Episode 132: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, Part 2
Today on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts continue their discussion of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas kick off the book discussion by clarifying some confusion over the definition of a picaresque novel. They share some thoughts on the how stories communicate to us in a unique way that cannot easily be expressed in any other way. Other ideas brought up in this episode are the following: the home as a refuge from the world, the centrality of food and drink, friendship with an addict, the problem of trying to use books to teach virtue, and more!
Cindy\u2019s 2022 Morning Time for Moms Summer Discipleship group is now open for registration. The theme this year is \u201cLaughter and Lament.\u201d Head over to morningtimeformoms.com to find out more and sign up!
Thomas will be teaching a webinar on Napoleon Bonaparte later this month, as well as an introductory course on Russian Literature in July 2022. Learn more and register at houseofhumaneletters.com.
Commonplace Quotes:A work of art speaks a truth we can\u2019t speak outright: the truth of the human experience. Love, joy, grief, guilt, beauty\u2013no words can communicate these. We can only represent them in stories and pictures and songs. Art is the way we speak the meaning of our lives.
Andrew Klavan
He is led more by his ears than his understanding, taking the sound of words for their true sense\u2026His ill-luck is not so much in being a fool, as in being put to such pains to express it to the world, for what in others is natural, in him (with much ado) is artificial.
Thomas Overbury, in \u201cA Mere Scholar\u201d
To Althea, from PrisonGranted that the average man may live for seventy years, it is a fallacy to assume that his life from sixty to seventy is more important than his life from five to fifteen. Children are not merely people: they are the only really living people that have been left to us in an over-weary world. Any normal child will instinctively to agree with your own American poet, Walt Whitman, when he said: \u201cTo me every house of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.\u201d
In my tales about children, I have tried to show that their simple acceptance of the mood of wonderment, their readiness to welcome a perfect miracle at any hour of the day or night, is a think more precious than any of the laboured acquisition of adult mankind\u2026
Kenneth Grahame
by Richard Lovelace
When Love with unconfin\xe8d wings\xa0
Hovers within my Gates,\xa0
And my divine\xa0Althea\xa0brings\xa0
To whisper at the Grates;\xa0
When I lie tangled in her hair,\xa0
And fettered to her eye,\xa0
The Gods that wanton in the Air,\xa0
Know no such Liberty.\xa0
When flowing Cups run swiftly round\xa0
With no allaying\xa0Thames,\xa0
Our careless heads with Roses bound,\xa0
Our hearts with Loyal Flames;\xa0
When thirsty grief in Wine we steep,\xa0
When Healths and draughts go free,\xa0
Fishes that tipple in the Deep\xa0
Know no such Liberty.\xa0
When (like committed linnets) I\xa0
With shriller throat shall sing\xa0
The sweetness, Mercy, Majesty,\xa0
And glories of my King;\xa0
When I shall voice aloud how good\xa0
He is, how Great should be,\xa0
Enlarg\xe8d Winds, that curl the Flood,\xa0
Know no such Liberty.\xa0
Stone Walls do not a Prison make,\xa0
Nor Iron bars a Cage;\xa0
Minds innocent and quiet take\xa0
That for an Hermitage.\xa0
If I have freedom in my Love,\xa0
And in my soul am free,\xa0
Angels alone that soar above,\xa0
Enjoy such Liberty.
The Truth and Beauty by Andrew Klavan
First Whisper of \u201cThe Wind in the Willows\u201d by Kenneth Grahame
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
\u201cOn Three Ways of Writing for Children\u201d by C. S. Lewis
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Children and Books by Mayhill Arbuthnot and Zena Sutherland
The Adventure of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
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