If you like this podcast, please give it a five-star review on iTunes and share it with your friends.

If you have questions, comments, or advice, email Chris at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

If you want, feel free to follow us on Instagram: @inklingsvarietyhour

Charlie Carter from the Thinklings podcast and Joseph Weigel from Men with Chests rejoin Chris to talk about Perelandra, Chapters 8-11 (or thereabouts).

Among other things, we discuss

• The nature of deception
• The division between dark and light in Perelandra
• The ever-present Center
• Diabolical psychology (or lack thereof)
• The rind and the core
• How Perelandra's vivid beauty reinforces the stakes of the dialogue
• Where, exactly, did Weston get his pack...it looks suspiciously like Ransom's, Precious, yes it does....
• How did Lewis interpret Genesis 1? (we don't really have enough time to discuss this fully, but we take a stab at it)

Next week: The fight.

Charlie Carter from the Thinklings Podcast, and Joseph Weigel, from Men With Chests, join me to talk about Chapters 4-8 of Perelandra.

We do a lot of reading on this episode--we certainly enjoyed ourselves, anyway! Enjoy the conversations between Ransom and the Green Lady, as well as Ransom and Weston (shudder).

Among other things, we discuss:

• The human desire to have things over again, and whether it is truly the root of all evil
• How someone who is sinless could be tempted to sin
• The ambition of Lewis' portrayal of the Lady
• The precariousness of the Lady's sinlessness
• The Force
• Spiritual sins
• Mer-people, myth, and evolution

See you all next time!

Email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com, rate the podcast on Apple Music, follow us on instagram (@inklingsvarietyhour), and share us with other people who like the Inklings

I hope you enjoy this, the first of a few (I think about five) episodes on Perelandra, commonly considered the best of Lewis' Ransom Trilogy books.

It's late, so I won't say much here, except:

• Joseph Weigel, of the Men with Chests podcast is my guest. He's great, and his podcast is well worth checking out.
• Share, rate, and follow this podcast if you like what you hear. Instagram is @inklingsvarietyhour. Email is inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com.

That's all for now! I may be back next week, but it may be in two weeks. Summer has been unexpectedly busy. Charlie Carter will be joining Joseph and me for Part 2 of Perelandra!

Charlie Carter from the Thinklings podcast talks with Chris about the rest of Owen Barfield's dystopian novella, Night Operation.

More description to come.

Do check out Harry Lee Poe's The Making of C.S. Lewis and Diana Glyer's The Company They Keep and Bandersnatch.

Next time: Perelandra.

An unpublished imitation of Gerard Manley Hopkins' style about the "On Earth as it is" part of the "Our Father."

Charles Williams makes an astute theological point, promotes G.M. Hopkins, and benefits from imitating his style.

Win-win-win.

Can somebody say "Exchange"?

Some helpful sources for this one:

The Third Inkling

The Oddest Inkling

"Dance like no one is understanding your bizarre esoteric philosophy."

Find this and other fitness tips on this episode, when we finally get into Owen Barfield.

In this episode, I talk with Charlie Carter from the Thinklings podcast about Owen Barfield's ideas and the way they play out in the first part of Barfield's dystopian novella, "Night Operation."

Apologies to Gina Dalfonzo for temporarily forgetting her last name! Here's her book, Dorothy and Jack.

Learn more about Barfield here: www.owenbarfield.org

We'll conclude the conversation next week!

If you enjoyed this episode, you can do three things (right now) to support the show:

1. Give us a five-star review on iTunes or Apple Music.

2. Email us at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

3. Follow us on Instagram @inklingsvarietyhour

This is long and late, but I wanted to do part of Tolkien's translation of Sir Orfeo, followed by a few ideas, followed by an awkward reading of the original Middle English. Forgive my poor audio (working out of office), as well as my poor reading of Middle English. When I do it well, it is very difficult for modern English speakers to understand, which isn't ideal for a podcast. I tried to split the difference, with the likely result that I did it well enough to still be difficult to follow, but poorly enough to be widely panned by people who read Middle English.

Sir Orfeo warns, among other things, of the dangers of falling asleep under a grafted tree at noon. You're only tempting fate (and fairies) when you do things like that. Come on.

Here's the Tolkien translation still in existence that I was able to find. Most of Tolkien's Sir Gawain translations also include Sir Orfeo.

As always, feel free to email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com

If there's one scholar whose work captures the spirit of what this podcast tries to do, it's Diana Glyer, author of The Company They Keep, Bandersnatch, and The Major and the Missionary. She joins Chris to talk about what we can learn from the Inklings' approach to writing in community.

This was a rich discussion, and I hope you get a lot from it. Diana and I discuss the following:

• Creativity, community, and writing groups
• Paper-reading groups in Oxford
• Typical Inklings meetings
• Resonators
• Types of critique
• Criticism versus dismissiveness
• Did Hugo Dyson end the Inklings?
• The perilous journeys of the one manuscript of the Lord of the Rings
• Christopher Tolkien, Mordor, WWI, and WWII
• Exclusivity and the Inklings
• Charles Williams' bracing effect on the Inklings
• Williams' influence on Tolkien?
• Lewis, Tolkien, and "Numinor"
• Tolkien's increasing crankiness
• Just what is influence?

Feel free to check out Diana's website at dianaglyer.com to see what she's currently up to!

If you enjoyed this podcast, let us know by doing the following:

• Giving us a five-star review on iTunes so that other people can find us more easily
• Emailing us (inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com)
• If you have Instagram, follow us @inklingsvarietyhour

Next week: Charlie Carter from the Thinklings podcast joins me to talk Owen Barfield and his dystopian novella, Night Operation!

Finally! Some Barfield!

[Music: George Winston's "Lullaby," from Summer]