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Published: Nov. 17, 2020, 6 a.m.

Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and the second episode of our series on George MacDonald's Phantastes, covering chapters 5-9. Angelina and Thomas kick off the book chat sharing some thoughts on the Duessa-type character in this section. Cindy mentions the connection she made to James Russell Lowell's poem, "The Vision of Sir Launfal." They go on to discuss the parallels between this section and the Pygmalion myth. Other mythological references abound throughout the story, as we will see. Our hosts go deep exploring the themes of deception, the fall, doppelgangers and spiritual death in these chapters.

Don\u2019t forget to check out the Advent and Christmas resources our hosts have ready for your holiday season. As mentioned before, Cindy\u2019s new edition of Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel\u2019s Messiah is available now, and she has a live celebration even happening on November 19, 2020. Check our CindyRollins.net for more information. Also, Thomas and Angelina have a sale going on for an Advent Bundle of their popular webinars, Charles Dickens\u2019 A Christmas Carol and The Poetry of Advent. Additionally, Kelly Cumbee will be teaching a webinar series called \u201cSeeking the Discarded Image: Nature.\u201d

Be back next week when we will cover chapters 10-14. Remember to join the discussion in our Literary Life Discussion Group.

Commonplace Quotes:

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

School isn\u2019t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.

Richard Louv

Milton\u2019s point in Paradise Lost is that free man can be instructed only by the non-compulsive forms, whether vision, parable, or drama. Hence Paradise Lost is a series of interlocking visions, Adam warned by the cathartic contrapuntal vision of satanic fall, and fall through vision of Eve. To fall is to choose an illusion, not a wrong reason.

Northrup Frye

When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be

by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be\xa0
\xa0\xa0\xa0Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,\xa0
Before high-pil\xe8d books, in charactery,\xa0
\xa0\xa0\xa0Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;\xa0
When I behold, upon the night\u2019s starred face,\xa0
\xa0\xa0\xa0Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,\xa0
And think that I may never live to trace\xa0
\xa0\xa0\xa0Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;\xa0
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,\xa0
\xa0\xa0\xa0That I shall never look upon thee more,\xa0
Never have relish in the faery power\xa0
\xa0\xa0\xa0Of unreflecting love\u2014then on the shore\xa0
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think\xa0
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Book List:

(Amazon affiliate links)

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv

Notebooks on Renaissance Literature by Northrup Frye

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carol

Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqu\xe9e

Faust (Parts One and Two) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford,\xa0and on Facebook at\xa0https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

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