The Literary Life Podcast

Welcome to another episode of The Literary Life podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks! This week our hosts open a new series on Ray Bradbury's well-known novel Fahrenheit 451. They talk about the form of the dystopian novel and why it is such a popular form in the modern world. Angelina shares some background on the form, as well as some of the foremost authors and books in this genre. Then they dive into the text, starting with the images of the hearth and the salamander. Looking at the world Bradbury has created, they take note of some of the major ideas and discuss any similarities to our current culture seen in these first several chapters. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Commonplace Quotes: If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that that is all the story is about, they are very definitely wrong. Neil Gaiman It will be a bad day for England when we have done with Shakspere; for that will imply, along with the loss of him, that we are no longer capable of understanding him. George MacDonald Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school it was during the Depression, and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for ten years. Ray Bradbury from "The Burning of the Leaves" by Laurence Binyon Now is the time for the burning of the leaves. They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke Wandering slowly into a weeping mist. Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves! A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist. The last hollyhock's fallen tower is dust; All the spices of June are a bitter reek, All the extravagant riches spent and mean. All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost; Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild Fingers of fire are making corruption clean. Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare, Time for the burning of days ended and done, Idle solace of things that have gone before: Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there; Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind. The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more. Book List: A Dish or Orts by George MacDonald Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Stardust by Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman 1984 by George Orwell Animal Farm by George Orwell Brave New World by Aldous Huxley That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis Utopia by Thomas More Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Frankenstein by Mary Shelley The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson H. G. Wells "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis Dorothy Sayers Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts continue their discussion of The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. After sharing some commentary on their commonplace quotes for the week, Angelina, Cindy and Thomas talk about the things that stood out to them as they read the second half of The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Some of the ideas they share are the following: the commonality of being ordinary, the responses people have to terminal illness, the one person who gives Ilyich comfort, and the humiliation of death. Angelina highlights the Orthodox metaphors and Christian imagery that are so prevalent in the end of this story. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Commonplace Quotes: The only inconvenience is that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection, and in the meantime the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair. Jonathon Swift The humanities do not always make a man humane–that is, liberal, tolerant, gentle, and candid as regards the opinions and status of other men. The fault does not lie in any one of these or in any other of the disciplinary subjects, but in our indolent habit of using each of these as a sort of mechanical contrivance for turning up the soil and sowing the seed. Charlotte Mason I should be cautious of censuring anything that has been applauded by so many suffrages. Samuel Johnson O Child Beside the Waterfall by George Barker O Child beside the Waterfall what songs without a word rise from those waters like the call only a heart has heard- the Joy, the Joy in all things rise whistling like a bird. O Child beside the Waterfall I hear them too, the brief heavenly notes, the harp of dawn, the nightingale on the leaf, all, all dispel the darkness and the silence of our grief. O Child beside the Waterfall I see you standing there with waterdrops and fireflies and hummingbirds in the air, all singing praise of paradise, paradise everywhere. Book List: The Life of Samuel Johnson by Boswell School Education by Charlotte Mason The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks delve into part one of a two-part discussion of Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Our hosts kick things off talking about their background with Russian literature, and Thomas gives some biographical information on Tolstoy. They also talk about the concept of the "holy fool." Some ideas discussed in this episode include the characters' responses to death, the mask of respectability, and the problem of discontent. Cindy is hosting a new summer discipleship course for moms this year, so head over to morningtimeformoms.com for more info and to sign up! Thomas and Angelina also have some great summer classes coming up, and you can check those out at houseofhumaneletters.com. Commonplace Quotes: Arrogance is a weed that ever grows in a dunghill. Owen Feltham To enhance the wonder, see How arch his notices, how