Episode 294: "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti, Part 1
The Literary Life Podcast
Angelina Stanford
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast! This week we begin a brief, two-episode series covering Christina Rossetti's narrative poem "Goblin Market." Our hosts, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, look at the life and family background of Christina Rossetti, highlighting her devout Christian faith as key to understanding her poetry. Thomas shares the dates for the Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite periods in terms of art and literature. Angelina asks what the form of this poem is as we approach this together, and she and Thomas propose a few connections and preliminary ideas they have about "Goblin Market" before we dive into the full text. Join us next week as they walk through the poem together and further discuss how to read this work as well as so much more!
Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!
We are excited to announce this coming year's annual Literary Life Online Conference, happening January 23-30, 2026, "The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human". Our speakers will be Dr. Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, Dr. Anne Phillips, and, of course, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks.
And to view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/294.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is not just another book chat podcast. |
| 0:21.6 | Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading well. |
| 0:32.6 | Explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter end to the great works of literature. |
| 0:40.2 | Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week, we will rescue |
| 0:47.1 | story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the |
| 0:55.9 | words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into |
| 1:02.2 | reality. Join us for an ever-unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. |
| 1:09.7 | This is the Literary Life Podcast. |
| 1:30.9 | Hello and welcome to the Literary Life podcast. |
| 1:37.5 | I'm Angelina Stanford, and here with me is a man who is not called Dante Rosetti, or anything, Rosette. |
| 1:39.0 | I wish you had a cool name like that. I've sometimes thought, I mean, what's in a name is Juliet asked, but I think probably quite a bit. |
| 1:43.9 | And I think that I would probably be a much more interesting and charismatic person if I were named Dante Rosetti. That's right. But it would also be... It's impossible not to be cool to name Dante Rosetti. That's a cool name. And it would also be false advertising, though. You're not a Dante Rose. |
| 2:18.0 | You're a Thomas Banks. Oh, yeah. I've learned to live with that. I haven't to think that's a good thing. You've learned to live with that. You've learned to endure the fact that I am not Don't Pierrezetti, but only I have a boring Anglo-Saxon name. We all have our cross system bear, and I guess that's mine. Welcome to the Literary Life podcast. If you're new here, we are two really lifelong English teachers. |
| 2:23.1 | I feel like we've been doing this our whole life. |
| 2:25.3 | And together we run the House of Humane Letters, a business which is devoted to recovering the lost intellectual tradition of the Humane Letters. |
| 2:34.2 | And this is our podcast where we basically give classes for free. |
| 2:39.7 | Last week, we did an episode on the literary tradition, and I know that not everybody |
| 2:44.5 | listens to these episodes in order, but I record them in order. |
| 2:48.8 | So you're going to have to let me make connections |
| 2:51.0 | for the fact that I'm moving chronologically |
| 2:53.5 | through these podcast episodes, |
| 2:55.3 | even if you're not. |
... |
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