The latest issue of The Rowling Library is out and the cover story, ‘The Birthday Misconception,’ is a delight. You can download the issue here and the ‘Birthday’ piece is on pages 16 to 21. The article does not list an author in a byline which it does with the four contributors listed on the homepage so I’m going to assume it was written by Patricio Tarantino, TRL founder and editor-in-chief as well as a friend of HogwartsProfessor.com.

I wrote that the article “is a delight” because I happened to share the misconception the piece explodes, namely, that Hogwarts acceptance letters arrive on the magical person’s eleventh birthday. Harry gets his letter on his eleventh birthday in a Hagrid Special Delivery just after midnight in the House on the Rock, but obviously Hogwarts owls had been coming to the Dursleys’ house and various points for days before that. In discussion with the HogwartsProfessor staff about this story, Beatrice Groves noted the prevalence of this misconception “is another example of the way in which the books are shaped around Harry’s experience, something we’re so deeply embedded in that we don’t even notice the anomaly.” 

After the jump, I will review the article’s various points of evidence about the ‘birthday misconception’ from Harry Potter canon, note some overlooked points, and offer my conclusions on the subject, which differ slightly from the TRL writer’s. See you there! [Read more…]

In the Land of Rowling Readers, there seem to be a disproportionate number of ‘Grangers.’

There is Hermione Jean Granger, of course, who thinks her Muggle-Dentist parents are her real folks (I suspect they adopted the boat-rape child conceived at the end of P. D. James’ The Skull Beneath the Skin; her biological mum, then? Super-sleuth and near-namesake Cordelia Gray).

And there is Holliday Grainger, afflicted with the rare combined affliction of excess consonanation and exorbitant vowelizing in her name, who plays the Bronte Studios adaptation role of Robin Venetia Ellacott.

Her only failing in that part is that she is much more beautiful than the actress who plays Charlotte Campbell, which makes Shorty Strike’s supposed struggle to realize he loves the one rather than the other that much less credible. (Am I the last person to know Ms Grainger had twins in May, 2021?)

There is John Granger, too, which would be the author of this piece. He knows the meaning of the name is derived from the Norman French word, not for ‘farmer’ as is often supposed, but for ‘barn keeper,’ a super-serf or yeoman’s role in the hierarchy of feudalism. There is a parable about a Granger in the Gospel according to St Luke (12: 16-31), the only person not a Pharisee or lawyer whom Christ calls a “fool,” alas.

This is all coincidence, of course, though Rowling did change Hermione’s middle name to ‘Jean’ from the ‘Jane’ it had been in time for Girl Wonder to blow the interpretation of the Deathly Hallows symbol in a children’s story. I want to think the change was made via Dumbledore’s will to make Hermione one of the ‘John’ Good Guys in keeping with her Peter-John Rule rather than to suggest that ‘John Granger’ couldn’t explain the allegorical meaning of an embedded symbol in a text if the map came with a key.

I thought of these three Grangers, but especially I admit of my own efforts here to discuss Rowling’s novels and their artistry, meaning and popularity, when I learned last week that the word ‘Grangerize,’ ‘Grangerise’ in the UK, means almost exactly the opposite of what I thought it did and almost exactly what several critics through the years say it is that I do. The explanation and definitions come after the jump. [Read more…]

Yesterday I wrote a post in which I righteously ridiculed those who would read Harry Potter having closed off their minds to any thought of that series’ author because of her supposedly poisonous views toward transgender people. Today, without taking back a word of what I wrote there, I think it important to add that I think, as frequently as recent posts here have begun with references to Rowling’s life experience, it really is best to read her work — and every other author’s work — through the text primarily rather than through biographical or ‘historical context’ filters.

If it were possible to read Rowling as we do Shakespeare, or better, given the recent glut of Shakespeare critical biographies, as we do Homer (or used to read Homer?), i.e., knowing nothing about her, we might come to a surer appreciation of her artistry and meaning, even of her popularity. Which must seem a stretch. Potter Pundits, in this scenario, would have to forsake all of Rowling’s helpful testimonies about her core beliefs and pointers to what she thinks are the key passages in her books as jumping off points for our interpretations of what she has written.

That exercise in self-handicapping would slow or even stop much of the work inspired by Rowling’s ‘Lake and Shed’ explanation of her writing process — so why ignore the author’s autobiographical testimony and self-interpretation? Because what makes Rowling’s work meaningful is not its origins in the Lake of her interior psychological crises but in the craftsmanship she employs in the Shed to make those inspirations mythic, symbolic, and, thereby, universal and self-transcending. It seems not only possible but likely that Rowling readers are spending too much time scuba-diving in the Lake and not enough critiquing the artisanship of the Shed.

I was reminded of this today when I stumbled upon a book review by Philip Sherrard, author of The Sacred in Life and Art, of Kathleren Raine’s Defending Ancient Springs. Raine, an accomplished poet, is most remembered today for simultaneously reviving and changing the depth and direction of William Blake studies in the 1960s by her close study of the poet-mage’s relationship with traditional writers and artists, notably Thomas Taylor the Platonist. As noted on Raine’s Wikipedia page, “her scholarly masterwork, the two-volume Blake and Tradition (published in 1969, and derived from the Andrew Mellon Lectures she delivered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C in 1968), … demonstrated the antiquity, coherence and integrity of William Blake’s philosophy, refuting T S Eliot’s assertion to the contrary.” For the short version, see Raine’s essay, ‘Blake’s Christ Consciousness.’

Raine’s triumph in Blake studies, I understand, is a cogent argument against my assertion above contra a biography-focused reading of an author because it was her close attention to just that which revealed the mythic and symbolic consistency in Blake’s mysterious poem-engravings. The problem in Rowling studies, however, is not the neglect of her personal formation and opinions but the all but exclusive attention given her work in light of her celebrity and her statements on topical issues of the day. Stepping back from that, as much as that is possible, may allow the same revival and refocusing of Rowling studies that Raine accomplished for Blake.

Which brings me back to Philip Sherrard’s review of Raine’s essay collection, Defending Ancient Springs. In brief, the focus in the book review is on what traditional or “true” literature is and the difficulty in writing such work today. Here is the meat of his argument: [Read more…]

https://twitter.com/diequalder/status/1494377369364221955

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