C. S. Lewis: Requiescat in Pace

November 20, 2008 by 7 Comments

Saturday is the 45th anniversary of C. S. Lewis’ death. I can count on my ten fingers the writers and individuals who have most shaped my thinking and beliefs. What is good and true and beautiful in my life, what I learned from these men and women, though, is largely attributable to what I learned first from reading Lewis or what he confirmed or helped me understand in a different light.

I am out the door, if you will, for my dates in McKeesport this weekend (see below) or I would write more. Please share here, if you have a moment, how Lewis helped you understand or appreciate Ms. Rowling’s books in the boxes below. I know one man, for instance, who told me that he didn’t get literary alchemy until he read Lewis’ Perelandra on my recommendation. Lewis’ artistry, which this friend understood more clearly than I had, opened up the alchemical scaffolding and subtext of Rowling’s Hogwarts adventures for him.

Maybe for you it was one of the ideas we throw about here as ‘givens’ for conversation about literature, Potter, and thinking in general, say, chronological snobbery, instructing while delighting, training in the stock responses, sneaking past watchful dragons, baptizing the imagination, or “the Seeing Eye,’ the universe being mental via our participation in the cosmic Logos. Just writing out that list, it’s hard to miss the centrality of Lewis and his genius in our discussions of Ms. Rowling’s books’ meaning.

As an extra, here is Peter Kreeft discussing the three men who died on 22 November 1963, CSL, JFK, and Aldous Huxley, and the important differences in how each understood the world. Enjoy.

And don’t forget the three CSL book special offers at Zossima Press! Black Friday savings without the post Turkey Day blues, crowds, or driving through the woods in a one horse open sleigh…

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis

‘Deathly Hallows’ and Penn’s ‘Fruits of Solitude’

October 13, 2008 by 19 Comments

I hope you have been following the discussion in the separate post below of what constitutes Harry Potter canon. The topic is of no little importance to the work we do here at Hogwarts Professor, of course, but that thread is also an excellent example of what internet exchanges can lead to but rarely do. I think we have come to a point, after no little give and take, that we accept there are four ways to understand literary canon with respect to the Potter novels, four ways that overlap to one degree or another but which differ enough to be understood independently. That discussion is certainly not over and I encourage you to jump in on that thread if you disagree or have a quintessential position that will square the circle and resolve all the contrary thinking there.

Here I want to apply what understanding we have reached and make an explicitly “textus primus” argument for the fullest understanding of the William Penn epigraph that is part of Ms. Rowling’s opening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. [Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Deathly Hallows Lectures

Michael Ward on Prince Caspian, Mars, and CSL

May 18, 2008 by 25 Comments

Hogs Head Tavern landed an interview with Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia, when he was in New York earlier this year and it is a WOW event. Of the many articles and reviews of the movie ‘Prince Caspian’ just released by Walden/Disney, all of which discuss the book as an aside or in lengthy comparisons, none of them captures what the book is about as powerfully as does Michael Ward in his answers to Johnny’s excellent questions at the Tavern. [Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Movie Thoughts

Recovering the Medieval Imagination

February 13, 2008 by 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 more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Traditional Symbolism

What Alchemy Does in Harry Potter

February 11, 2008 by 17 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 more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Literary Alchemy, Traditional Symbolism