nice his sense Of the ridiculous; . . . . he can read The inside of the earth, and spell the stars; He knows the policies of foreign lands; Can string you names of districts, cities, towns, The whole world over, tight as beads of dew Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs; All things are put to question; he must live Knowing that he grows wiser every day, Or else not live at all, and seeing too Each little drop of wisdom as it falls Into the dimpling cistern of his heart: For this unnatural growth the trainer blame, Pity the tree… Meanwhile old grandame earth is grieved to find The playthings, which her love designed for him, Unthought of: in their woodland beds the flowers Weep, and the river sides are all forlorn. Oh! give us once again the wishing-cap Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood, And Sabra in the forest with St George! The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap One precious gain, that he forgets himself. William Wordsworth, from "Prelude" [Fairy stories] never seek to criticize or moralize, to protest or plead or persuade; and if they have an emotional impact on the reader, as the greatest of them to, that is not intrinsic to the stories. They would indeed only weaken that impact in direct proportion as soon as they set out to achieve it. They move by not seeking to move; almost, it seems, by seeking not to move. The fairy-story that succeeds is in fact not a work of fiction at all; . . . It is a transcription of a view of life into terms of highly simplified symbols; and when it succeeds in its literary purpose, it leaves us with a deep indefinable feeling of truth. C. M. Woodhouse, on Animal Farm, The Times Literary Supplement, 1954 Growing Old by Matthew Arnold What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The luster of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? —Yes, but not this alone. Is it to feel our strength— Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay? Is it to feel each limb Grow stiffer, every function less exact, Each nerve more loosely strung? Yes, this, and more; but not Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be! 'Tis not to have our life Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow, A golden day's decline. 'Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are no more. It is to spend long days And not once feel that we were ever young; It is to add, immured In the hot prison of the present, month To month with weary pain. It is to suffer this, And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. Deep in our hidden heart Festers the dull remembrance of a change, But no emotion—none. It is—last stage of all— When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man. Book List: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy Resolves: Divine, Political, and Moral by Owen Feltham War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Anton Chekhov Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev Papa Panov's Special Day by Mig Holder The Giagantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy Koshka's Tales: Stories from Russia by James Mayhew The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley How Much Land Does a Man Need and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On The Literary Life podcast this week, hosts Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford interview their friend and veteran homeschool mother of 4, Adrienne Freas. Adrienne is now the Classical Education Advisor for the K-12 Curriculum and Professional Development Project at University of Dallas Classical Education Master's Degree program at the University of Dallas, and she is active in consulting and advocating for Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy. Adrienne was a featured speaker in the 2019 Back to School Conference, available for replay at morningtimeformoms.com. Adrienne describes her young life and how the fine arts were the highlight of her childhood and her early struggles to learn to read. She shares how high school literature teachers and reading the classics whet her appetite for even more great literature. She talks about the difference it makes to have a teacher who is enthusiastic and believes the students can step up to the challenge. Cindy, Angelina and Adrienne all share their love for Charlotte Mason and her philosophy of giving children a wide and generous curriculum. Commonplace Quotes: Whenever we are called to teach, our proclamation of goodness should be so wrapped in beauty as to console. This should apply to our daily actions as well, and it is an art. Timothy Patitsas Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. Martin Luther Q (Quiller-Couch) was all by himself my college education. I went down to the public library one day when I was 17 looking for books on the art of writing, and found five books of lectures which Q had delivered to his students of writing at Cambridge. "Just what I need!" I congratulated myself. I hurried home with the first volume and started reading and got to page 3 and hit a snag: Q was lecturing to young men educated at Eton and Harrow. He therefore assumed that his students—including me—had read Paradise Lost as a matter of course and would understand his analysis of the "Invocation to Light" in book 9. So I said, "Wait here," and went down to the library and got Paradise Lost and took it home and started reading it and got to page 3 when I hit a snag: Milton assumed I'd read the Christian version of Isaiah and the New Testament and had learned all about Lucifer and the War in Heaven, and since I'd been reared in Judaism I hadn't. So I said, "Wait here," and borrowed a Christian Bible