 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 âproblemâ of paganism in Lewisâ writings, and how to approach reading ancient and medieval literature.
Commonplace Quotes:My part has been merely that of Walter Scottâs 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. LucasIt is the memory of time that makes us old; remembering eternity makes us young again.
Statford CaldecottIt 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 âDe Descriptione TemporumâWhat then is the good ofâwhat is even the defense forâoccupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feeling which we should try to avoid in our own person?âŠThe nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselvesâŠ[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 Victoryby C. S. Lewis
Roland is dead, Cuchulainâs crest is low,
The battered war-rear wastes and turns to rust,
And Helenâs eyes and Iseultâs 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,
Book List:
Yet, like the phoenix, from each fiery bed
Higher the stricken spirit lifts its head
And higher-till the beast become a god.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 âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Today on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks are joined by Atlee Northmore to explore the various screen adaptations based on Howards End by E. M. Forster. They begin the discussion with the question of what is the good of translating one art form, in this case a book, into another art form, such as a screen play. They talk about the beauty of the Merchant Ivory film adaptation, while critiquing the casting and chemistry of the cast, sharing their favorite and least favorite scenes. In contrast, they praise the BBC-Starz series for its excellent adaptation, although it missed some important things that the 1992 film did include. Atlee also highlights some of the ways in which the screen adaptations serve as subtle visual cues for ideas from the story. In the end, Angelina, Thomas, and Atlee share thoughts on enjoying a film as a stand-alone work of art versus judging it as an adaptation of a novel.
There are still spots open in many of the classes at House of Humane Letters, so if you or your student are interested in taking something, head over to houseofhumaneletters.com to register today!
We hope you will join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â You can visit the HHL Facebook page or Instagram to find the post to share and enter our giveaway for a $20 discount code! During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
Commonplace Quotes:Every poet, in his kind, is bit by him that comes behind.
Jonathan Swift, from âCriticsâNarrative prose, especially the novel, has taken, in modern societies, the place occupied by the recitation of myths and fairy tales in traditional and popular societies. Furthermore, the âmythicâ structure of certain modern novels can be discerned, demonstrating the literary survival of major mythological themes and characters.
Mircea Eliade
Now, doesnât it seem absurd to you? What is the good of the ear if it tells you the same as the eye? Helenâs one aim is to translate tunes into the language of painting and pictures into the language of music. Itâs very ingenious, and she says several pretty things in the process, but whatâs gained, Iâd like to know?
E. M. Forster, from Howards End CargoesBy John Masefield
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amythysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. Book and Link List:From Pharos from Pharillon by E. M. Forster
Howards End (1992)
Howards End (BBC-Starz)
Howards End Episode 1
The Remains of the Day
The English Patient
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Welcome to The Literary Life Podcast and the final episode in our our series on Howards End by E. M. Forster. Today Angelina and Thomas seek to sum up the book and wrap up their thoughts on the way Forster weaves this story. The open with some comments on the almost allegorical nature of Howards End, then talk about the words âonly connectâ and their meaning in the context of the book. They discuss the problem of Helen and Leonardâs relationship and the romance of pity. Other topics of the conversation are the crisis point between Mr. Wilcox and Margaret, the contrast between Charles and Tibby, the fate of Leonard Bast, and the future of Howards End.
We hope you will join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
Commonplace Quotes:Life without dragons would be tame indeed.
Desmond MacCarthy, âThe Poetry of ChestertonâHowards End is a novel of extraordinary ambition and wide scope. Written in prose with the texture of restrained poetry, it is consummately controlled and sure of purpose. It is Forsterâs most complexly orchestrated work to its date, and it smoothly manipulates imagery and symbolism, plot and character, into an organic whole. In so doing, it gracefully integrates social comedy, metaphysical explorations, and political concerns. Howards End tests Forsterâs liberal humanism, finds it wanting, and proposes a marriage of liberal values to conservative tradition. Without destroying the practical contributions of progressivism, it forcefully attacks the mindless materialism that yields rootlessness and spiritual poverty.
Claude J. Summers, from E. M. Forster FinisBy Marjorie Pickthall
Give me a few more hours to pass With the mellow flower of the elm-bough falling, And then no more than the lonely grass And the birds calling. Give me a few more days to keep With a little love and a little sorrow, And then the dawn in the skies of sleep And a clear to-morrow. Give me a few more years to fill With a little work and a little lending, And then the night on a starry hill And the road's ending. Book List:Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and our series discussing Howards End by E. M. Forster. This week Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks cover chapters 26-34. Together they continue to talk about the ideas Forster is presenting in the book as seen in this section, including Howards End as a character, the echoes of Wind in the Willows (thanks to Jen Rogers!), Helenâs idealism, Margaret and Henryâs conflict, the idea of rootedness, and more.
