Thoughts for the Serious Reader of Harry Potter
Just sayin.’ Not many book series and consequent film franchises inspire home decorating innovations like this one. And can you think of a better way to keep children away from the electrical socket or wasting volts with silly appliances?
Hat tip to James McG — and Semper Fi!
For those of us who are old enough to remember when dinosaurs walked the earth and the Hogwarts Saga was not yet finished, the ‘Red Hen,’ aka Joyce Odell, is a VIP of the first order. Her Red Hen Publications website was the online place to go for the most closely and cleverly argued speculations about the artistry and meaning of the books. My Ring Composition work, all of which was done post Deathly Hallows, owes a great deal to work that Ms Odell did as far back as 2003 (when she detailed all the Stone-Phoenix connections and parallels) and to her post Half Blood Prince work in which she predicted that Hallows would resonate in like fashion with Prisoner.
Did I mention that she predicted the Horcrux story line years before we knew there was such a thing? Check out ‘The Changeling Hypothesis’ for some amazing literary detective work — and browse through her fanfic publications while you’re there (the Red Hen is a graphic artist of the first order, as well). There’s enough fascinating Potter Punditry collected here and here to keep future academics (and serious readers of Potter canon) who really do their homework busy for weeks.
I was delighted, consequently, when I learned in our e-correspondence, that she updated her web site at long last to reflect Hallows realities and her disappointment with the finale. I asked her for a statement to publish here and she obliged me with this note: [Read more…]
A letter from independent scholar Joel Hunter, formerly of Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College — with a request for help from all Potter Pundits! I cannot think of a group more qualified to answer this than we are, so please share your answers to the survey question here as well as sending a note to the student.
Hello, Friends,
I have a request from an ASU student who is trying to complete her final project for a class, but she is hitting a roadblock with getting feedback from a Tumblr post she broadcast requesting feedback from HP fans. So I agreed to reach out to you all to see whether she could expand her network (it appears that she doesn’t have enough Tumblr followers who are also HP fans). What she’d like to get fans’ responses about she expressed as follows:
“I hope to know whether or not I am correct in thinking an online community for Harry Potter fans is a positive experience that can lead to valuable friendships, even if those friendships are only through the internet.”
I’m not sure how she’s conceptualizing “valuable friendship,” but for this she may be drawing from some of our readings.
Respondents should send their answer to Sarah.E.Mann@asu.edu.
Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.
Every best wish,
Joel
I confess I expected to see a BBC chapter-by-chapter television program, an opera, and Quidditch replacing Wrestling in the Olympic Games b we’d see the world’s shared text on stage performed as an evangelical drama. But I was wrong again.
The Moscow News reports an Orthodox Christian priest in Tartarstan has written a play about Harry’s defeat of the Dark Lord via his traditional faith in Christ.Read the whole thing but here is the Fan Fic scenario:
In the beginning Hedwig, Harry’s pet owl, brings sad news from Hogwarts. The battle between good and evil ended with Voldemort’s victory, and all Harry’s friends, Hermione, Ron and nearly all the Weasleys, have died.
Harry rushes to see Dumbledore, who tells him to find “the one who created everything”, as he’s the only power that can stop Voldemort.
And both good and evil are just two sides of the same coin, the headmaster warns Harry, before he draws his last breath.
Harry is then teleported to an orthodox church where he learns his parents baptised him into Orthodoxy just before they died.
He heads to Jerusalem to see the descent of the Holy Flame with his new friends – Anastas and Agniya, two Orthodox siblings he met along the way.
The final encounter with Voldemort happens in the Holy Land and with the help of Saint Cyprianus, his patron saint, Harry defeats his enemy.
I’m guessing you see some problems with the scenario as laid out (Dumbledore is still alive at the Battle of Hogwarts? Harry teleports?) but maybe this is just a translation issue. Or of course it could be an exploitation issue… or maybe just a priest with too much time on his hands? During Great Lent?
Thanks to Lee for sending today’s First Thing blog post on this subject. Please, anyone, write in a comment at the blog saying that Looking for God in Harry Potter has been revised and retitled as How Harry Cast His Spell. And mention, too, that the sadly sacreligious iconological treatment of Harry as Christ is from the Dallas Morning News article ‘The Book of Harry’ published in 2009.
My apologies for the lag time in posting; my excuse is talks I’m prepping or giving, applications I’m filling out, and Muggle work to pay the rent. As I’m beginning a seven week adventure in Monday night talks about each of the Chronicles of Narnia the first day of April — and I keynote the Potter watch 2013 and MISTI-Con fan conventions in that time frame, I’m afraid it isn’t going to get much better soon.
Having said, here is a note sent me today by a ‘Chris C’ that merits our attention, especially those of us neck deep in the Narniad:
Dear Mr. Granger,
I’m writing in concern about something interesting related to Michael Ward’s brilliant Planet Narnia.
In that book, Ward mentions a theologian named Austin Farrer, a friend of C.S. Lewis’s, and Farrer’s book, A Rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John’s Apocalypse.
I bring it up, because curiosity killed the cat and I decided to look into what a friend of the Inklings had to say. What I discovered was basically that both Lewis and Dante weren’t the first authors to write about the “Seven Heavens”. It appears St. John, or rather Someone, beat both Lewis and Dante to the punch, and in a way even more “Inspired”, let’s say.
Perhaps the greatest lower case “revelation” (pardon the pun) of Farrer’s book is that it lays bare the “architechtural” foundations of St. John’s scripture and theology, especially in it’s relation to Jewish ideas of “The Temple”.
To give a very brief and inadequate summary: Farrer’s argument is that Revelation is structured around the Jewish calender of feasts and ceremonies, starting (I think) from the Jewish New Year, followed by Passover, then Tabernacles, Dedication, and once more back to New Year, structured as a kind of Ultimate Holy Week, in which the feasts and sacred days are revealed as a kind of pattern of Divine Providence written into the very fabric of the cosmos itself.
Also, like Dante and Lewis, St. John weaves the Seven Planets into the structure of his book, I think in a kind of guidepost or clock-like way, I’m not certain. [Read more…]
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