Rowling’s 2012 ‘Harry Potter: Beyond the Page’ Interview “A Virtual Author Visit”

September 26, 2024 by Leave a Comment

I have hastily searched for a transcript to this interview and come up empty. I will do my best to rectify that.

Why? Because 2012 is an important year in Rowling Studies; it was the year Casual Vacancy was published, her first novel explicitly for adults and first publication post Potter, and we know now that she was neck deep in the planning and writing of the Strike-Ellacott books, the first of which would be published in April 2013. And The Ickabog and Christmas Pig, too? If memory serves, Nick Jeffery used the bread crumbs Rowling dropped in this interview about her current efforts and he predicted the existence of Pig well before that project was made public. Regardless, 2012 was a pivotal year and we need a transcript and annotated version.

If you want to read what Potter Pundits of the time thought were the most interesting and important Rowling droppings rather than listen to the fifty minute ‘virtual’ interview, check out the SnitchSeeker.com contemporaneous coverage of Rowling’s 2012 Potter Q&A. ‘Harry Potter Wiki’ has a page devoted to the event, too, one largely derived from SnitchSeeker’s summary.

More tomorrow!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: How Many?

September 25, 2024 by 1 Comment

I’m writing up a Substack post on the ‘pregnancy trap’ plot points and characters in the work of J. K. Rowling, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to last year’s Running Grave. It’s part of the Fourth Generation ‘Rowling Studies’ effort at HogwartsProfessor to begin looking at her work from a mountain top or macroscopic view across series and individual novels, screenplays, and the one play script rather than the microscopic examination of the latest work and consequent speculating about the next coming thing.

A key part of that work is to identify plot point ‘golden threads’ in addition to the Shed artistic elements I have labored to draw out through the years (psychomachia, alchemy, chiasmus, mythology, etc.). Perhaps the most curious of these is the ‘pregnancy trap’ in which a man or woman, usually a woman, attempts to force his or her partner into a relationship commitment, usually marriage, by either becoming pregnant (if male, all but insuring that the female partner becomes pregnant) or offering oneself as a sex object.

The first step in identifying and discussing a golden thread,’ a plot point found in many of Rowling’s work and at the heart of the story involved, is to run through the oeuvre or opera omnia to date and check to see if the point is indeed prevalent — and, perhaps as important, that all the instances have been found. My working list for ‘pregnancy traps’ in Rowling’s work include these ten instances — and I ask for your help in critiquing this list and letting me know of others that I in my haste have overlooked:   [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fourth Generation, Pregnancy Trap

Is Rowling ‘Spiritual Not Religious’?

September 24, 2024 by 3 Comments

Rowling has told one interviewer that she leads “an intensely spiritual life” but confessed to another that the Christian church did not offer her much solace at the time of her mother’s death and that she struggled with the “rules” and “institutional” aspects of ecclesial living.

This is a difficult subject for even serious readers to track because it requires that I argue on the one hand, as I hope I have demonstrated both in Deathly Hallows Lectures and How Harry Cast His Spell, that Rowling’s Hogwarts Saga finale was profoundly sacramental, laden with Christian symbolism and content,  and about a Christ-like sacrificial love resulting in a victory over death, while at the same time being an allegory of a believer’s struggle between embracing skepticism or faith as his life orientation. Rowling has said that her faith is very important to her, that she is more than a “weddings and funeral” church-goer, but that her belief in God is a very tenuous thing.

Her core beliefs, as she has shared more than once, turn around the immortality of the soul and the importance of imagination. Religion, which is to say, the communal, exoteric, and liturgical practice of a living faith? Not so much.

I recently have been corresponding with a challenging new voice in Potter Punditry and Rowling Studies who has pledged to push back on my arguments that Rowling is more invested in her feminist rituals and public testimony than she is in any kind of church life. This thoughtful reader seems to be arguing (or preparing an argument) that I misunderstand Rowling’s Anglican faith despite my having grown up in the Episcopal Church. I very much look forward to reading that counter to my “spiritual not religious” position, especially as I have not given the state of the Anglican communion any thought since my departure from it soon after my marriage in 1987.

