Episode 87: The Literary Life of Wes Callihan
This week on The Literary Life podcast, our hosts chat with Wes Callihan, founder of Schola Tutorials and primary instructor in the Old Western Culture series by Roman Roads Media. Thomas starts off our interview today asking Wes what he remembers about stories and reading as a young person. Wes shares how he came to be a teacher and how his literary life developed as he became an adult. Angelina asks Wes about his approach to challenging literature when he started out reading the great books. He shares the joy of reading aloud, even to yourself, rather than silently whenever possible. Wes also talks about how learning languages enhanced his reading as well. Find the Youtube video of Wes\u2019 personal library here.
Don\u2019t forget to head over to HouseofHumaneLetters.com to find out all about the exciting line-up for our next Literary Life Online Conference, happening April 7-10, 2021 for which Wes Callihan will be our keynote speaker.
Commonplace Quotes:I have called this work \u201cmeadow\u201d on account of the delight, the fragrance and the benefit which it will afford those who come across it, for the virtuous life and the habitual piety do not merely consist of studying divinity, not only of thinking on an elevated plane about things as they are here and now. they must also include the description and writing of the way of life of others. So I have striven to complete this composition to inform your love, oh child, and as I have put together a copious and accurate collection, so I have emulated the most wise bee, gathering up the spiritually beneficial deeds of the fathers.
John Moschos
The fact that various persons have written angrily to say that the Judas I have depicted seems to them to be a person of the utmost nobility, actuated by extremely worthy motives, confirms my impression that this particular agent of hell is at present doing his master\u2019s work with singular thoroughness and success. His exploits go unrecognized \u2013 which is just what the devil likes best.
Dorothy Sayers
People enter politics or the Civil Service out of a desire to exert power and influence events; this, I maintain, is an illness. It is only when one realizes that great administrators and leaders of men have all been at any rate slightly mad that one has a true understanding of history.
Auberon Waugh
On Shakespeare. 1630In essence, Tolkien was trying to recover the vision of Eden, the childhood of the race, when beauty was still connected with truth. Through story\u2013the right kind of story, including traditional legends and fairy-tales\u2013the ability to see all things with a pure heart and in the light of heaven could be evoked. He wanted to prove that poetic knowledge, George MacDonald\u2019s \u201cwise imagination,\u201d could be awoken even in a world apparently closed to its very possibility.
Stratford Caldecott
by John Milton
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pil\xe8d stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid\xa0\xa0\xa0
Under a stary-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,\xa0
What need\u2019st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment\xa0
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.\xa0
For whilst to th\u2019 shame of slow-endeavouring art,\xa0\xa0\xa0
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart\xa0\xa0\xa0
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book\xa0
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,\xa0\xa0\xa0
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,\xa0\xa0\xa0
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;\xa0
And so sep\xfalchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
The Spiritual Meadow by John Moschos
The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy Sayers
Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Papillon by Henri Charriere
Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
Sailing the Inside Passage by Robb Keystone
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by John Mandeville
The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis
Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco
The Land of Darkness by Ibn Fadlan
The Travels of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta
Monologium by St. Anselm
Cur Deus Homo by St. Anselm
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Iliad by Homer, trans. by Alexander Pope
Pacific and Other Stories by Mark Helprin
The Novels of Charles Williams
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
Taliessin through Logres, The Region of the Summer Stars by Charles Williams
Support The Literary Life:Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the \u201cFriends and Fellows Community\u201d on\xa0Patreon, 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,\xa0and on Facebook at\xa0https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at\xa0https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris\xa0and on Facebook at\xa0https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy\u2019s own Patreon page also!
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let\u2019s get the book talk going!\xa0http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB