Traditional Symbolism

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Guest Post: Myth in Meyer, Lewis, and Disney

June 2, 2010 in C. S. Lewis, Traditional Symbolism, Twilight by John | 6 comments

A guest post from John Stanifer in Indiana! It is a paper he will be delivering this weekend at Taylor University’s Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C. S. Lewis and Friends. Who knew that Twilight and Till We Have Faces share a mythic antecedent and common cause? Enjoy!

Tale as Old as Time:

A Study of the Cupid and Psyche Myth, with Particular Reference to C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces

In 1956, C.S. Lewis saw the publication of his final novel, Till We Have Faces. “Everyone says it’s my best book,” he wrote to one correspondent (Hooper, 647).  Lewis lovers may argue that point till they have blue faces, but one thing they can agree on is that the novel stands as a testament to Lewis’s love for Greek myth.  For those who are unfamiliar with Till We Have Faces or who simply need a refresher, the novel’s basic plot is a reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, a myth that centers on the love between a gorgeous god and a mortal woman.  As we will see, this myth in all its numerous forms is designed to resonate in the hearts of book lovers, playgoers, film audiences, and human beings everywhere.

The goal of this discussion will be to trace the various adaptations of the Cupid and Psyche myth and its echoes in works as various as the poetry of John Milton, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Though I’ll be referring back to Lewis and Till We Have Faces often, my aim is to unveil the threads that run through each and every one of these works.  Read the rest of this entry »

‘Anne of Green Gables’ and Harry Potter

January 18, 2010 in Deathly Hallows Lectures, Traditional Symbolism by John | 6 comments

Where have I been over the holidays? Mostly on Prince Edward Island with Anne of Green Gables. I’m working on a new book, tentatively titled Bella Swan’s Bookshelf (creative, I know) about the literary influences playing on the Twilight series and that requires a lot of reading time with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s green and grey-eyed red-head.

We’ve discussed the possible influence of Anne on the Hogwarts Saga before (see Anne Shirley vs. Harry Potter from the archives of the Anne Lexicon site and my response here if you missed that). I want to re-visit the topic for three reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

Azkatraz 2009: Blast on the Bay!

July 28, 2009 in Hog Pro Notes, Traditional Symbolism by John | 6 comments

I’m speaking tonight at the New York Public Library tonight (6:30 pm, 455 Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Lions) on Harry Potter’s Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures. I hope to see you there!

If you cannot come to that, please enjoy the photos below and at Flickr as well as stories about Azkatraz 2009, and here, and here, and here, HPEF’s biggest and best Potter con yet. More tomorrow! Read the rest of this entry »

The Divine Mirror in Pilgrim’s Progress

January 29, 2009 in C. S. Lewis, Deathly Hallows Lectures, Jonathan Swift, Traditional Symbolism by John | 2 comments

Mirrors are a big part of fantasy literature in the English tradition. It starts in a big way with the Alice classics by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), an Oxford Platonist, Anglican clergyman, and mathematician, when he sends his heroine Through the Looking Glass and it echos through Goudge’s work (as we saw yesterday), Tolkien’s Mirror of Galadriel and Frodo’s Light which is essentially a phial of water taken from the pool-mirror, up to the Godfather mirror fragment that plays such a large part in Deathly Hallows.

The tradition of mirrors in fantasy fiction and its origin in the natural theology and logos epistemology of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is discussed at length in The Deathly Hallows Lectures, chapter 5, ‘The Seeing Eye,’ so I won’t beat that to death again here. What I want to share today is what I think may be the first and what is certainly the most important pre-Coleridge use of a mirror that reflects the ‘I’ that is, as Lewis says, “a sacred name.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Harry Potter-Twilight Connection

January 6, 2009 in Traditional Symbolism, Unlocking Harry Potter by John | 35 comments

I turned in drafts for four chapters of Harry Potter’s Bookshelf yesterday, and, while waiting for guidance about what to do next, I read Twilight, the first of Stephenie Meyer’s Bella Swann novels. Here are 10 thoughts from my first pass through it: Read the rest of this entry »

The Esoteric Meaning of ‘Fountain of Fair Fortune’

December 14, 2008 in Traditional Symbolism by John | 4 comments

I was asked by a friend at The Hog’s Head’s thread about ‘The Fountain of Fair Fortune’ to discuss its meaning in the light of the symbols on Ms. Rowling’s drawing of the Fountain. I started an answer there that grew to such a length that I have brought it here lest it hijack the Hog’s Head thread entirely.

