Young Heretics Spencer Klavan

Next time you want to get everyone's attention for a speech at a party, try this: stand up on a table, pound your mead-chalice on a hard surface (you've got a mead-chalice, right?) and shout HWÆT! No one will have any idea what you're saying, but they'll have no choice but to listen. That's the power of Old English. We've hit bedrock in our excavation of the history of English, which brings us to Beowulf and what Seamus Heaney calls "the coffered riches of grammer and declensions."
Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute (now offering Old English instruction!): https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/
Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM
Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com
Mark Forsyth's books on curiosities of the English language: https://a.co/d/fxudMAn
https://a.co/d/3A5XpbQ
Live reading of Beowulf from Hillsdale: https://youtu.be/CH-_GwoO4xI?si=tQCTnID9A7gi5s5_
 

Mother nature is one of the most ancient pagan deities, and also one of the trendiest in modern times. What gives--why is a character whose name you can literally find carved into primitive rocks also being portrayed by Octavia Spencer in Apple PR campaigns? In this essay, I argue that Mother Earth or Mother Nature represents one of the most natural assumptions for humans to make about the world, transformed by the scientific revolution into something materialist, and now re-made via allegory into something very like the old pagan god. I call it, an "allegregore": a supposedly metaphorical way of talking that takes on a life of its own.
Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/
I maked this: Gateway to the Epicureans: https://a.co/d/2uyMIWw
Subscribe to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com
Subscribe to my joint substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

I really enjoyed comparing notes with Johnathan Bi, whose journey in some ways mirrors my own: whereas I moved from a humanities background into an interest in science, Johnathan started in the science and tech world, then came to appreciate the importance of great literature. Together we discuss the rise of generalism, the promise and perils of the AI age, and what the canon has to teach us in our unusual times.
Take a look at Johnathan's website: http://greatbooks.io/
And his new lecture series: https://youtu.be/M0w2eQ-FcEA
Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/
I maked this: Paradise Lost, the audiobook: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/p/paradise-lost
Subscribe to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com
Subscribe to my joint substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

Will we ever get to stop hearing about Dr. Fauci? Does anyone even remember COVID anymore? These are the sorts of profound questions that define our times. I will not be answering them. Instead, I want to tell you a Very Young Heretics story about how the pagan gods found their way into modern science--and why they might be finding their way back out again in the age of "The Science" (TM). Plus: is listening to audiobooks the same as reading? No, but you should still do it anyway.
Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/
I maked this: Paradise Lost, the audiobook: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/p/paradise-lost
Subscribe to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com
Subscribe to my joint substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com
 

The prologue of The Canterbury Tales used to be part of a standard-issue training set in English courses. Today I'm RETVRNing to tradition and rebooting the old practice of memorizing--or at least reciting--the first few lines of this defining English poem in Middle English. Plus: should whisky be spelled with an -ey, or a -y? The answer will show you just what a carnival the English language is.
Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute (now offering Old English instruction!): https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/
Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM
Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com
Harvard's interlinear translation of The Canterbury Tales: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0
 

Can Europe survive without its Christian spirit? Can the West? It's a question that's weighing on more and more intelligent people's minds, and Novalis helps us to grapple with it in a unique way. In this episode I look at three key areas--science, religion, and politics--where the secular spirit of Enlightenment humanism has exhausted itself and needs a new source of inspiration. Perhaps those sources are to be found in the middle ages, and perhaps Novalis can help us find them.
Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/
I maked this: "How Woke Hierarchy Created an Upper-Class Underclass," at The Spectator World: https://thespectator.com/topic/how-woke-hierarchy-created-upper-class-underclass/
Subscribe to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com
Christendom or Europe? in a new edition, edited by Michael Martin: https://angelicopress.com/products/christendom-or-europe
My review of Tom Holland and further thoughts on cultural Christianity: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-anxiety-of-influence/