and read about Lucifer and so forth, and then went back to Milton and read Paradise Lost, and then finally got back to Q, page 3. On page 4 or 5, I discovered that the point of the sentence at the top of the page was in Latin and the long quotation at the bottom of the page was in Greek. So I advertised in the Saturday Review for somebody to teach me Latin and Greek, and went back to Q meanwhile, and discovered he assumed I not only knew all the plays of Shakespeare, and Boswell's Johnson, but also the Second Book of Esdras, which is not in the Old Testament and is not in the New Testament, it's in the Apocrypha, which is a set of books nobody had ever thought to tell me existed. So what with one thing and another and an average of three "Wait here's" a week, it took me eleven years to get through Q's five books of lectures. Helene Hanff After Reading "Antony and Cleopatra" by Robert Louis Stevenson As when the hunt by holt and field Drives on with horn and strife, Hunger of hopeless things pursues Our spirits throughout life. The sea's roar fills us aching full Of objectless desire – The sea's roar, and the white moon-shine, And the reddening of the fire. Who talks to me of reason now? It would be more delight To have died in Cleopatra's arms Than be alive to-night. Book List: The Ethics of Beauty by Timothy Patitsas The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff Macbeth by William Shakespeare Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams The Turn of the Screw by Henry James Emily Dickinson The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition by Karen Glass A History of the English-Speaking People by Winston Churchill Paradise Lost by John Milton The Divine Comedy by Dante Algieri The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie Perceval by Chretien de Troyes Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan Lenten Lands by Douglas Gresham The Betrothed: I Promesi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni The Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Beothius Range by David Epstien Gene Stratton Porter Elizabeth Goudge Waverly by Sir Walter Scott Reorienting Rhetoric by John D. O'Banion Unbinding Prometheus by Donald Cowan Heidi by Johanna Spyri The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fischer The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster Beowulf translated by Burton Raffel The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens The Once and Future King by T. H. White Men of Iron by Howard Pyle Links Mentioned: AmblesideOnline The Well Read Poem Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

On this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks are joined by James Banks to discuss the value of reading Don Quixote and how to approach the book. They talk about translations and how to choose a translation of this particular work. James shares how he first read Miguel de Cervantes' classic work and gives a little contextual background on him as an author. He also argues that Don Quixote is a romance in the tradition of Spenser and is more of a satire of modernity than of chivalry. Other ideas discussed are the comic duo, the Spanish Renaissance literature, the travel novel, and how to dive into reading Don Quixote. It's not too late to register for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 with special guest speaker Wes Callihan. Head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up today! Listen to previous episodes with James Banks by going to The Literary Life podcast Episode 32 and Episode 33. Commonplace Quotes: Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. attributed to Abraham Lincoln I take it to be part and parcel of the same great process of Internalisation which has turned genius from an attendant daemon into a quality of the mind. Always, century by century, item after item is transferred from the object's side of the account to the subject's. And now, in some extreme forms of Behaviourism, the subject himself is discounted as merely subjective; we only think that we think. Having eaten up everything else, he eats himself up too. And where we 'go from that' is a dark question. C. S. Lewis Say you're an idiot. And say you're a Congressman. But I repeat myself. Mark Twain I don't like the word "allegorical." I don't like the word "symbolic." The word I really like is "mythic," and people always think that means "full of lies" when what it really means is full of a truth that cannot be told in any other way but a story. William Golding, BBC interview Clerihew by G. K. Chesterton The people of Spain think Cervantes Equal to half a dozen Dantes: An opinion resented most bitterly By the people of Italy. Book List: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis Lord of the Flies by William Golding Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens The Shadow of Cervantes by Wyndham 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 morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts chat with Wes Callihan, founder of Schola Tutorials and primary instructor in the Old Western Culture series by Roman Roads Media. Thomas starts off our interview today asking Wes what he remembers about stories and reading as a young person. Wes shares how he came to be a teacher and how his literary life developed as he became an adult. Angelina asks Wes about his approach to challenging literature when he started out reading the great books. He shares the joy of reading aloud, even to yourself, rather than silently whenever possible. Wes also talks about how learning languages enhanced his reading as well. Find the Youtube video of Wes' personal library here. Don't forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 for which Wes Callihan will be our keynote speaker. Commonplace Quotes: I have called this work "meadow" on account of the delight, the fragrance and the benefit which it will afford those who come across it, for the virtuous life and the habitual piety do not merely consist of studying divinity, not only of thinking on an elevated plane about things as they are here and now. they must also include the description and writing of the way of life of others. So I have striven to complete this composition to inform your love, oh child, and as I have put together a copious and accurate collection, so I have emulated the most wise bee, gathering up the spiritually beneficial deeds of the fathers. John Moschos The fact that various persons have written angrily to say that the Judas I have depicted seems to them to be a person of the utmost nobility, actuated by extremely worthy motives, confirms my impression that this particular agent of hell is at present doing his master's work with singular thoroughness and success. His exploits go unrecognized – which is just what the devil likes best. Dorothy Sayers People enter politics or the Civil Service out of a desire to exert power and influence events; this, I maintain, is an illness. It is only when one realizes that great administrators and leaders of men have all been at any rate slightly mad that one has a true understanding of history. Auberon Waugh In essence, Tolkien was trying to recover the vision of Eden, the childhood of the race, when beauty was still connected with truth. Through story–the right kind of story, including traditional legends and fairy-tales–the ability to see all things with a pure heart and in the light of heaven could be evoked. He wanted to prove that poetic knowledge, George MacDonald's "wise imagination," could be awoken even in a world apparently closed to its very possibility. Stratford Caldecott On Shakespeare. 1630 by John Milton What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a stary-pointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. Book List: The Spiritual Meadow by John Moschos The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy Sayers Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George Papillon by Henri Charriere Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Paul Thoreaux Sailing the Inside Passage by Robb Keystone The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by John Mandeville The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco The Land of Darkness by Ibn Fadlan The Travels of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta Monologium by St. Anselm Cur Deus Homo by St. Anselm The Aeneid by Virgil The Iliad by Homer, trans. by Alexander Pope Pacific and Other Stories by Mark Helprin Ray Bradbury The Novels of Charles Williams G. K. Chesterton Alexander Pope Fyodor Dostoyevsky Leo Tolstoy Anton Chekhov Aleksander Solzhenitsyn The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis P. G. Wodehouse Edward Gibbon Philip Schaff Taliessin through Logres, The Region of the Summer Stars by Charles Williams Isaac Asimov Theodore Sturgeon Robert Heinlein Arthur C. Clarke 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

On this week's episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks wrap up their discussion of George Eliot's Silas Marner. In this episode, Angelina reveals her light bulb moment connecting this story with Shakespeare's play, The Winter's Tale. Thomas talks about the changes in Silas as he has integrated back into the community through his love for Eppie. Cindy points out the characteristics we see in Nancy as a woman who has been through suffering and come out more gracious on the other side. Don't forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 with special guest speaker Wes Callihan. Commonplace Quotes: We are all willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. E. M. Forster Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keep the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. Aldous Huxley The worst evil in the world is brought about not by the open and self-confessed vices but by the deadly corruption of the proud virtues. Dorothy Sayers A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating 'round the perfect trees. And make us happy in the darting bird That suddenly above the bees is heard, The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, And off a blossom in mid air stands still. For this is love and nothing else is love, To which it is reserved for God above To sanctify to what far ends He will, But which it only needs that we fulfill. Book List: Two Cheers for Democracy by E. M. Forster Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Middlemarch by George Eliot The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy Sayers Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell The Tempest by William Shakespeare To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 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

