The Literary Life Podcast Episode 71: Phantastes, Ch. 1-4
Lewis's Master
- C.S. Lewis considered George MacDonald his master, profoundly influencing his writing and spiritual journey.
- Lewis even compiled a book of MacDonald excerpts, highlighting MacDonald's impact on his imagination.
MacDonald's Goodness
- MacDonald's writing emanated goodness, possibly stemming from his simple, devout faith.
- He maintained a positive relationship with his father despite significant theological differences, demonstrating remarkable grace.
Anti-Victorian Victorian
- MacDonald, a Victorian author, challenged the era's emphasis on didacticism, advocating for imagination as an antidote to societal ills.
- Phantastes, like Dickens's Hard Times, critiques modern education's stifling of children's imaginations.
Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and the beginning of our series on George MacDonald’s Phantastes. Before our hosts, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas begin the book chat, though, we wanted to let you know about some Advent and Christmas resources ready for the upcoming holiday season. As mentioned before, Cindy’s new edition of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah is available now. 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.
Cindy shares a little about her past reading of many of MacDonald’s books and the effect they had on her. Angelina and Cindy also give some pertinent biographical information about MacDonald and put him in his Victorian context. Angelina brings out the connections between Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and MacDonald’s Phantastes, including the questing element. In answer to Cindy’s question about the German word “Maerchen”, Thomas shares some ideas about what sorts of stories are included in that term.
In this discussion, Angelina points out all the big themes of fairy tales and stories in general that we see right away in this story. Cindy highlights the role of the grandmother in this and other MacDonald stories. In light of the Faerie Queene connections, Thomas wonders if there will be a true woman and a false woman in this story. Angelina and Cindy go on to explore so many more of the ideas and themes presented in these chapters. Be back next week for chapters 5-9.
Commonplace Quotes:There is no truth, however overpowering and clear, but men may escape from it by shutting their eyes.
Cardinal John Henry NewmanHurry is a sort of violence on the soul.
John Mark ComerI should have been shocked in my teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness. But now that I know, I there was no deception. The deception is all the other way round–in that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and Duty, which never lets us feel in our face the sweet air blowing from “the land of righteousness,” never reveals that elusive Form which if once seen mus inevitably be desire with all but sensuous desire–the thing (in Sappho’s phrase) “more gold than gold.”
C. S. Lewis Maerchenby Walter de la Mare
Soundless the moth-flit, crisp the death-watch tick; Crazed in her shaken arbour bird did sing; Slow wreathed the grease adown from soot-clogged wick: The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
Mouse frisked and scampered, leapt, gnawed, squeaked; Small at the window looped cowled bat a-wing; The dim-lit rafters with the night-mist reeked: The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
O wondrous robe enstarred, in night dyed deep: O air scarce-stirred with the Court’s far junketing: O stagnant Royalty — A-swoon? Asleep? The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
Book List:Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.
The Princess and The Goblin by George MacDonald
Lilith by George MacDonald
Hallelujah by Cindy Rollins
The Christmas Stories and Poems of George MacDonald by George MacDonald
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer
George MacDonald by C. S. Lewis
The Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald
At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis
A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Adam Bede by George Eliot
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
The Purple Island by Phineas Fletcher
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