To celebrate Halloween with a delve into the folk horror of The Running Grave, Beatrice Groves, Research Fellow and tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, and author of Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, has written a Hogwarts Professor Guest Post: ‘Hits-and-misses, Folk Horror and Shakespearean Pastoral: Running Grave first thoughts’. To find out more about spooky ash henges, dreadful dollies, and magnificent magnolia, join Prof Groves after the jump:
Beatrice Groves – Hits-and-misses, Folk Horror and Shakespearean Pastoral
October 31, 2023 by 3 Comments
Rowling’s ‘Running Grave’ Video Shorts
October 20, 2023 by 3 Comments
The Rowling Library has compiled all of Rowling’s answers to questions, all originally posted on the Robert Galbraith Facebook page, in one very convenient YouTube package. I think I speak for all Serious Strikers in thanking them for that collation. Their transcript of these twenty questions can be found here.
After the jump, a review of what irked many listeners and my own thoughts about what made the event easily forgettable. [Read more…]
Running Grave, Part Eight: A Ring Reading
October 15, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Part Two Parallels, Eight’s Latch, Turn, and Turtle-Back Lines, Answers to Robin’s Questions, Guesses about Strike’s Epiphany, and the Pizza Mystery
It just gets better and better! Running Graves’ Part Eight turned up the excitement with a Papa J – Cormoran Strike confrontation, a car chase and shooter, and, as Robin says to Cormoran after the Brewster-Edensor dialogue, “Loads of information!” In this post I’ll be laying out the larger ring parallels between Parts Two and Eight, sharing my thoughts about Part Eight’s individual ring elements, and then giving my last guesses about whodunnit before all is revealed in Part Nine. If the sun isn’t up before I’m done, I’ll put up some thoughts about Rowling’s “meaning in the middle” and other points that this long look at the structure highlight.
For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free. Look out for the Part Nine conclusion tomorrow!
Running Grave, Part Seven: A Ring Reading
October 14, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Part Three Parallels, Part Seven’s Ring Elements, Its Whodunnit Revelations, and the ‘Real’
Part Seven, the shortest Part in The Running Grave at only eleven chapters, ticks all the boxes in this series of Strike7 ring readings’ signature points. It has the external book-ring parallels with Part Three, the signature latch, turn, and turtle-back parallels internally, and its meaning-full middle in which we get a skiff of clues pointing to the mystery’s resolution. Part Eight is the largest of the novel’s Parts, close to twice the size of Seven, so I’m going to rush this post out in my hurry to read and chart the twenty chapter set later tonight. Here we go —
For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free.
Running Grave, Part Six: A Ring Reading
October 13, 2023 by Leave a Comment
The Novel’s First Turtleback Line is a ‘Wow!’ and the Interior Ring has a Surprise Inside
Yesterday’s ring reading of Part Five parsed the central Part of the nine Part Running Grave as its own distinct ring with latch, turn, and turtle-back parallels but also included some discussion of the novel axis, the connections between Part Five as the book’s turn and its relations to the beginning and end of the story. [I’m going to assume that the important links here are to Part One rather than the Prologue and to Part Nine instead of the Epilogue, though the latch of Prologue and Epilogue, the throat-clearing introductory material and the tying up of loose ends, will almost certainly be something to review as well.] The turn in Part Five, chapter 70 and chapters 71-72, reflected both the latch of this central Part and the ‘meaning in the middle’ of Part One.
For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free.
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