The Literary Life Podcast

Episode 293: The Literary Tradition
Hosts: Angelina Stanford & Thomas Banks
Date: September 9, 2025

Episode Overview

This special episode tackles the foundational question at the core of The Literary Life Podcast: What is the literary tradition? Hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks, both experienced teachers and literary scholars, aim not to provide a reductionist definition, but rather to orient listeners within the vast, often-misunderstood landscape of Western and global literary tradition. The conversation explores how stories shape our vision, the pitfalls of modern reading approaches, and the necessity of recovering lost ways of reading—with an affirmation that "Stories will save the world."

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Need for a Definition

• Importance of the Literary Tradition:
  The hosts regularly receive questions such as "What is the literary tradition, really?" Their attempt is not to offer a simple answer but to explore the depth, scope, and formative power of entering into this tradition.
• Analogy of Sight:
  Angelina likens learning to read in the tradition as putting on glasses for the first time: only then do you realize what you've missed.

  "The blurry vision of literature, it's not a permanent state. ...this is the starting point to learn how to get some glasses. And now you can see the world." – A (16:04)

• A Tradition Lost (and Found):
  There's a generational gap, with roots of “bad reading” extending back 150-200 years (even C.S. Lewis lamented his students' reading!), yet the thread of the tradition is still recoverable.

2. Commonplace Book Segment (10:39–13:15)

• Mr. Banks's Quote:
  "Great poets naturally draw small poets after them." – J.W. McHale
• Angelina's Quote:
  From Augustine’s On Christian Teaching, highlighting that learning how to read is "essentially learning how to see."

  "Suppose they wanted to see the new moon... but their eyesight was too weak to see even my finger. Surely it would be wrong for them to be annoyed with me for that reason." – Augustine via A (12:02)

3. Why Definitions Are Difficult & The Limitations of Reductionism

• The literary tradition is described as “a multi-roomed cathedral”—too vast to circumscribe with a formula. The episode will instead orient new and old listeners with two fundamentals of the tradition.

4. The Two Fundamentals of the Literary Tradition

Fundamental 1: Literature is not a closed system (24:29)

• Modern reading isolates text from context, seeing only "me and the book," ignoring its place in a continuous tradition.

• The True Tradition: Literature forms a "coherent, consistent world... self-referential," where meaning emerges from resonances between works.

  "Literature does not relate to life or to ourselves. It relates to other literature." – Northrop Fry (28:07, paraphrased by A)

• Analogy of Notes & Colors:
  Just as music has unchanging notes and visual art its primary colors, literature is built from recurring "building blocks": myths, fairy tales, fables, biblical stories, etc.

• Literature as Art:
  Literature is “an art of the written word”—closer to music or painting than philosophy or history.

• Originality vs. Tradition:
  The drive for originality has led to the withering of the literary tradition; true creativity arises from innovating within tradition, not erasing the past.

• Resonance & Meaning:
  Understanding a work fully means hearing its echoes of earlier stories and archetypes; meaning is made when these connections are apprehended.

• Universality:
  The literary tradition is not limited to the West; similar story forms and archetypes appear across cultures due to a shared, ancient way of seeing the world ("the monomyth").

Fundamental 2: The Tradition Upholds the Imagination (Not Mere Fancy) as a Meaning-Making Faculty (56:10)

• Coleridge’s Definition:
  The imagination is not just the ability to "picture a dog when you hear the word," but the faculty by which we perceive meaning through symbols.

  "The imagination is a meaning making faculty. ...it makes meaning via symbols." – A (56:18)

• Reason vs. Imagination:
  The imagination is "suprarational"—not opposed to reason, but transcending it in the apprehension of symbolic meaning.

• Letter and Spirit (St. Augustine):
  Reading properly is seeing both the literal (letter) and the figurative, deeper meaning (spirit) of a text, with the surface leading to the transcendent.

  "The letter kills, but the spirit quickens." – St. Paul/Augustine via A (58:40)

• Modern Crisis:
  Modern modes of reading separate letter and spirit, reason and imagination, siding with the surface and forsaking deeper meaning; this is termed a kind of ‘illiteracy.’

5. Consequences of the Lost Tradition

• “Bad Traditions”:
  Modern and postmodern literary theories disconnect literature from its roots, treating it as solely about power, self-expression, ideology, or personal resonance. Even many well-meaning Christian readings reduce texts to moral lessons or exempla.