On March 7, 2024 you can join Thomas and his brother James live for a webinar on King Alfred the Great. Register today at houseofhumaneletters.com. The webinar recording will also be available for lifetime access after that date.
We hope you will join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
If you want to get the special literary themed teas created by our Patron Erin Miller, go to adagiotea.com to check them out!
Commonplace Quotes:Everything has been said already; but since nobody was listening, we shall have to begin all over again.
Toutes choses sont dites dĂ©jĂ ; mais comme personne nâĂ©coute, il faut toujours recommencer.
Andre Gide, from âNarcissusâIt is under these âpresent conditionsâ of materialism, urbanization, and cosmopolitanism that Howards End poses the question, âWho shall inherit England?â This question is given a lyrical resonance shortly after Margaret tells Helen of her intention to marry Henry. The two women, visiting Aunt Julie at Swanage, gaze across Poole Harbor and watch the tide return. âEngland was alive, throbbing through all her estuaries, crying for joy through the mouths of all her gulls, and the north wind, with contrary motion, blew stronger against her rising sea,â the narrator records, and then asks: âWhat did it mean? For what end are her fair complexities, her change of soil, her sinuous coast? Does she belong to those who have moulded her and made her feared by other lands, or to those who had added nothing to her power, but have somehow seen her, seen the whole island at once, lying as a jewel in a silver sea, sailing as a ship of souls, with all the brave worldâs fleet accompanying her towards eternity?â These questions are at the heart of the book. More crudely stated, they ask whether England belongs to the imperialist or to the yeoman, to those who see life steadily or to those who see it whole, to the prosaic or to the poet. Put another way, they ask whether the inheritors of England are to be people of action or vision.
Claude J. Summer, from âE. M. Fosterâ To E. M. ForsterBy W. H. Auden
Here, though the bombs are real and dangerous, And Italy and Kings are far away, And we're afraid that you will speak to us, You promise still the inner life shall pay. As we run down the slope of Hate with gladness You trip us up like an unnoticed stone, And just as we are closeted with Madness You interrupt us like the telephone. For we are Lucy, Turton, Phillip, we Wish international evil, are excited To join the jolly ranks of the benighted Where Reason is denied and Love ignored: But, as we swear our lie, Miss Avery Comes out into the garden with the sword. Book List:Theodore Dreiser
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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On The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina and Thomas continue our series on Howards End by E. M. Forster with a discussion of chapters 17-25. In opening the conversation on this chapter, they consider the various houses and ask the question of what role Howards End plays in this whole story. They also delve into the seemingly unlikely romance between Margaret and Mr. Wilcox and the complexity of their personalities, as well as the reactions of their family members. Other ideas they share are about the seen and the unseen, connections versus transactions, and more! Keep listening next week as we cover chapters 26-34.
On March 7, 2024 you can join Thomas and his brother James live for a webinar on King Alfred the Great. Register today at houseofhumaneletters.com. The webinar recording will also be available for lifetime access after that date.
We hope you will join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
Commonplace Quotes:Sapiens est qui novit tacere.
Wise is he who knows when to keep silence.
St. Ambrose, from De Oficibus Ministrorum (On the Duties of the Clergy)But âOnly connectâ was the exact phrase I had been leading up to, and it has been precious to me ever since I read Howards End, of which it is the epigraph. Perhaps, indeed, it is the theme of all Forsterâs writing, the attempt to link a passionate skepticism with the desire for meaning, to find the human key to the inhuman world about us, to connect the individual with the community, the known with the unknown, to relate the past to the present, and both to the future.
P. L. Travers, from âOnly Connectâ To My Dear and Loving HusbandBy Anne Bradstreet
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay; The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love letâs so persever, That when we live no more, we may live ever. Book List:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories by E. M. Forster
Selected Stories by E. M. Forster
What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story by P. L. Travers
The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Welcome to The Literary Life Podcast and our second episode in our series on E. M. Forsterâs book Howards End. This week, Angelina and Thomas cover chapters 8-16, continuing their discussion of the book and the overarching concept of âStoryâ along the way. In talking about different plot points and characters, Angelina and Thomas make some comparisons between the two couples presented in these chapters and share some thoughts on the friendship between Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox. Angelina points out that Forster is doing some medieval things in this story, as we will see as we go on further. They also bring out more of the significance and symbolism of Howards End the place in the story.
