Episode 179: Kidnapped, Intro to Robert Louis Stevenson and Ch. 1-6
Welcome back to a new read along series on The Literary Life Podcast! This week Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy will begin their discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s Kidnapped, covering chapters 1-6, as well as giving some background information on the beloved author and the historical setting of this book. Angelina talks about the life of R. L. Stevenson, and Thomas sets the historical stage for the story. We also get a glimpse into the form of the novel as a romance from some clues Stevenson gives at the outset. Cindy highlights the foreboding in the song of a woman David Balfour passes on the road. They look more closely at David\u2019s plight, the role of the usurping uncle, and Stevenson\u2019s excellent storytelling.
Come back next week to get in on the discussion of chapters 7-18.
You are not too late to participate in Thomas\u2019 mini-class on G. K. Chesterton taking place live or later from June 26th through July 7th. Register at\xa0HouseofHumaneLetters.com\xa0today!
Commonplace Quotes:Perhaps it is a mistake to suppose that metaphors can be invented. The real ones, those that formulate intimate connections between one image and another, have always existed; those we can invent are the false ones, which are not worth inventing.
Jorge Luis Borges, An Essay on Hawthorne
The tragedy of King Lear, in some of its elements perhaps the very greatest of all the Shakespearean tragedies, is relatively seldom played. It is even possible to have a dark suspicion that it is not universally read; with the usual deplorable result, that it is universally quoted. Perhaps nothing has done so much to weaken the greatest of English achievements, and to leave it open to facile revolt or fatigued reaction, than the abominable habit of quoting Shakespeare without reading Shakespeare.
G. K. Chesterton, from and introduction to The Spice of Life
Epitaph on a JacobiteTruth is a stern mistress, and when one hath once started off with her one must follow on after the jade, though she lead in flat defiance of all the rules and conditions which would fain turn that tangled wilderness the world into the trim Dutch garden of the story-tellers.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke
by Thomas Macaulay
To my true king I offered free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.
For him, I threw lands, honours, wealth, away.
And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.
For him I languished in a foreign clime,
Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood\u2019s prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill\u2019s whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting place I asked, an early grave.
Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O\u2019er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton
Other Inquisitions: 1937-1952 by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. by Ruth L. C. Simms
The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, ed. by Dale Ahlquist
The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sacketts Series by Louis L\u2019Amour
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