The Literary Life Podcast

On this episode of The Literary Life podcast, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks open a new series of discussions about Aristotle’s work on story, Poetics. After sharing this week’s commonplace quotes, Thomas gives us some background on Aristotle and his time. Angelina points out the importance of differentiating between Aristotle’s work Rhetoric and Poetics and how they are applied. She and Thomas also talk about the problem of translating the Greek word “mimesis.” They discuss Aristotle’s thoughts on the characters in comedy and tragedy, as well as the complex concept of “arete.”

Thomas will be teaching a webinar on Jean Jacques Rousseau on February 24th. You can learn more and register at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up in mid-April, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

The supreme imaginative literature of the world is a survival of the fittest ink blots of the ages, and nothing reveals a man with more precision than his reaction to it.

The men who have loved Shakespeare best and have kept him most alive have all been Cadwals.

When we are young we all think we are going to remake the world...But in the end it is the world which remakes most of us.

It 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 delineations of character. There are indeed three notable exceptions. Aristotle in the Poetics constructed a theory of Greek tragedy which puts Story in the centre and relegates character to a strictly subordinate place. In the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, Boccaccio and others developed an allegorical theory of Story to explain the ancient myths. And in our own time Jung and his followers have produced their doctrine of Archetypes. Apart from these three attempts the subject has been left almost untouched...

by Simonides, trans. by F. L. Lucas

We died in the glen of Dirphys.

Here by our country’s giving

This tomb was heaped above us high on Euripus’ shore.

Twas earned, for young we lost the loveliness of living.

We took instead upon us the bursting storm of war.

The Meaning of Shakespeare, Vol. 1 by Harold Goddard

The Fair Bride by Bruce Marshall

On Stories by C. S. Lewis

Northrop Frye

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Pamela by Samuel Richardson (not recommended)

An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

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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! htt...

Welcome to another episode in our “Best of The Literary Life Podcast” series. Today on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins tackle the topic of fairy stories, discussing the what, why and how of reading them. Angelina shares the distinctive characteristics of fairy stories in contrast to other types of stories, such as myths. They deal with the question of whether fairy tales are “escapist”, the influence of the Grimm brothers scholarly work on interpreting fairy stories, and allowing the story to unveil its deeper truths without forcing meaning onto it.

Angelina gives an illustration of how to see the gospel messages in fairy tales by talking us through the story of Sleeping Beauty. She refutes the ideas that fairy tales are about human romance or are misogynistic. She also highlights some of the Enlightenment and Puritan responses to fairy tales that still linger with us today. Cindy and Angelina also discuss some common concerns such as the magical, weird, or scary aspects of fairy tales. Angelina also makes a distinction between folk tales, literary fairy tales, and cautionary tales.

Other Literary Life series openers referenced in this episode:

Episode 20: An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

Episode 71: Phantastes by George MacDonald

Episode 30: The Literary Life of Caitlin Beauchamp

After a certain kind of sherry party, where there have been cataracts of culture but never on word or one glance that suggested a real enjoyment of any art, any person, or any natural object, my heart warms to the schoolboy on the bus who is reading Fantasy and Science Fiction rapt and oblivious of all the world beside.

Children are not deceived by fairy tales. They are often and gravely deceived by school stories. Adults are not deceived by science fiction. They can be deceived by stories in women’s magazines.

Both fairy stories and realistic stories engage in wish fulfillment, but it is actually the realistic stories that are more deadly. Fairy stories do awaken desires in children, but most often it is not a desire for the fairy world itself. Most children don’t really want there to be dragons in modern England. Instead, the desire is for they know not what. This desire for something beyond does not empty the real world, but actually gives it new depths. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods. The reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.

by Siegfried Sassoon

Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain, Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees; Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees, He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain; ‘He was the grandest of them all—was Cain! ‘A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire; ‘Swift as a stag; a stallion of the plain, ‘Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire.’

Grimly he thought of Abel, soft and fair— A lover with disaster in his face, And scarlet blossom twisted in bright hair. ‘Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace? ... ‘God always hated Cain’ ... He bowed his head— The gaunt wild man whose lovely sons were dead.

Phantastes by George MacDonald

The World’s Last Night by C. S. Lewis

An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

“On Three Ways of Writing for Children” by C. S. Lewis

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

The Princess and The Goblin by George MacDonald

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!

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at Angelina Stanford – House of Humane Letters.

