This week on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks continue their series on George MacDonald’s Phantastes, covering chapters 10-14. Angelina and Thomas open the book chat talking about disorientation and how MacDonald is using the mirror images to help us enter into Anados’ feelings. Some of the topics covered in these chapters are disenchantment and demystifying the world, the child of mysterious origin, seeing and not seeing, romanticism and the dark imagination.

Don’t forget to check out the Advent and Christmas resources our hosts have ready for your holiday season. As mentioned before, Cindy’s new edition of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah is available now, and you can access the replay of her special live event if you visit her website. Check our CindyRollins.net for more information. Also, Thomas and Angelina have a sale going on for an Advent Bundle of their popular webinars, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and The Poetry of Advent. Additionally, Kelly Cumbee will be teaching a webinar series called “Seeking the Discarded Image: Nature.”

Commonplace Quotes:

He extended the boundaries of the world, but he never shifted its center.

Alfred Noyes

"Absolute attention is prayer." When May Sarton quoted those words of Simone Weil in her journal, she went on to say, "I have used that sentence often in talking about poetry to students, to suggest that if one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is given."

Simone Weil, May Sarton, Esther de Waal

For repose is not the end of education; its end is a noble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urging on the motions of life, which had better far be accelerated into fever, then retarded into lethargy.

George MacDonald The Palm and the Pine

by Heinrich Heine

Beneath an Indian palm a girl Of other blood reposes; Her cheek is clear and pale as pearl Amid that wild of roses.

Beside a northern pine a boy Is leaning fancy-bound. Nor listens where with noisy joy Awaits the impatient hound.

Cool grows the sick and feverish calm, Relaxed the frosty twine.– The pine-tree dreameth of the palm, The palm-tree of the pine.

As soon shall nature interlace Those dimly-visioned boughs, As these young lovers face to face Renew their early vows.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links)

William Morris by Alfred Noyes

The Well at the World’s End by William Morris

The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther De Waal

The Imagination: Its Functions and Its Culture by George MacDonald

William Morris Textiles Coloring Book

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams

The Four Men by Hilaire Belloc

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol

The Arabian Nights translated by Sir Richard Burton

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

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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!

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William Morris

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