If you want to check out our previous episodes on two of E. M. Forsterâs short stories, you can find those here:
Episode 17: âThe Celestial Omnibusâ
Episode 99: âThe Machine Stopsâ
We hope you will join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
This March you can join Thomas and his brother James back for a webinar on King Alfred the Great. You can sign up at houseofhumaneletters.com.
Commonplace Quotes:[The Greeks] were children with the intellects of men.
R. W. Livingstone, from The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to UsIt is astonishing how little attention critics have paid to Story considered in itself. Granted the story, the style in which it should be told, the order in which it should be disposed, and (above all) the delineation of the characters, have been abundantly discussed. But the Story itself, the series of imagined events, is nearly always passed over in silence, or else treated exclusively as affording opportunities for the delineation of character. There are indeed three notable exceptions. Aristotle in the Poeticsconstructed a theory of Greek tragedy which puts Story in the centre and relegates character to a strictly subordinate place.
C. S. Lewis, from On Stories A Selection from âTerminusâBy Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is time to be old,
To take in sail:â
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: âNo more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
Thereâs not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.
Book List:Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster
The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster
Wendell Berry
An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Welcome to a new series on The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford and husband Thomas Banks. This week they begin talking about E. M. Forsterâs book Howards End, giving some introductory information about Forster and also cover the first seven chapters of the book. Thomas shares some background on the Bloomsbury Group authors in contrast to their Victorian predecessors. Angelina highlights the literary tradition of naming books after houses and invites us to consider the importance of place in this story as we go forward.
We hope you will join us for the sixth annual Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â During the live or later series of webinars, we will seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is. Speakers include Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, and Kelly Cumbee, in addition to Angelina and Thomas.
Also, The House of Humane Letters is expanding to include more classes, and pre-registration for returning students and registration for new students opens soon. Sign up for their email list to find out when you can sign up at houseofhumaneletters.com.
Commonplace Quotes:We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.
E. M. Forster, Howards EndHowards End is Mr. Forsterâs first fully adult book. It is richly packed with meanings; it has a mellow brilliance, a kind of shot beauty of texture; it runs like a bright, slowish, flickering river, in which different kinds of exciting fish swim and dart among mysterious reedy leptons and are observed and described by a highly interested, humane, sympathetic, often compassionate, and usually ironic commentator. The effect is of uncommon beauty and charm; the fusion of humor, perception, social comedy, witty realism, and soaring moral idealism, weaves a rare captivating, almost hypnotic spell; and many people think it (in spite of the more impressive theme and more serious technique of A Passage in India) Mr. Foresterâs best book.
Rose Macaulay, The Writings of E. M. Forster The Pity of ItBy Thomas Hardy
April 1915
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar From rail-track and from highway, and I heard In field and farmstead many an ancient word Of local lineage like 'Thu bist,' 'Er war,' 'Ich woll', 'Er sholl', and by-talk similar, Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird At England's very loins, thereunto spurred By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are. Then seemed a Heart crying: 'Whosoever they be At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we, 'Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame; May their familiars grow to shun their name, And their brood perish everlastingly.'Source: Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems (Palgrave, 2001)
Book List:Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Rose Macaulay
Dorothy Parker
Virginia Woolf
George Eliot
Matthew Arnold
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wendell Berry
An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Today on The Literary Life, Angelina and Thomas sit down with Cindy to chat about her new book Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People, Too. First Cindy shares some of what she has going on this year, and Angelina officially introduces the 2024 Literary Life Online Conference, âDispelling the Myth of Modernity: A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination.â
Cindy shares how this book came to be and what the process was for developing the ideas she wanted to put into words. Angelina and Thomas bring up different aspects of the book that stood out to them as important messages for mothers. Cindy talks about her approach to encouraging moms toward tackling life-long learning without the overwhelm and anxiety.
Commonplace Quotes:âBairns are a queer kind of blessing sometimes,â remarked the mother.
George MacDonald, from Salted with FireOne of the disadvantages of setting up a man as a god, is that his lapses from rectitude may be quoted by his worshippers in justification of their own.
Bernard Allen, from Augustus CaesarMay the gods give you everything that your heart longs for. May they grant you a husband and a house and sweet agreement in all things, for nothing is better than this, more steadfast than when two people, man and his wife, keep a harmonious household, a thing that brings much distress to the people who hate them, and pleasure to their well-wishers, and for them the best reputation.