  "All of those are stuck on the letter. ...for them is the whole thing. ...as Augustine points out, ...that's not reading, that's being illiterate." – A (64:23)

• Recovery Means Restoration:
  To re-enter the tradition, one must learn “to look through the window” of story to the divine, not merely at smudges or latches (i.e., not just at surface, historical, or ideological readings).

• Universality of the Journey:
  All stories are ultimately “visible soul[s] on a journey to God”; this is seen in myths, Bible stories, fairy tales, and even in motifs like the orphan narrative.

6. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Reductionism:

  "Anyone claiming such a thing would be hopelessly reductionist. ...my brain sees all the branches of the tree of stories." – A (13:38)

• On the Necessity of the Imagination:

  "No one becomes virtuous through analysis and through discussing virtue." – A (67:35)

• On the Universality of Story:

  "All literature is variation of the one story, the monomyth. ...It's everywhere." – A (52:25)

• On Modern Critical Theories:

  "They deliberately cut themselves off from this older symbolic meaning... Freud replaces it with a new symbolic language. ...Freud's symbols are all to explain not—you look through them and see the divine—but you look...down and in...Freudian symbols just tell us something about ourselves." – A (87:30)

• On Learning to See:

  "My world got so much bigger and I could touch more of it." – Emily Rabel, quoted by A (99:17)

• A Moment of Levity:

  "I joke that people probably say, 'she's so excited about everything she's promoting.' Yeah, there's a reason for that. I only promote things I'm excited about." – A (09:46)

7. Suggested Further Listening and Study

• Podcast Episodes:

  • "Why Read Pagan Myths?"
  • "Why Read Fairy Tales?"
  • "The Importance of the Detective Novel"
  • Long-form: "Much Ado About Nothing" series, "Harry Potter" series

• Webinars & Classes:

  • Heather Goodman's Coleridge Webinar
  • Ella Hornstra's "The Grammar of the Natural World"
  • Angelina's "How to Read Fairy Tales" and "How to Read Beowulf"
  • Jen Rogers’ class on the Inklings

• Upcoming Conference:
  “The Letter Killeth, But the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human” (January 2026 online; keynote: Dr. Jason Baxter)

Summary Table: Important Segments & Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamps | Key Content | |-------------------------------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------| | Show Start & Podcast Purpose | 00:18–03:17 | Intro, context, hosts' credentials | | Sponsors, Announcements | 04:08–09:35 | Info about House of Humane Letters & Cassiodorus Press | | Commonplace Book Quotes | 10:39–13:15 | Literary wisdom on influence and seeing meaning | | What is the Literary Tradition? | 13:38–20:24 | Analogy of sight, why it's hard to define | | History of "Bad Reading" | 20:24–24:27 | C.S. Lewis, loss of tradition in academia | | Fundamental 1: Not a Closed System | 24:27–56:10 | Art as tradition, intertextuality, universality of story | | Fundamental 2: Imagination as Faculty | 56:10–78:14 | Coleridge, letter vs. spirit, deeper meaning | | Pitfalls of Modern Reading | 78:14–90:58 | Examples of poor approaches, reduction of literature | | Application, How to Recover the Tradition | 90:58–99:17 | Podcast/class recommendations, learning to "see" tradition | | Closing Thoughts & Upcoming Series | 100:19–102:52 | Patreon, next read: Rossetti's Goblin Market |

Conclusion: The Heart of It All

Angelina and Thomas stress that reentering the literary tradition is less about finding a formula or checklist and more about being re-enchanted—learning to SEE, to apprehend the meaning shining through every classic. The "literary tradition" thus becomes not an artifact or a list, but a way of being, a spiritual exercise—one the podcast and its community seek to foster, recover, and pass on.

"Stories will save the world because stories help to give us eyes to see the reality of the cosmos." – A (83:52)

Standout Quotes

• "Define sight to someone who's blind. You can't." – A (16:13)
• "It's not letter versus spirit... It is both." – A (62:53)
• "Literature is a window into the divine. ...All these bad ways of reading are like smudging it up so you can’t look through the window." – A (76:31)
• "Every story is an orphan story." – A (81:44)
• "My world got so much bigger and I could touch more of it." – Emily Rabel, via A (99:17)

Next Episode Preview

The podcast will next embark on a two-episode exploration of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market," with Thomas Banks as the guide and Angelina reading the poem for the first time.

Closing Poem

A Minor Bird by Robert Frost, read by Thomas Banks (102:52)

For further engagement, join the House of Humane Letters, the Patreon community, or their next conference—all ways to become part of the unfolding, rescued tradition. As always, "Keep crafting your literary life. Stories will save the world."