Welcome to The Literary Life Podcast and a new series featuring the book The Age of Innocence. Our hosts, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks introduce us to American Gilded Age author, Edith Wharton, the "First Lady of American Letters." They also share their own experiences with reading Wharton's stories, novels, and letters, as well as some background on the time period and cultural context in which she was writing. In discussing the first several chapters of this book, Angelina and Thomas point out small details and subtleties that Wharton uses to give us hints about the characters and situations she presents.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

To view the full show notes for this episode, including book links, commonplace quotes, and today's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/289. 

On today’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas will be talking about the milestones of a reader’s literary life. This episode developed in response to the many questions they’ve received over the years about challenges people face throughout their reading lives. They begin by thinking back to childhood and recalling the first time they each chose a book for themselves and fell in love with the story, as well as the feeling of getting their first library cards as children. Thomas asks Angelina when was the first time she found herself arguing with a book, and he answers the same question himself.

Other milestones they discuss are changing your mind about a book on a re-read, learning to see past the imperfections of a book to see the underlying truth, distinguishing the work of art from your subjective reading experience, as well as separating the life of the author from the work of literature. They also answer other common concerns such as “Help! I dislike all the characters in this book!”

Be sure to come back next week as we open our next series on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence in which we will be covering chapters 1-8.

Visit the HouseofHumaneLetters.com to sign up for all the upcoming and past mini-classes and webinars taught by Angelina, Thomas, and their colleagues!

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/288. 

On today’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas wrap up their discussion of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling with the final Mowgli story–“Tiger, Tiger.” Before beginning to talk about the story, the chat a little about Kipling’s other works and his place in literary history and what sort of writer he was. In this section, Angelina points out the parallels to the first story, as well as the mythic qualities of the whole tale. Together they cover the various ideas in this section, including the ideas of belonging, freedom and boundaries, and heroism.

Join is next week for an episode on “Literary Milestones” in the life of a reader. After that we will begin a new series on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.

Over at House of Humane Letters, a new webinar is now available for registration. It is taught by Heather Goodman and is titled “Coleridge’s Imagination: Restoring the Chain of Being.” Also, check out this year’s Back to School Online Conference, “Educating the Freeborn,” over at MorningTimeforMoms.com to get registered and hear all of this year’s amazing speakers!

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/287. 

On The Literary Life podcast this week, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas continue their discussion of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. After sharing their commonplace quotes for this week, they begin talking about “Kaa’s Hunting.” Angelina asks Cindy about the age range for this book, which is recommended on AmblesideOnline for Year 3 students. They talk about Mowgli’s upbringing and training in the law of jungle, in contrast to the monkeys who are lawless. Other highlights of this conversation are the Edenic ability of Mowgli to speak to the animals, the complex role of the serpent in folklore, and the resurrection imagery in this story.

Check out this year’s Back to School Online Conference, “Educating the Freeborn,” over at MorningTimeforMoms.com to get registered and hear all of this year’s amazing speakers!

For the full show notes for this episode, please visit our website at https://theliterary.life/286. 

Today on The Literary Life podcast, we begin a new series of episodes on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling with our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks! After sharing their commonplace quotes, each of them talks about their own reading histories with Rudyard Kipling’s work. Thomas gives us some biographical information about Kipling and sets up the literary period in which he wrote. They then begin talking about the structure and form of this book as it is set up as a series of short stories as beast fables. Angelina shares some of the mythic and fairy tale elements she noticed while reading this first story, “Mowgli’s Brothers.” They also discuss some of the challenges we face reading stories written in a different time and place without imposing our current views on all the literature of the period.

Check out this year’s Back to School Online Conference, “Educating the Freeborn,” over at MorningTimeforMoms.com to get registered and hear all of this year’s amazing speakers!

To view the full show notes for this episode complete with book links, quotes, and today's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/285. 