Homer, from The Odyssey To My Motherby Christina Rossetti
To-dayâs your natal day,
Sweet flowers I bring;
Mother, accept, I pray,
My offering.And may you happy live,
Book List:
And long us bless;
Receiving as you give
Great happiness.My Early Life by Winston Churchill
Possession by A. S. Byatt
Howards End by E. M. Forster
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindyâs own Patreon page also!
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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Welcome to another episode in our âBest of The Literary Lifeâ podcast series. Today on The Literary Life Podcast, our hosts Angelina and Cindy chat with âsuperfanâ Emily Raible about her own literary life. Emily is a homeschool mom, an avid reader, birdwatcher, baker and probably Angelinaâs 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 familyâs home library and starting to fall in love with true classics.
After getting married to an avid reader, Emily started going through her husbandâs own library during her long hours at home alone. Even after she became of lover of reading, Emily still didnât 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 âreader,â and how we learn and enter into the literary world throughout our lives.
If you are listening to this on the day it drops, there is still time to grab a spot for Thomas Banks and Anne Phillipsâ webinar on Herodotus taking place today January 30, 2024. Head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com/webinars where you can sign up! Of course, you can also purchase the recordings to tune in after the webinar is released.
If you missed the 2020 Back to School Conference with Karen Glass, you can still purchase the recording at MorningTimeforMoms.com.
Also, our Sixth Annual Literary Life Online Conference is coming up in April 2024. The theme is âDispelling the Myth of Modernityâ with keynote speaker Jason Baxter. You can learn more and register now at HouseofHumaneLetters.com.
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. ChestertonTime 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 FujimuraThe 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 OâConnor Armies in the Fireby 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;â
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
Book List:
Where are those armies marching to,
And what the burning city is
That crumbles in your furnaces!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 Nightâs Dream by William Shakespeare
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
Agatha Christie
James Patterson
Tom Clancy
Harry Potter series
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Divine Comedy by Dante (trans. by Dorothy Sayers)
Illiad and Odyssey by Homer
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Room of Oneâs 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 âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindyâs own Patreon page also!
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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On The Literary Life podcast this week, we will wrap up our series on Shakespeareâs A Midsummer Nightâs Dream. Our hosts, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas walk through the last two acts of the play, sharing their thoughts on the structure and ideas presented here. Angelina talks about why she thinks Shakespeare resolves the different conflicts the way he does. They discuss the importance of the play within the play, the fairy tale atmosphere, and the unreality of time and space. Cindy and Angelina both bring up plot points that feel slightly problematic to them. Angelina highlights the theme of harmonizing discord and bringing order from disorder.
To sign up for Thomas Banks and Anne Phillipsâ webinar on Herodotus taking place January 30, 2024, head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com/webinars.
Find Angelinaâs webinar âJonathan Swift: Enemy of the Enlightenmentâ at HouseofHumaneLetters.com.
Even though the spring 2022 Literary Life Conference âThe Battle Over Childrenâs Literatureâ featuring special guest speaker Vigen Guroian is over, you can still purchase the recordings at HouseofHumaneLetters.com.
Commonplace Quotes:Revolutionaries always hang their best friends.
Christopher HollisIt is easy to forget that the man who writes a good love sonnet needs not only be enamored of a woman, but also to be enamored of the sonnet.
C. S. LewisFor the end of imagination is harmony. A right imagination, being the reflex of the creation, will fall in with the divine order of things as the highest form of its own operation; âwill tune its instrument here at the doorâ to the divine harmonies within; will be content alone with growth towards the divine idea, which includes all that is beautiful in the imperfect imagination of men; will know that every deviation from that growth is downward; and will therefore send the man forth from its loftiest representations to do the commonest duty of the most wearisome calling in a hearty and hopeful spirit. This is the work of the right imagination; and towards this work every imagination, in proportion to the rightness that is in it, will tend. The reveries even of the wise man will make him stronger for his work; his dreaming as well as his thinking will render him sorry for past failure, and hopeful of future success.
George MacDonald Earthâs Secretby George Meredith
Not solitarily in fields we find Earth's secret open, though one page is there; Her plainest, such as children spell, and share With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind. Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, In turbid cities, can the key be bare. It hangs for those who hither thither fare, Close interthreading nature with our kind. They, hearing History speak, of what men were, And have become, are wise. The gain is great In vision and solidity; it lives. Yet at a thought of life apart from her, Solidity and vision lose their state, For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives. Book List:Fossettâs Memory by Christopher Hollis
A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald
A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis
The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the âFriends and Fellows Communityâ 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 www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindyâs own Patreon page also!
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and letâs get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
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