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 110: “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe
Episode 109: “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen, Vol. 2, Ch. 1-5
Episode 108: “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen, Vol. 1, Ch. 10-18
Episode 107: “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen, Vol. 1, Ch. 1-9
Episode 106: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” Part 2
Episode 105: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R. L. Stevenson, Part 1
Episode 104: Witches, Wizards, and Magic, Oh My!!
Episode 103: “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence
Episode 102: The Literary Life of Atlee Northmore
Episode 101: “Reunion” by Fred Uhlman
Celebrating Episode 100: Live Q&A with Patrons
Episode 99: “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster
Episode 98: “How Much Land Does a Man Need” by Leo Tolstoy
Season 3, Episode 97: Antigone by Sophocles, Part 2
Episode 96: Introduction to Antigone
Episode 95: An Introduction to Edmund Spenser with Kelly Cumbee
Episode 94: “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, Part 3
Episode 93: “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, Part 2
Episode 92: "Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, Part 1
Episode 91: "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," Part 2
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