I have already posted on Dumbledore’s Commentary on this Tale, and, though few agree with me about what Ms. Rowling is after in Dumbledore’s dispute with Lucius Malfoy, I think there is little doubt that the meaning of his commentary is Ms. Rowling’s veiled opinion about gay marriage. ‘The Tale of Fair Fortune’ itself, however, is less political than spiritual, and, with Dumbledore’s Commentary, it confirms her assertion that the Tales are a “distillation of the themes” in the Potter books. Read the rest of this entry »

Salon: ‘A Spy in The House of Narnia’

December 10, 2008 in C. S. Lewis, Hog Pro Notes, Traditional Symbolism by John | 12 comments

Certainly it would take days to unpack all the upside-down and almost exactly backwards ideas in this Salon article, A Spy in the House of Narnia, an interview with the Salon founder and author of the new title, The Magician’s Book: A Skeptics Adventures in Narnia. Long story short: child loves the Chronicles of Narnia until she learns they are largely allegorical. She returns to them years later to demonstrate they really aren’t Christian books but works of remarkable imaginative artistry.

Two quick notes: Read the rest of this entry »

The King of the Golden River – Ruskin

August 8, 2008 in Hero's Journey, Hog Pro Notes, Traditional Symbolism by John | 1 comment

Another tale of three brothers, subtitled ‘The Black Brothers: A Legend of Stiria,’ this fairy tale by the very young John Ruskin (1841) should get you in the mood for Tales of Beedle the Bard. I couldn’t find a version online with Dumbledore’s commentary so I hope we can fill it in. My bet is that Ruskin, as a serious reader of Coleridge and as a Romantic in recovery from consumption, wrote this with the Dantean three layers: narrative line, moral line, and almost invisible alchemical artistry to transform our vision in a kind of esemplastic epiphany. Let me know what you see, especially in the description of the glacier and the transparency of nature.

The King of the Golden River

By John Ruskin Read the rest of this entry »

Recovering the Medieval Imagination

February 13, 2008 in C. S. Lewis, Traditional Symbolism by John | 3 comments

“Isn’t Jupiter splendid these nights?” he exclaimed to one correspondent in 1938; “Do you ever notice Venus these mornings at about quarter past seven?” he asked his godson in 1946. “She has been terrifically bright lately, almost better than Jupiter.”

Sound familiar? How about Hagrid’s conversation with the Centaurs in Philosopher’s Stone? “Mars is bright tonight…”

But this isn’t a Centaur. It is C. S. Lewis. The quotations are from C. S. Lewis and the Star of Bethlehem, an excerpt taken from Dr. Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia in Christianity Today’s Books and Culture. I commend it to your attention for these reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

What Alchemy Does in Harry Potter

February 11, 2008 in C. S. Lewis, Literary Alchemy, Traditional Symbolism by John | 13 comments

Filit sent me a link to a livejournal posting by ‘Josef Djugashvili,’ Alchemy, What Might Have Been, in which post the writer and serious reader tries to assess the value of understanding alchemy (and specifically the stages of alchemy) in getting to the meaning of Harry Potter. The conclusion s/he comes to after examining the three stage process of black white, and red and a more involved seven stage process is that “IMVHO alchemy does not assist too much in our understanding of the Harry Potter series as it stands, whichever way one slices it.” S/He asks readers to “convince me otherwise.”

I’m pretty sure this kind of discussion doesn’t allow for premise-conclusion demonstrations that would convince any person of good will but I feel obliged to respond to the live-journalist (even if s/he has chosen Josef Stalin‘s birthname as an alias; I should confess this choice sets my teeth on edge and has made writing this an exercise). Here are three talking points for HogPro conversation today: Read the rest of this entry »

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