See the video recording here and read about it at the Hog’s Head.
The short version is “It was a lot of fun.” I am very grateful to friends at The Leaky Cauldron (Melissa), The Group That Shall Not Be Named (Jonathon), and Pace University (Prof. Limbach), as well as to Travis Prinzi and James Thomas, my fellow Pundits, for setting up the event and making it as enjoyable and edifying as it was.
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Great video by the pundits! I think we need more of these.
A question regarding Harry’s name, specifically, his last name. I thought that perhaps it was a respelling of “pater,” the Latin word for father. If the name is read this way, it can refer to Harry as the heir of The Father, just like The Potter. So Harry as the Christ-figure still works. But the name can also refer to Harry as the heir of James, which can allude to his inheritance at Gringotts, his inherited looks, his inherited relationship with Snape, and, of course, the cloak (which takes on a whole different meaning after reading DH). No reason why Harry’s last name can’t refer to all three: The Potter, The Father, and James. Just thought that with all of Rowling’s use of Latin in naming characters, “pater” for “Potter” might be a reasonable tie.
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I agree with your Potter-pater assonance link (I wrote about in How Harry Cast His Spell) and suggest this is not an ‘either-or’ problem of the name meaning ‘James’ or ‘heavenly Father,’ but, as surface and allegorical senses of the text being a ‘both-and’ interpretation, just as we all have biological and heavenly fathers (and our relationships with the former shape in large part our capacity for the latter, hence every orthodox spiritual tradition’s insistence on veneratio of parents).
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The edited and much easier to follow (close-ups!) YouTube version of the Pace ‘Potter Pundits Live’ event is now up. What do you think?
John Granger’s Books!
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