Episode 75: Phantastes, Ch. 20-End
The Literary Life Podcast
Angelina Stanford
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2020
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on The Literary Life podcast, we wrap up our series on George MacDonald's Phantastes. Today Angelina, Cindy and Thomas discuss chapters 20-25. Thomas opens the conversations giving his impressions of the ending of this fantasy. Angelina talks more about the symbolism of death and rebirth, as well as the themes of the quest, the shadow self, and the presence of more dual images. Cindy shares some of her thoughts on this reading as well as the moment she first read the ending passages of this book.
Don't forget to check out the upcoming reading challenge for next year, the Literary Life 19 Books for 2021 challenge! We will be back next time with an episode full of ideas and book suggestions to help inspire your #LitLife192021 reading. Also, we are pleased to be bringing you Literary Life Commonplace Books, perfect for recording what you are reading, as well as all your favorite quotes.
Commonplace Quotes:
People say that life is the things, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith
A great public position may create false values, endow its holder with gifts that are not his own, and make a great philosopher out of a corrupt lawyer.
Alfred Noye
And yet there are people who say that Shakespeare always means "just what he says"!…He thinks that to find over and undermeanings in Shakespeare's plays is to take unwarranted liberties with them is like a man who holds the word "spring" must refer only to a particular period of the year and could not possibly mean birth, or youth, or hope. He is a man who has never associated anything with anything else. He is a man without metaphors. And such a man is not man at all, let alone a poet.
Harold Goddard
Joseph
by G. K. Chesterton
If the stars fell; night's nameless dreams
Of bliss and blasphemy came true,
If skies were green and snow were gold,
And you loved me as I love you;
O long light hands and curled brown hair,
And eyes where sits a naked soul;
Dare I even then draw near and burn
My fingers in the aureole?
Yes, in the one wise foolish hour
God gives this strange strength to a man.
He can demand, though not deserve,
Where ask he cannot, seize he can.
But once the blood's wild wedding o'er,
Were not dread his, half dark desire,
To see the Christ-child in the cot,
The Virgin Mary by the fire?
Book List:
Two Worlds for Memory by Alfred Noyes
The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis
A Dish of Orts by George MacDonald
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller
Support The Literary Life:
Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, 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, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!
Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're going to. Welcome to the literary life podcast where your hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins, explore a life shaped by books, stories, and poetry. |
| 0:28.0 | Each week, we will rescue story from the Ivory Tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. |
| 0:35.0 | The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, |
| 0:39.0 | to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. |
| 0:44.0 | Hello and welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. |
| 0:51.0 | I am Angelina Stanford and with me as always are the mysterious |
| 0:55.7 | Mr Banks and the blonde bombshell herself, Cindy Rollins. How's everybody doing |
| 1:01.5 | today? Very well, thank you. |
| 1:03.0 | Yes, doing well. |
| 1:05.0 | Are we feeling in the Christmas spirit? |
| 1:07.0 | Oh, I am. I'm always in the Christmas spirit. |
| 1:10.0 | Yes, I mean, I just carried a Christmas tree up the stairs for a certain lady. |
| 1:14.6 | So yes, I guess. |
| 1:15.6 | Indeed he did. |
| 1:16.6 | My husband had to be shimmelrous this morning and carried, carried the tree up the stairs. |
| 1:21.8 | And we went through the whole ritual of is it straight is it |
| 1:25.2 | straight me saying yes and then looking and saying it's not straight and doing it all over. |
| 1:29.7 | Yeah and then after you get it completely decorated it will be tilted and then you'll be like, okay, now what do we do? |
| 1:36.5 | You know, one area of human progress I do believe in is Christmas tree holders. |
| 1:41.6 | Because the ones that we have now are way... I remember like the one we had when I was a kid was it was you know |
| 2:00.0 | You had to tie it in place with a thousand little bits of twine. Yes, we did that too. Yeah, we use dental floss sometimes to. Oh, that is way too much. So do you have one of those with the spike? Because we have a spike one. My husband really is yeah so that's the newest one I have it's got that |
| 2:05.4 | spike at the bottom and then the screws you put in yeah so it really does stay pretty stable that one was actually |
... |
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