One of the most wonderful features of Troubled Blood, at least for those of us who are devoted to Edmund Spenser, is the Faerie Queene subtext woven throughout Robin Ellacott and Cormoran Strike’s year-and-a-bit-long investigation into the cold case of MargoBamborough. With the publication of The Christmas Pig, it’s clear that J.K. Rowling’s Faerie Queene theme was not a one-shot effort, but evidence of Spenser’s prominence in her compost pile of influences. In addition to the wonderful connections to Scripture, Dante, and my longtime favorite, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Christmas Pig uses the Spenser template beautifully to weave an accessible, yet remarkably effective, allegory that is completely different from the latest Strike adventure while still drawing from the deep and powerful well of Spenser.
Nativity Concert: St Photios Seminary
The St Photios Orthodox Theological Seminary in Etna, California, serves an Old Calendar Orthodox Christian jurisdiction so today there, as in all the traditional Christian world, is St Spyridon’s Day or 12 December. [St Spyridon is the patron saint of potters, so Potter-philes have another reason to rejoice today regardless of your calendar orientation.] Nativity is celebrated on 25 December, which is 7 January on the profane calendar, and Christmas, the period for celebrating this great Feast Day, is observed for the twelve days between Nativity and Theophany.
Having noted all that, the women at St Photios Seminary, well out in the wilds and woods on the California border with Oregon, perform a Nativity concert during the Phillipian Fast for the local community every year. Seminarians and nuns from the nearby St Elizabeth’s Convent sing traditional carols to edify and entertain their friends and older people in the small town where they live. The virtual concert — California is currently again in a state-mandated lockdown — was recorded and the soundtrack ‘spiced up’ with with some lovely shots of the white Christmas season there taken from a drone camera.
Happy holidays from HogwartsProfessor.com!
Beatrice Groves – The Silver Doe at Christmas
To follow on from two Christmas posts in Bathilda’s Notebook, Mugglenet: Christmas in the Forest of Dean: The Silver Doe Part 1 and Part 2, Beatrice Groves, Research Lecturer and tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, and author of Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, has written a Hogwarts Professor Guest Post: Tracing the imagery and symbolism of the Silver Doe via one of J. K. Rowling’s favourite authors. If you haven’t yet read the Bathilda’s Notebook posts, please do. Then, on Christmas Eve (in the western tradition), enjoy this wonderful and timely article…
Christmas Pig 3: The Quadrigal Reading
This is the third post in a series about Christmas Pig as understood through the lens of sacred art as defined by the Perennialist school. All five are about Rowling’s latest book as the crystallization and condensation of the artistry and meaning of all her work to date. The first post, ‘Jack, Jones, Peter, and John,’ introduced the idea of Rowling’s writing intentionally esoteric and spiritual art, an idea explained in terms of her given name and the conflict of Peter and John throughout her oeuvre and in Christmas Pig especially. The second part of the series, ‘Dante, Sacred Art, and the Symbolism of the Tree and Its Angels,’ advanced the thesis that Rowling is best understood as a writer of extra-liturgical sacred art a la Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Lewis with an exegesis of the tree and angel symbolism of Christmas Pig.
The next few posts will introduce the traditional, which is to say ‘theocentric,’ literary concepts of the Quadriga and Psychomachia, Rowling’s use of exteriorization with respect to objects and characters, and the symbolism of the Heart with the specific argument that the author of Harry Potter, Cormoran Strike, and The Christmas Pig equates a mother’s unconditional and sacrificial love as the Logos love of the God Who is Love (1 John 4:7-12). Any one of these subjects, of course, could be a book of its own so this will be a survey by necessity but a rich one I hope.
Join me after the jump for a deep dive into Rowling as a writer of soul and Spirit allegory for the edification and transformation of her readers. Today, the Quadrigal or Four Horse Chariot reading. [Read more…]
Whence Holly’s Hatred in Christmas Pig? The Symbolism of the ‘Broken Angel’
I’m trying to get the next piece in my traditional reading of Christmas Pig done but am taking a break from the Four Chariots or ‘Garden’ interpretation to share another piece of head-canon or fan-fiction I’ve written. The first was about how the Christmas tree fell over the first time; my guess was that Holly pulled it down to cover her tracks when Toby the Dog ate the Toilet Roll Angel she’d replaced with her own ornament.
Today I want to take a shot at explaining the mysterious rage Holly feels about little boy Jack and her disproportionate response to being called a Loser by her younger step-brother. Why does she lose all her self-control and poise, the signatures of an accomplished gymnast, when a whiny kid gives her the ‘L’ sign?
I’m guessing based on things we’ve learned in Cormoran Strike and what we know of Rowling’s biography that it comes down to Holly thinking Judy Jones caused the break-up of Natalia and Holly’s dad’s marriage. And that her condition is exteriorized in the story not only as Bully Boss the Fist but as Broken Angel. Join me after the jump for how I got there. [Read more…]
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