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/