Welcome to this episode of The Literary Life Podcast, in which our hosts discuss George Eliot's book Silas Marner, chapters 10-15. Thomas kicks off the discussion by highlighting the character of Dolly Winthrop. Angelina talks about Silas Marner opening himself to grace in these chapters. She also points out the way that Eliot uses Godfrey's character to point out our own potential lack of moral courage. Cindy points out the problem of addiction for Molly in causing her to neglect her own baby. Angelina also talks about the Rumpelstiltskin parallels and other fairy tale elements in the book thus far. Don't forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 with special guest speaker Wes Callihan. Commonplace Quotes: Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours in a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge. Samuel Johnson Philosophy, like medicine, has a great number of drugs, and precious few genuine remedies. Nicolas Chamfort The feudal ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of moveables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty. E. M. Forster On My First Daughter by Ben Johnson Here lies, to each her parents' Ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth; Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due, It makes the father less to rue. At six months' end she parted hence With safety of her innocence; Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears, In comfort of her mother's tears, Hath placed amongst her virgin-train: Where, while that severed doth remain, This grave partakes the fleshly birth; Which cover lightly, gentle earth! Book List: The Year of Our Lord, 1943 by Alan Jacobs The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell Complete Maxims and Thoughts by Nicolas Chamfort Howard's End by E. M. Forster The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot The History of the Devil by Daniel Defoe Sir Roger de Coverley by Joseph Addison Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Middlemarch by George Eliot The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 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

On today's episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks continue their discussion of George Eliot's Silas Marner, covering chapters 4-9. They talk about the problems facing the Cass family and their tense relationships, examine George Eliot's treatment of Silas Marner's victim-hood, reflect on the changing times of the Victorian period, and Thomas breaks out his "Cheers" accent. Don't forget to check out Angelina and Thomas' upcoming classes at HouseofHumaneLetters.com and Cindy's Discipleship for Moms on Patreon. Commonplace Quotes: Perhaps the first thing that he can learn from the artist is that the only way of "mastering" one's material is to abandon the whole conception of mastery and to co-operate with it in love: whosoever will be a lord of life, let him be its servant. Dorothy Sayers You said that we owe literature almost everything we are and what we have been. If books disappear, history will disappear, and human beings will also disappear. I am sure you are right. Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of transcendence. Some people think of reading only as a kind of escape: an escape from the "real" everyday world to an imaginary world, the world of books. Books are much more. They are way of being more fully human. Susan Sontag Just because a man is going to be hanged tomorrow it does not necessarily follow that he has anything interesting to say about it. Desmond MacCarthy Cradlesong by William Blake Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, Dreaming in the joys of night; Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep Little sorrows sit and weep. Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles. As thy softest limbs I feel Smiles as of the morning steal O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast Where thy little heart doth rest. O the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep! When thy little heart doth wake, Then the dreadful night shall break. Book List: The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers Criticism by Desmond MacCarthy Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry The Aeneid by Virgil Emma by Jane Austen Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at 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

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins and Thomas Banks dig into George Eliot's Silas Marner. Today's discussion gives us an introduction to George Eliot and covers the first three chapters of the book. Thomas shares a little historical context for the setting of Silas Marner and how that affects the interpretation of this book. Angelina points out the ways in which Eliot uses some fairy tale and otherworldly elements to explore moral ideas. Don't forget to check out Angelina and Thomas' upcoming classes at HouseofHumaneLetters.com and Cindy's Discipleship for Moms on Patreon. Commonplace Quotes: A poem can be like two hands that lift you up and put you down in a new place. You look back with astonishment and find that because you have read a few lines on a printed page or listened for a couple of minutes to a voice speaking, you have arrived at somewhere quite different. Elizabeth Goudge Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong… Samuel Johnson These fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are. You can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wits, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people amongst whom your life is passed, that it is needful you should tolerate, pity and love. George Eliot Adlestrop by Edward Thomas Yes. I remember Adlestrop— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop—only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Book List: Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge The Dean's Watch by Elizabeth Goudge Adam Bede by George Eliot The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Middlemarch by George Eliot Romola by George Eliot Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings by George Eliot Silly Novels by Lady Novelists by George Eliot Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy 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