On this week’s episode of The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford is joined as always by Thomas Banks and Cindy Rollins for the opening of their series on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Today our hosts focus on the background and historical context for this piece of literature, as well as going over the highlights of the first two chapters. They talk about the question of the role of the monster in literature in modernity versus its historical interpretation. Understanding the form of the Gothic novel and the time period in which this book was written are important aspects of approaching Dracula.
Keep listening next week for more about how to read this book. We will be covering chapters 3-7.
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Commonplace Quotes:And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere modernity cannot kill.
Bram StokerThat children should have the peace of God as a necessary condition of growth is a practical question. If we believe it is their right, not to be acquired by merit nor lost by demerit, we shall take less upon ourselves and understand that it is not we who pasture the young souls. The managing mother who interferes with every hour and every occupation of her child’s life, all because it is her duty, would tend to disappear. She would see with some amusement why it is that the rather lazy, self-indulgent mother, is often blessed with very good children. She, too, will let her children be, not because she is lazy, but being dutiful, she sees that, give children opportunity and elbow room, and they are likely to become natural persons, neither cranks nor prigs. And here is the hope for society–children so brought up are hardly likely to become managing persons in their turn, inclined to intrude upon the lives of others and be rather intolerable in whatever relation.
Charlotte MasonMen of science spend much time and effort in the attempt to disentangle words from their metaphorical and traditional associations. The attempt is bound to prove vain, since it runs counter to the law of humanity.
Dorothy Sayers Ghostsby Elizabeth Jennings
Those houses haunt in which we leave
Something undone. It is not those
Great words or silence of love
That spread their echoes through a place
And fill the locked-up, unbreathed gloom.
Ghosts do not haunt with any face
That we have known; they only come
With arrogance to thrust at us
Our own omissions in a room.
The words we would not speak they use,
The deeds we dared not act they flaunt,
Our nervous silences they bruise;
It is our helplessness they choose
And our refusals that they haunt.
The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Wake Not the Dead by Johann Ludwig Tieck
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Vampyre by John Polidori
Varney the Vampire by James Malcolm Rymer
Carmilla by Sheridan Lefanu
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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 morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also!
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Episode 229: “Best of” Series, “Araby” by James Joyce, Ep. 11
Episode 228: “Best of” Series, “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, Ep. 15
Episode 227: “Agnes Grey” by Anne Bronte, Ch. 19-25
Episode 226: “Agnes Grey” by Anne Brontë, Ch. 12-18
Episode 225: “Agnes Grey” by Anne Brontë, Ch. 6-11
Episode 224: “Agnes Grey” by Anne Brontë, Introduction and Ch. 1-5
Episode 223: “Best of” The Literary Life – “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster, Ep. 99
Episode 222: “Tartuffe” by Moliere, Acts 3 - 5
Episode 221: “Tartuffe” by Moliere, Introduction and Acts 1 & 2
Episode 220: Fairy Tales and Children’s Literature with Dr. Vigen Guroian
Episode 219: “Best of” Series – Why Read Old Books, Ep. 80
Episode 218: “Best of” Series – Our Favorite Poems, Ep. 54
Episode 217: “Best of” Series – The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: A Conversation with Jason M. Baxter, Ep. 145
Episode 216: E. M. Forster’s “Howards End” On Screen
Episode 215: E. M. Forster’s “Howards End”, Ch. 35-End
Episode 214: E. M. Forster’s “Howards End,” Ch. 26-34
Episode 213: E. M. Forster’s “Howards End,” Ch. 17-25
Episode 212: E. M. Forster’s “Howards End”, Ch. 8-16
Episode 211: E. M. Forster’s “Howards End”, Introduction and Ch. 1-7
Episode 210: Reading “Beyond Mere Motherhood” with Cindy Rollins
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