This week on The Literary Life, we bring you an episode from deep in the archives in which Cindy and Angelina discussed Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Garden Party.” After a great chat over their commonplace quotes, Angelina and Cindy dig into this week’s story. They start with how Cindy found this story and the connections she was making to Little Women. Angelina gives a brief biographical sketch of Katherine Mansfield and highlights how Mansfield’s own illness and death give us insight into how she deals with death in this story. Angelina walks us through how she looks at the use of figurative language and images, such as the Garden of Eden. They also touch on “The Garden Party” having the same structure of moving toward a moment of epiphany that we saw in “Araby.” 

Cindy brings up the disconnect between the world of the women at home and the working people outside the home, as well as between the classes in this story. They talk about the importance of Laura’s new hat as a symbol of one type of person she can become. Another image that Angelina and Cindy take a look at is the descent from the garden into darkness. They discuss the parallels from the beginning of the story and the end of the story, as well as Laura’s movement from innocence to experience, from blindness to sight.

To view the full show notes for this episode, complete with commonplace quotes, book links, and this week's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/284. 

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina and Thomas are once again joined Dr. Jason Baxter, author of Why Literature Still Matters. In this episode, our hosts sit down with Dr. Baxter for a chat about a wide variety of topics, including teaching the old books, reading poetry to understand it, the delight of teaching students at HHL, their hot takes on hot takes, making reading recommendations, and translating Dante, and so much more. We will be back next week with a "best of" episode covering Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Garden Party," and after that we begin a fun new series on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit our website at https://theliterary.life/283. 

This week on The Literary Life, Angelina and Thomas wrap up our encore series on J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter: Book 1. Angelina and Thomas begin the episode with some thoughts on their Aristotelian approach to literature as seen in this series of episodes. After sharing their commonplace quotes, they dive into their discussion of the last few chapters of the book. Some of the ideas they consider are how the entire plot is a series of symbols, alchemy and the allegory of the soul, and the figure of the “wildman” in the literary tradition. They also go over the characters of the centaurs, the significance of the unicorn, more references to Greek mythology, how Harry exemplifies the “chest” of the well-ordered man, and the great importance of the philosopher’s stone as a Christ symbol. 

Visit HouseofHumaneLetters.com for classes with Angelina, Thomas, and other members of their teaching team.

To view the full show notes for this episode, including commonplace quotes, book links, and today's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/282.

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast and our series on J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter: Book 1. After sharing some thoughts on detective fiction as it relates to Rowling, our hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks discuss chapters 8-12. Some of the ideas they share are the following: Homeric echos and classical allusions in this book, the identity quest, the significance of characters’ names, the four houses and the bestiary, the three parts of the soul, the Christian influence on Rowling’s stories. Angelina also seeks to teach something about symbolism and structure of literature and art as seen through the Harry Potter books. 

Visit HouseofHumaneLetters.com for updates on classes with Angelina, Thomas, and other members of their teaching team.

To view the full show notes for this episode including book links, quotes and today's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/281. 

This week we are back with the second part of our remix of Angelina and Thomas’ podcast series on Harry Potter: Book 1 by J. K. Rowling. This week we are covering chapters 3-7. Angelina opens the book discussion with an overview of the literary motifs used by Rowling in the Harry Potter books to help modern readers better understand these kinds of stories. One of the motifs she highlights is the identity quest and how we see Harry on a journey of the soul. She also shares some thoughts on the fairy tale “magic” of these stories in contrast to actual witchcraft as well as the symbolism used to show us that this is a fairy world.

Thomas and Angelina talk about the characters we meet in these chapters, including the symbolism of some of their names. Other ideas discussed in this episode include the importance of alchemy, the Gothic literary tradition, the layers of the quest, the rise of the fantasy genre, and so much more!

Visit HouseofHumaneLetters.com for updates on classes with Angelina, Thomas, and other members of their teaching team.

To view the full show notes for this episode, please visit https://theliterary.life/280.