My ragged high school edition of Jane Eyre had a rather critical editor whose introduction seems to me a series of backhanded compliments, pretty much extolling Charlotte Bronte’s achievements and popularity, while, at the same time, expressing bafflement over them in light of the novel’s apparent inadequacies, including a perceived lack of humor. Though there is an iconoclastic trend among academics who enjoy knocking the “greats” off their pedestals and picking through the broken pieces of their shattered marble busts, it seems Charlotte Bronte gets more than her fair share from both critics in her own era and our own. From mid-nineteenth-century culture mavens to Harold Bloom, everybody seems to want to take a swipe at Jane and her creator. But why? And why do we love them both anyway?
Jane Eyre 2: Genre and Gender Revulsion and Consequent Critical Disdain for Jane Eyre
Could Dobby Be A Refugee from ‘Vanity Fair’?
Susan Bowyer, who rocked my world in late 2008 with her discovery that the House of Gaunt and the Dark Mark were direct borrowings from Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero, wrote to me earlier this month with another Vanity-Potter link:
John, do you think it’s possible that Dobby’s name comes from William Dobbin in Vanity Fair? He’s a faithful, heroic, slavishly devoted and selfless character. And we have already discussed the likelihood that Vanity Fair contributed other ideas (the Gaunt name and the ‘dark mark.’)
A fascinating possibility, which I’ll discuss below the jump.
HogPro Interviews the Rev. Danielle Tumminio, Author of ‘God and Harry Potter at Yale’
I had a short conversation earlier this week with the Rev. Danielle Elizabeth Tumminio, the author of God and Harry Potter at Yale, about her experience teaching Christian theology at Yale University through the lens of the Hogwarts Saga. I think you’ll find it informative — and I hope that you’ll join in the conversation with your own questions about the controversial course, its content, and her reasons for the choices she made.
Jane Eyre 1: “Once Upon a Time in Thornfield…” Reading Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’ as a Fairy Tale
When I began my re-read of Jane Eyre for our Hogwarts Professor Book Club, I chose to use the edition I used in high school (though I have, of course, read Charlotte Bronte’s classic often since then, I’ve not used this edition so much). I found that part of my joy in re-visiting this, one of my all-time favorites, came from also revisiting the person who made those notes in the margins over 20 years ago. Some of those notes were for an essay I wrote about the fairy-tale elements of the novel. The essay itself is, I fear, long ago nibbled up by attic mice to make little mousie beds (or in one of those boxes I don’t plan to open myself but expect my children to excavate), but reading the notes has given me pause to resurrect the concept for our discussion here. What about Jane Eyre makes it a fairy tale? After all, it is often considered a herald of the modern autobiographical novel, hardly the stuff of princesses and dragons, and yet, at its core lie some of the most resonant elements of fairy tale literature.
‘Story Time:’ Chronos and Kairos in Harry Potter
With this post, I welcome M. Brett Kendall of Muggle Matters and Fordham University to the Faculty of HogwartsProfessor.com. Longtime readers of this site and serious readers of Harry Potter know Professor Kendall as ‘Merlin’ and as the man who both predicted the central place Harry’s ‘Expelliarmus’ spell would play in Deathly Hallows as well as the chiasmus structure of the seven book series. This last is the foundation of all discussions of Ring Composition in the books and Prof. Kendall’s insight here reflects his background in Hebrew Bible studies and traditional literature. His opening post is a challenging piece on the understanding of time within the narrative of the Hogwarts Saga. I hope you will join me in welcoming Professor Kendall to the forward dais and faculty table here in the Great Hall.
Thank you, Professor Granger.
I have a joke that when I am not doing much and a friend asks what I am up to, I reply that I am busy committing “chrono-cide” … just killing time. “Chronos” is one of two Greek words for time. It means “clock time,” the simple material succession of events. The other Greek term for “time” is “kairos.” This is the term for “special time,” unique moments. In this post I will discuss narrative in Harry Potter (and in general) as an intersection, and special relation, between these two concepts of time. In short I will say that Harry Potter as “story time” is part of what attracts us so much to the works.
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