The KJV, Our Real ‘Shared Text,’ Hits 400 Years

January 17, 2011 by 3 Comments

We talk here about Harry Potter as a ‘Shared Text,’ meaning that it serves, because so many people have read it, as a common reference for discussion, almost a shoe-horn for getting into larger topics and as a language or experience for facilitating exchange of ideas. The Hogwarts Saga only has this function, though, because the Shared Text of Western Civilization, the book known as “The Book” and “The Holy Book” or more commonly The Bible, has lost much of its power via commonality and reverence even among  serious readers.

Allan Bloom noted this in his Closing of the American Mind:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Shared Text

HogPro Mailbag: Alternative Etymology of Muggle

January 15, 2011 by 12 Comments

Another Great Letter! Keep those Theories and Questions coming!

Dear Professor,

After seeing Deathly Hallows Part 1, I have recently begun to re-read the Harry Potter series, which I’m now understanding in a whole new light, thanks to discovering your wonderful essay on Literary Alchemy. Also, I was bowled over by the Vanity Fair/Gaunt connection, which made me wonder if you would be interested in my accidental discovery of the etymology of the word, muggle.

Apparently, “muggle”, if I am to understand this correctly, is a Celtic loan word to Middle English–and it means a person with a tail. (I also think JK meant it to mean a non-believer). The word is used in a story about St. Augustine. Apparently, he was on a mission trying to convert non believers to Christianity. They stoned him, he prayed to God for vengeance, and God Gave the non-believers tails.

Remember when Hagrid cursed Dudley with a pigs tail?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mailbag

Jane Eyre 5: Crossing the Threshold with Jane—The Novel’s Liminal Elements

January 14, 2011 by 9 Comments

At first, when I realized we would be reading Jane Eyre during the end of December and beginning of January, I thought that was a little strange. After all, this seems more the time of year to read Dickens, or maybe Charlotte Bronte’s sister Emily’s great novel Wuthering Heights ( I still hold to the old traditions of ghost stories at Christmas). Then  I realized there is probably no better time of year to read this novel which, in many ways, is a story that focuses on the meeting place between one state and another, making it a threshold or liminal (from the same root word that gives us “limbo”) story of the first order.

January, of course, is named for Janus, the Roman doorway good, whose two faces looked in opposite directions. The Romans took their thresholds seriously, giving us the tradition of the groom carrying the bride over the threshold of their new home (though a Roman groom had a group of his buddies heft the little woman in rather than trying to take on the task alone!). Romans recognized that the threshold was a tricky place, an in-between spot that was neither one place or the other. Threshold places are those that, like Lewis’s Wood Between the Worlds in The Magician’s Nephew, connect two places.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Elizabeth Baird Hardy, HogPro Book Club

Shared Text: The Smithsonian Institute’s Three Cheetahs Are Named Draco, Granger, and Zabini

January 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I am curious, of course, about why they named one of the three brothers ‘Granger.’ You can read more about the SI Zoo’s cheetahs and the decision to name them for Harry Potter characters here. The breeding idea seems to have worked out well, too. H/T to Lynn!

Filed Under: Shared Text

Prof. John Patrick Pazdziora: Worlds of Words

January 12, 2011 by 6 Comments

‘Welcome back to Hogwarts after our Christmas break! Before we tuck into our New Year’s Eve Eve Feast [editor’s note: Yes, Hogwarts is on the Julian Calendar], I wish to introduce our new Magical Language Arts Teacher, Professor John Patrick Pazdziora, on loan from nearby St. Andrew’s University, where he studies Muggle fantasy alongside our non-magical brethren. He will be filling the revived Lake Poets Chair in Literary Alchemy, long neglected, and his classes will be open to all those attempting the Eloquence and Imagination N.E.W.T. — although I must caution older student that you must have attained an Outstanding on your O.W.L. if you wish to take his Advanced Spell Composition class. I have asked him to give us a short talk tonight to introduce his research as we sup on soup and before the main courses are served. I give you Hogwarts Professor Pazdziora.”

Thank you, Headmaster. I am honoured both by the appointment and by the overwhelming kindness of your welcome. As I–like the rest of you–am far more interested in what we are about to eat than what I am about to say, I shall be brief to the point of near silence. You shall not–alas!–always be so fortunate when I speak.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, John Patrick Pazdziora