Find Cindy at MorningTimeforMoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at Cindy Rollins – Writer. Check out

This week on The Literary Life podcast, we bring you another fun Literary Life of...episode. Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy’s guest today is Lia Techand, our first international guest on the podcast. Lia, a German born in Kyrgyzstan, currently serving with her husband as a missionary in Australia, along with their two book-loving children. We start off the interview hearing Lia tell about her young life and how she started loving English literature. She talks about her parents and grandparents’ reading lives and the legacy of loving books that they left for her. She also shares how literary analysis and symbolism teaching in high school and college challenged her enjoyment of literature. Lia tells about how she stopped reading in university because she was too busy but then started reading again once she became a mother.

Lia and Angelina share some examples of crazy literary theory that is taught in university programs, and how that confused and discouraged Lia so much. She also tells the story of finding The Literary Life podcast and taking classes with Angelina. They wrap up the conversation with some encouragement for readers looking for the meaning in the stories they read.

Join us next time for a discussion of Plato’s Ion, led by Mr. Banks!

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

A story is a work of art. Its greatest use to the child is in the everlasting appeal of beauty by which the soul of man is constantly pricked to new hungers, quickened to new perceptions, and so given desire to grow...

The storyteller...has, in short, accomplished the one greatest aim of story-telling,–to enlarge and enrich the child’s spiritual experience, and stimulate healthy reaction upon it.

Of course this result cannot be seen and proved as easily and early as can the apprehension of a fact. The most one can hope to recognize is its promise, and this is found in the tokens of that genuine pleasure which is itself the means of accomplishment.

Every thirty years a new race comes into the world–a youngster that knows nothing about anything, and after summarily devouring in all haste the results of human knowledge as they have been accumulated for thousands of years, aspires to be thought cleverer than the whole of the past. For this purpose he goes to the university, and takes to reading books–new books, as being of his own age and standing. Everything he reads must be briefly put, must be new, as he is new himself. Then he falls to and criticizes.

What has drawn the modern world into being is a strange, almost occult yearning for the future. The modern mind longs for the future as the medieval mind longed for heaven.

In these days, when Mr. Bernard Shaw is becoming gradually, amid general applause, the Grand Old Man of English letters, it is perhaps ungracious to record that he did once say there was nobody, with the possible exception of Homer, whose intellect he despised to so much as Shakespeare’s. He has since said almost enough sensible things to outweigh even anything so silly as that. But I quote it because is exactly embodies the nineteenth-century notion of which I speak. Mr. Shaw had probably never read Home; and there were passages in his Shakespearean criticism that might well raise a doubt about whether he ever read Shakespeare. But the point was that he could not, in all sincerity, see what the world saw in Home and Shakespeare, because what the world saw was not what G. B. S. was then looking for. He was looking for that ghastly thing which Nonconformists call a Message.

by Heinrich Heine

Still is the night, and the streets are lone, My darling dwelt in this house of yore; ‘Tis years since she from the city has flown, Yet the house stands there as it did before.

There, too, stands a man, and aloft stares he, And for stress of anguish he wrings his hands; My blood runs cold when his face I see, ‘Tis my own very self in the moonlight stands.

Thou double! Thou fetch, with the livid face! Why dust thou mimic my lovelorn mould, That was racked and rent in this very place So many a night in the times of old?

On this episode of The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks, our hosts introduce their new series on Shakespeare’s play Othello. They share some tips and strategies for those new to Shakespeare, both as independent readers and for reading along with children. Angelina also talks more specifically about how to approach reading a Shakespearean tragedy. Finally, our hosts respond to the idea that Shakespeare plays should be watched, not read. Join us back here next week to dive into the discussion of Othello!

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

The devils come because the half-gods go,

But in the end the gods, the gods return.

I was rereading chapter 14 of Surprised by Joy, and there it was, the opening quote from George MacDonald: “The one principle of hell is – ‘I am my own’.”

A convention is a form of freedom. That is the reality that the realists cannot get into their heads. A dramatic convention is not a constraint on the dramatist; it is a permission to the dramatist. It is a permit allowing him to depart from the routine of external reality, in order to express a more internal and intimate reality. . . .

But as Shakespeare had the liberty of a literary convention, he can make Macbeth say something that nobody in real life would say, but something that does express what somebody in real life would feel. It expresses such things as music expresses them; though nobody in those circumstances would recite that particular poem, any more than he would begin suddenly to play on the violin. But what the audience wants is the emotion expressed; and poetry can express it and commonplace conversation cannot. . . .

