Montgomery is an Inkling scholar from the earliest thoughts of such a thing and his Myth, Allegory, and Gospel was a landmark book in iconographic criticism in the sea of deconstruction. Every ‘Looking for God’ title ever written (mine included) can be called with justification “footnotes to Montgomery.”

So what?

The man who is responsible for my first book, Hidden Key to Harry Potter, whose name I won’t mention here because he is modest enough that I think he’d prefer to be anonymous. knew Montgomery well. He knew, too, something I didn’t. Montgomery is an alchemy in literature and history scholar. He sent the subject matter expert a copy of Hidden Key — and the book’s first review was a near rave from a Dean of Lewis and Tolkien scholarship.

And if you don’t think that endorsement helped Tyndale decide to buy that title and risk the backlash of their market (Christian bookstores), you need to re-think that one. I owe Montgomery a debt both in how I think about great books and for the big lift his blurb gave me as a writer back in 2002.

The Hidden Key is “must” reading for Potterites, whatever their religious orientation. — Prof. Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, Christian Apologist, Barrister, Educator, and Author of “Myth, Allegory, and Gospel” and “Cross and Crucible”

I am reading currently MYTH ALLEGORY AND GOSPEL: An Interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien/ C.S. Lewis/ G.K.Chesterton/Charles Williams which looks at Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton and Williams in precisely this sort of myth relational study and it has numerous citations to what I believe are peer-reviewed articles. This book is older, from 1974 and is edited by John Warwick Montgomery. It was published by Bethany Fellowhip, Inc. (ISBN 0-87123-357-6 for the hardback and ISBN 0-87123-4 (pbk.)) and should be available from your library at college or obtainable on inter-library loan. The footnotes will be very useful to use as will the essays in varying depth. As I read it I am struck by the connections I make to JK Rowling’s use of myth and symbol.

Our Professor here is the peer to which all the reviews should be subject! I have read in some academic studies of Potter but these are limited to the first 4 or 5 books in general. There is nothing to compare to the hogwartsprofessor at present for this material. You might wish to get the books John has authored on inter-library loan and use them in similar fashion. To purchase them, follow the Zossima link or see Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Best of luck on your research and paper. I should like to read it if you would care to submit here to John and he could forward it on. Or we could exchange email addresses if you so desired.

Welcome to Hogwarts Professor! I’m afraid you’re SOL in looking for peer reviewed pieces on the Aeschylus epigraph that fronts Deathly Hallows. If you go here, though, you can read something invaluable about Orestes, the Libation Bearers, and Harry Potter.

Show it to your professor. He’ll accept it.

John

This is J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, and perhaps the appearance of the William Penn and Libation Bearers quotations are to illustrate the story’s larger significance. Many consider Harry Potter books to be for children, and call them “light fare.” It is clear, by Rowling’s choice of these quotations, that she does not completely share this perspective. There is something very true and important about these stories.

Penn influenced John Locke, and actually won a pardon for him while he was a political fugitive. Locke’s ideas became the foundation of American and French democracies. While Penn was one of the primary influences behind the U.S. bill or rights. These are towering figures in history.

The Greek legend of Orestes and Agamemnon is also a very prestigious source for a quotation. The Greeks are well known as a source of ancient wisdom.

Authors often link characters and events in their stories to major works of fiction and major historical events as they create a holistic pattern in their own fictional worlds. The pattern “feels real” because it is. It is based on real history and real experience, or on stories that reflect the realities of the human condition. This lends an element of realism to good fiction, as it is actually molded after true experiences and events, though these events are disguised and rearranged in a fictional form. Sometimes the original meaning of the fictional works and historical events which have inspired and influenced an author are completely lost, but often, major truth inevitably remains, either because it is inherent to reality and human life or because the author intends it. This “synthesis” can make fictional works important beyond the mere facts and action of the stories themselves, because there is a TRUTH behind them that none can see.

The quotation from Libation Bearers is about how “corrupted houses” cannot be changed from outside but must be changed from within. The Greek Myth involves the return of an exiled son, Orestes, to Greece. Orestes, like Harry Potter, shares a tattoo on his forehead. The chorus from the Greek play is suggesting that the young shoulder the responsibility of liberating their “corrupted houses” from the entrenched forces of corruption. A corrupt ruling family in a Greek Myth is the equivalent of a corrupt government in modern times. But the Greeks were too powerful to be defeated from without, they needed reform from within. This model of change is profound in Rowling, but she never makes anything that amounts to a specific criticism, though its present day relevance is obvious. (The West, especially the United States and its militarized allies cannot be reformed from the outside or defeated through conquest…they can only be changed from within.) But Rowling may be intending to apply this criticism to bureaucracies like Universities, or to corporations that abuse their workers…and not governments.

Friendship is defined as the vehicle through which resistance to evil and positive change can occur. But more importantly, the William Penn quote is telling us that all meaning in life comes from friendship with other people. Read that quote carefully, because we are living in a time where the dominating culture is spreading ideas that are antithetical to this concept.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do seas; they live
in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love
and that live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass,
they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet
their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present,
because immortal.
—William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude.

Here is what it means:
If we only cross the world, and have no friends, we are the living dead. Just like when friends are parted by seas and distance they die a little, for the only way a human being lives, is in the heart of another human being.

To be alive and to have true love and to be a part of God, humans must be together.

When brought into God’s world by togetherness, humans are mutually loyal, committed, intimate, free, safe, and valued by one another.

This is the comfort of friends, and though they may be said to die, in truth they never do…for the life of a true friend extends beyond the boundaries of their own bodies, into immortal heaven, and into the hearts of others.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT:
Consider human life from the vantage point and on the timescale of civilization. In their time on Earth except for the recent present, humans have arranged themselves according to bonds of family and friendship. Society has been organized according to Kin-Based relationships and tribal friendships based on mutual reciprocity. This began to change into an organization based on territory, and has changed again, into an organization based on property and wealth. This new organization does not value friendship as permanent and enduring the way it was valued in the tribe. It has thus degraded the value of human life as well and eroded human ties to one another. The conditions that Penn notes between friends: “togetherness, humans are mutually loyal, committed, intimate, free, safe, and valued by one another” are not present in material culture. This can be felt profoundly by anyone whose ever seen a group of back stabbing new york socialites, shallow Hollywood pseudofriends, or greedy wall street brokers, they are not alive in God’s world, because to live, loyalty, commitment, intimacy, togetherness, virtue, and trust are necessary. Every man is born, but not every man really lives.

I find the two quotations to be Lady Rowling’s statement that “…and then the conversation turned…”[Lyrics, "Keep Feelin' Fascination," Human League].

That is to say for 6 long volumes, she has carefully crafted in us the pagan view of Death as a destination and a destiny. Building in us the same horror of Death that drove the Chorus in Orestes to chant their Canticle of Vengeance. Indeed I was fully prepared to chant it with them: “Go Harry! Go Ron and Hermione! Shatter the Horcruxes! Kill Voldemort! Avenge Sirius, avenge Dumbledore. For by Voldemort’s hand, they have met Death and are with us no more. Give me Vengeance! Lift this burden from my heart.”

And then she gives us Penn: Death becomes not a destination but a journey; not a fearsome enemy but a dear friend. One who owns the Valley between here and our final home. A genial host, who throws an encouraging arm across our shoulders and shares with us the vicissitudes of the journey through the shadows of his Valley and warmly parts from us at the door of our Father’s House, much like Death and the Third Brother in Beedle the Bard’s Tale. Thus reminding us that Sirius and Dumbledore are not really gone, just in a distant land that they now call home, and though they may never come back to join us here, we shall surely, at the appointed time, go forth to join them there. Penn chants the Canticle of Love.

This, Lady Joanne says, is our Alpha and Omega–where we have been and where we are going to journey by volume’s end. The contrasting views of the Pagan and the Christian. The Old versus the New Testament viewpoint on Death.

BTW: Has anyone else noticed that the ratio of the length of the first six volumes of the Potter Saga to its final volume is effectively identical to the ratio of the length of the Old Testament versus the New Testament in the Holy Bible? Purely Coincidental of Course:-)

first in the william penn:
1- i know divine is something that connected to god then what is “glass” means? a mirror? a mirror that friends can see each other?

2- what “that though they may be said to die” means despite the fact that they maybe dead ???

3- “in the best sense, ever present” means in the best state like always has been?