The hot spots nation wide for serious study of Harry Potter, in my experience talking on campuses the last ten years, are places where a Professor is a Potter Pundit — think Pepperdine with James Thomas, Lawrence University with Edmund Kern — or where a class offered on the Hogwarts Saga has achieved something like cult status. Richard Priggie’s ‘The Soul of Harry Potter‘ course on Deathly Hallows at Augustana College is one of these and it has been my great pleasure to speak with this group (and other students at Augustana) more than once, always learning more from our exchanges than they could from me. Today I want to share an essay from one of these students, Mara Cantrell-Paulson, about Neville as Sidekick as a guest post. Let me know what you think! [Read more…]
Guest Post: The Sidekick’s Journey — Neville Longbottom
Moscow News: Harry Potter Converts to Orthodox Christianity
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.
MuggleNet Academia 19: The History Hidden in Harry Potter
Nancy Reagin, History Professor at Pace University and editor of the brilliant Harry Potter and History, joins me, Keith Hawk, and student guests Elspeth Gordon-Smith and Gerardo Alverez for a rolliking conversation about all the history rolled into the Hogwarts Saga. Join us for discussion of the legendary and the true backdrops of the Statute of Secrecy, a look at the reasons why the Ministry is the Wizarding World’s chief employer, Medieval Manuscripts, IRA bombings and Death Eaters, and, yes, Voldemort and Hitler. If you love history or if you just want to learn the extra dimension the Muggle-world backdrops give our favorite books, this is a show you won’t want to miss! [Read more…]
A Sourcebook for the Astrological Narniad: Revelations?
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…]
InfoGraphic Listing: Hogwarts Professor in Top 100?
I get more than my share of reader letters, I’m guessing, if there is a pile of letters that are supposed to be distributed evenly amongst all authors. Perhaps I merit the correspondence I receive because my putting my email address in each book with a request for feedback generates these letters. You tell me.
I also receive quite a bit of Internet solicitation email, y’know, letters from business people (?) who offer to raise my weBlog’s place on internet search engines or requesting advertisement space in HogPro’s side-bar, or, most bizarre to me, offering to write blog posts for the site if I will include links to the author’s website.
Last week, though, I received notification that HogwartsProfessor was going to be included in an ‘InfoGraphic’ display of the ‘100 Best Blogs for Readers.’ Was I interested in posting this on my blog? I answered with a question: “What is an ‘InfoGraphic’?” This morning I received my answer, which you can see beneath the jump. I’m afraid it is a cross not only of the three solicitations mentioned above but something like the “Who’s Who Among High School Students” listing scams mixed in as well. Which is to say, if you respond to the invitation, you make the list.
I did peruse the Top 100 list and stumbled on something of interest at NarniaFans.com I’ll write about later. If any of you can figure out, though, why HogPro was invited to join this list of Independent Writers and Paranormal Fiction blogs, please enlighten me!
[Read more…]
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