The realist is reduced to inarticulate grunts and half-apologetic oaths, like an apoplectic major in a club.

by Walter de la Mare

A dark lean face, a narrow, slanting eye, Whose deeps of blackness one pale taper’s beam Haunts with a flitting madness of desire; A heart whose cinder at the breath of passion Glows to a momentary core of heat Almost beyond indifference to endure: So parched Iago frets his life away. His scorn works ever in a brain whose wit This world hath fools too many and gross to seek. Ever to live incredibly alone, Masked, shivering, deadly, with a simple Moor Of idiot gravity, and one pale flower Whose chill would quench in everlasting peace His soul’s unmeasured flame — O paradox! Might he but learn the trick! — to wear her heart One fragile hour of heedless innocence, And then, farewell, and the incessant grave. ” O fool! O villain! ” — ’tis the shuttlecock Wit never leaves at rest. It is his fate To be a needle in a world of hay, Where honour is the flattery of the fool; Sin, a tame bauble; lies, a tiresome jest; Virtue, a silly, whitewashed block of wood For words to fell. Ah! but the secret lacking, The secret of the child, the bird, the night, Faded, flouted, bespattered, in days so far Hate cannot bitter them, nor wrath deny; Else were this Desdemona. . . . Why! Woman a harlot is, and life a nest Fouled by long ages of forked fools. And God — Iago deals not with a tale so dull: To have made the world! Fie on thee, Artisan!

Othello by William Shakespeare

London Sonnets by Humbert Wolfe

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit

Leon Garfield’s Shakespeare Stories by Leon Garfield

Stories from Shakespeare by Marchette Chute

Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

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!

This week on The Literary Life Podcast we have our final installment of the series on C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Til We Have Faces. This week, our hosts finish up with Part 2, Chapters 1-4. Opening the conversation, Angelina shares some of her feelings on just having finished the book. She points out the importance of understanding the Cupid and Psyche myth. Cindy brings up the concept of a “sin-eater” in relation to Orual’s taking on of Psyche’s trials.

They talk about the ways in which Orual begins to see more clearly and remember things differently at this point in the story. The theme of selfish love versus self-sacrificing love comes full circle as the book closes. Orual’s symbolic death and rebirth are key topics, and the allusions to Christ and the Gospel throughout this story are truly exciting.

Join us next week for a special interview with Wendi Capehart on her literary life!

I can’t say I learned nothing, at St. Charles Borromeo. I learned bladder control; which is good for women, useful in later life. The second thing I learned was that I had got almost everything terribly wrong.

We read Dante for his poetry and not for his theology because we have already met the theology elsewhere.

In the twinkling of an eye, in a time too small to be measured, and in any place, all that seems to divide us from God can flee away, vanish, leaving us naked before Him, like the first man, like the only man, as if nothing but He and I existed. And since that contact cannot be avoided for long, and since it means either bliss or horror, the business of life is to learn to like it. That is the first and greatest commandment.

by Louis Macneice

In a week I return to work, lecturing, coaching, As impresario of the Ancient Greeks Who wore the chiton and lived on fish and olives And talked philosophy or smut in cliques; Who believed in youth and did not gloze the unpleasant Consequences of age; What is life, one said, or what is pleasant Once you have turned the page Of love? The days grow worse, the dice are loaded Against the living man who pays in tears for breath; Never to be born was the best, call no man happy This side death. Conscious – long before Engels – of necessity And therein free They plotted out their life with truism and humour Between the jealous heaven and the callous sea. And Pindar sang the garland of wild olive And Alcibiades lived from hand to mouth Double-crossing Athens, Persia, Sparta, And many died in the city of plague, and many of drouth In Sicilian quarries, and many by the spear and arrow And many more who told their lies too late Caught in the eternal factions and reactions Of the city state. And free speech shivered on the pikes of Macedonia And later on the swords of Rome And Athens became a mere university city, And the goddess born of the foam Became the kept hetaera, heroine of Menander, And the philosopher narrowed his focus, confined His efforts to putting his own soul in order And keeping a quiet mind. And for a thousand years they went on talking, Making such apt remarks, A race no longer of heroes but of professors And crooked business men and secretaries and clerks Who turned out dapper little elegiac verses On the ironies of fate, the transience of all Affections, carefully shunning the over-statement But working the dying fall.

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Hallelujah by Cindy Rollins

Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoire by Hilary Mantel

The Dyer’s Hand by W. H. Auden

The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs

Descent into Hell by Charles Williams

The Private Memoires and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

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!

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 o...