Episode 65: Til We Have Faces, Ch. 8-11

09/22/20 • 81 min

This week on The Literary Life, we continue our series on C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Til We Have Faces, and our hosts discuss chapters 8-11 today. Before we get started, we want you to know there is still time to sign up for Cindy’s Morning Time Q&A on September 23. Register at CindyRollins.net today! Also, Thomas will be teaching a mini-class series on Shakespeare’s Roman Plays in October, and you can find out more and register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com.

Angelina starts off the conversation asking for everyone’s impressions of this section of reading, and Thomas and Cindy bring up the melancholy nature of much of this story. Themes discussed in this episode include: seeing and not seeing, reason’s response to faith, the dream motif, the similarities with the story of Iphigenia, baptism and crossing the river, and the ways relationships change over time. Another topic our hosts highlight is the tension between mysticism and rationalism and the truth that transcends the inadequacy of these.

Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes:

“Self-consciousness is a great barrier to faith.

A. B. Simpson

It is a mark of true folklore that even the tale that is evidently wild is eminently sane.

G. K. Chesterton

The poet’s job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always takes place.

Northrup Frye Requiescat

by Matthew Arnold

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!

Her mirth the world required; She bathed it in smiles of glee. But her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat and sound. But for peace her soul was yearning, And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin’d, ample spirit, It flutter’d and fail’d for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.)

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies by Robert Kirk

St. Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton

The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. 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 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

Listen to The Literary Life: Commonplace Quotes:

“Self-consciousness is a great barrier to faith.

A. B. Simpson

It is a mark of true folklore that even the tale that is evidently wild is eminently sane.

G. K. Chesterton

The poet’s job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always takes place.

Northrup Frye Requiescat

by Matthew Arnold

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!

Her mirth the world required; She bathed it in smiles of glee. But her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat and sound. But for peace her soul was yearning, And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin’d, ample spirit, It flutter’d and fail’d for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links are used in this content.)

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies by Robert Kirk

St. Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton

The Educated Imagination by Northrup Frye

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. 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 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

Previous Episode

Episode 64: Til We Have Faces, Ch. 6-7

Today on The Literary Life Podcast our hosts Angelina, Cindy and Thomas discuss chapters 6-7 of C. S. Lewis’ mythical retelling Til We Have Faces. Before we get started, we want you to know about Cindy’s Morning Time Q&A on September 23. Register at CindyRollins.net. They open the discussion this week talking about Lewis’ writings on love and jealousy. Angelina points out similarities to this story and other classical myths and even Spenser’s Faerie Queene. They also talk about Orual’s desires as opposed to Psyche’s expectations.

Cindy mentioned Peter Kreeft’s talk on Til We Have Faces a couple of times. Here is the link to that audio for those who are interested in listening to that.

Commonplace Quotes:

The stage is an epitome, a better likeness of the world, with the dull part left out.

William Hazlitt

The motto was Pax, but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Pax: peace, but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at nights, little comfort, sometimes scant food; beset with disappointments and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. “It is My own peace I give unto you.” Not, notice, the world’s peace.

Rumer Godden

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. . . . I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; . . . I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.

C. S. Lewis A Woman Homer Sung

by William Butler Yeats

If any man drew near When I was young, I thought, “He holds her dear,’ And shook with hate and fear. But O! ’twas bitter wrong If he could pass her by With an indifferent eye. Whereon I wrote and wrought, And now, being grey, I dream that I have brought To such a pitch my thought That coming time can say, “He shadowed in a glass What thing her body was.’ For she had fiery blood When I was young, And trod so sweetly proud As ’twere upon a cloud, A woman Homer sung, That life and letters seem But an heroic dream.

Book List:

Affiliate links are used in this content.

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

Christian Behavior by C. S. Lewis

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

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

Next Episode

Episode 66: Til We Have Faces, Ch. 12-15

Today on The Literary Life, our hosts discuss chapters 12-15 of C. S. Lewis' masterpiece Til We Have Faces. Don't forget that Thomas will be teaching a mini-class series on Shakespeare's Roman Plays in October. You can find out more and register at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. We are giving away one spot in the class to someone who shares about the class publicly on social media and tag it #houseofhumaneletters. The winner will be announced on October 2, 2020 on the House of Humane Letters Facebook page!

Angelina opens the discussions with the point that Lewis changes the story of Psyche throughout the book, especially in this section. Cindy shares how the last couple of chapters in this week's reading made her feel and the tension of wanting to choose sides. In these scenes, we see again the theme of disordered loves and the rift in the relationship between Orual and Psyche, as well as Orual's descent further into self-deception. Be back next time when we cover chapters 16-21.

Commonplace Quotes:

This is what I recommend to people who ask me how to get published. Trust your reader, stop spoon-feeding your reader, stop patronizing your reader, give your reader credit for being as smart as you at least, and stop being so bloody beguiling: you in the back row, will you turn off that charm. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours.

Hilary Mantel

He had an outstanding gift for attracting hatreds.

Rene Pichon

The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship, from a corkscrew to a cathedral, is to know what it is–what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used.

C. S. Lewis The Laws of God, The Laws of Man

by A. E. Houseman

The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me; And if my ways are not as theirs Let them mind their own affairs. Their deeds I judge and much condemn, Yet when did I make laws for them? Please yourselves, say I, and they Need only look the other way. But no, they will not; they must still Wrest their neighbor to their will, And make me dance as they desire With jail and gallows and hell-fire. And how am I to face the odds Of man’s bedevilment and God’s? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made. They will be master, right or wrong; Though both are foolish, both are strong. And since, my soul, we cannot fly To Saturn nor to Mercury, Keep we must, if keep we can, These foreign laws of God and man.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links)

Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoire by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

A Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis

Paradise Lost by John Milton

God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis

The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles

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