I hope this isn’t necessary to repeat, but I hope, if you’re thinking that I am contradicting myself here with respect to what I’ve written previously about the Christian content “baked into the cake” of almost everything Rowling writes, that you will review the “triple play” post I wrote last week in which I explained how this author’s interwoven literary alchemy, psychomachia, and chiastic structure combine to deliver a soul-transformative experience to readers via their imaginations. Rowling may not be a practicing Christian in any conventional sense, but she wields the most powerful tools of the English literary tradition, uniformly Christian until about fifteen minutes ago, to great effect.

My pre-emptive skepticism about my friend’s claim that Rowling is religious beyond weaving a Christian world view, allegories of the soul, and images of the sacraments into her fiction — between the Goblet of Fire grail image and the Bond of Blood, I trust few are disputing that today — springs from three sources, which I’ll discuss after the jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling’s Christmas Pig in Hollywood?

September 23, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Variety reported in April that Rowling’s best stand-alone work, The Christmas Pig, was being adapted for film. “Variety understands the project is in a very early stage of development in-house [by Bronte Studios] and a production company has not yet been attached.”

There hasn’t been any news since that I know of. Variety hinted in April that the adaptation would be an animated film rather than live-action: “The Christmas Pig was first published in 2021 with illustrations by Jim Field. At the time of publication, Swift Films made a series of promotional videos for the project.” It makes sense that it would be a cartoon, except I cannot recall a Bronte Studios animated project; I think the Variety hint is that Bronte Studios will “develop” the adaptation and then out-source it to Swift Films.

I confess to scratching my head about Bronte Studios being involved with even just a supervisory role in Christmas Pig’s adaptation to a movie when they have taken on the job of re-inventing the Hogwarts Saga for the television screen.

I confess, too, both to real excitement about the world having an alternative to the usual annual Christmas specials, be it the variety shows, parades, or animated films, an option with some real heft to it — and to real disappointment that the adaptation is being made. I have been looking forward very much to reading this book to my grandchildren; the delight I had with their parents when I read the Harry Potter novels aloud to them for the first time and saw the story unfolding in the wonder-filled imaginations may be a pleasure I do not have with the grandkids if they watch the cartoon version first.

Oh, well! I’m looking forward to news about this project, even if I elect in the end not to watch the movie myself. Let me know if you’ve heard about any developments!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Sunday Potter Quiz: Series Center!

September 22, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Goblet of Fire Chapter 19: The Hungarian Horntail

 

  1. True or False: Harry is angry at all the snide remarks that result from Rita Skeeter’s article on him in the Daily Prophet, causing him to yell at Cho Chang who was only pointing out he dropped his quill.
  2. Who can see through Invisibility Cloaks?
  3. The Creevy brothers’ attempts to modify POTTER STINKS badges have only made them say what?
  4. Who bumps into Harry in the wood near the dragon enclosure?
  5. In which Hogsmeade shop does Hagrid tell Harry to met him to see the dragons?
  6. Hermione is worried that if Harry goes to see Hagrid, he’ll miss what?
  7. When Harry and Hagrid set off into the forest, where do they stop first?
  8. What four breeds of dragon are in the enclosure?
  9. True or False: According to Charlie Weasley, his mother is ‘having kittens’ with worry about Harry, especially after reading Rita Skeeter’s article.
  10. What is the password back into Gryffindor Tower?

For Your Reflection and Discussion: What is the date of Harry’s Goblet of Fire trip into the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid and his conversation with Sirius Black in the Gryffindor Common Room? What time does Sirius set for their conversation and how does this time and the date, not to mention the alliterative chapter title, reflect Rowling’s book and series structural artistry?

Quiz answers after the jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized