466 - Malcolm Guite - Old Stories Know Secrets That We Have Forgotten

Malcolm Guite is a poet and Anglican priest. He is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge and lives in Norfolk, England. He lectures widely in England and North America on Theology and Literature. His books include Sounding the Seasons; Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Canterbury 2012). The Singing Bowl; Collected Poems (Canterbury 2013) and Parable and Paradox (Canterbury Press 2016) and Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder 2017) After Prayer (Canterbury Press 2019) and The Word Within the Words (DLT 2021) and Lifting The Veil, Square Halo, 2021. In 2023 he was awarded the Archbishop Lanfranc Medal for Education and Scholarship by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is presently working on Merlin’s Isle: an Arthuriad a four volume epic poem on The Arthurian legends He has a Youtube series called ‘A Spell in the Library’ at https://www.youtube.com/c/MalcolmGuitespell YouTube version of this episode: https://youtu.be/E5En6DZTYFk Galahad and the Holy Grail: https://store.rabbitroom.com/products/merlins-isle Patrons of The Symbolic World can watch the 30 minute documentary here: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/premium-content/merlins-isle Subscribe here if you’re not already a patron: https://thesymbolicworld.com/subscribe Register for Universal History Masterclass during the month of July and get 15% off: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/courses/universal-history-masterclass 🔓 Become a patron to support us and unlock exclusive monthly symbolism content: https://thesymbolicworld.com/subscribe 💻 Website and blog: http://www.thesymbolicworld.com Timestamps: 00:00 – Coming up 01:29 – Introduction 03:05 – Malcolm Guite’s Calling as Priest and Poet 06:39 – Can the Imagination Be Dangerous? 09:27 – Imagination as the Organ of Meaning 11:58 – Fantasy, Escapism, and Enchantment 15:46 – Why Arthurian Stories Resist Modernization 19:57 – Galahad and the Grail 21:20 – What Arthurian Stories Reveal About Human Brokenness 23:27 – The Scope of Malcolm’s Arthurian Project 26:05 – The Dolorous Stroke and the Origin of the Wasteland 30:54 – “You Live in Just Such a World” 33:20 – The Wasteland as a Pattern of Reality 37:51 – Recovering the Christian Meaning of the Grail 40:44 – Universal History Masterclass 42:42 – Why Malcolm Chose the Ballad Form 44:59 – The Collapse of the Materialist Worldview 49:41 – Remembering Without Falling into Unreason 51:46 – Tradition as Active Remembrance 53:19 – Tradition as the Roots of a Living Tree 54:40 – How Irony Destroys Old Stories 57:56 – Daring to Be Naive Again 58:28 – The Four-Volume Arthurian Series 59:54 – Why the Beauty of the Book Matters 01:01:10 – Chivalry, Masculinity, and the Civilized Warrior 01:02:23 – Fellow Travelers in the Recovery of Meaning Our website designers: https://www.resonancehq.io/ My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/