Mailbag Query: Seeing Thestrals And Seeing Death

December 21, 2010 by 1 Comment

Mr. Granger: In Deathly Hallows, Ms. Rowling writes that Harry witnessed his mother’s death.  If this is true, why doesn’t he see the thestrals until after Cedric dies?

I believe Ms. Rowling has answered this in an interview or her web site; please do a search at JKRowling.com and Accio Quotes!

My quick answer, probably reflecting what I’ve read with my own thoughts stirred in, is that the ability to see Thestrals, a transformed vision in a Saga largely about seeing correctly and at greater depth, is a function of how the mind changes in its ability to grasp profound and difficult meaning — represented neatly by the mythic creatures suggestive of death, the Thestrals — after a confrontation with life’s ending.

Harry experience of death as an infant was not changed by what he saw, at least not internally, hence it is Cedric’s death in the Hangleton graveyard which opens his eyes, if you will. Great question — and please let me know what you find in your search for Ms. Rowling’s answer. [For more on the eyes of Deathly Hallows and Coleridgean transformed vision in imaginative literature, see chapter 5 of The Deathly Hallows Lectures, ‘The Seeing Eye.’]

Filed Under: Deathly Hallows Discussion Points

God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy Fiction In An Ivy League Classroom

December 20, 2010 by 2 Comments

[21 December 2010 Interview on NBC-TV with Rev. Tumminio about her class and new book]

God and Harry Potter at Yale, the Rev. Dr. Danielle Elizabeth Tumminio’s book about her controversial Yale class, ‘Harry Potter and Christian Theology,’ is now available for purchase via Amazon.com. I was invited to speak to this class two of the years the course was offered so I can say as an eye-witness and participant that it was anything but a basket-weaving seminar or transcript filler. The small class of students was chosen from hundreds of Elis who applied, all of whom were Harry Potter wonks in addition to being as intelligent and earnest as you’d expect in this Ivy clad bastion. Rev. Tumminio kept the class loose but the topics they discussed while pouring through all seven Potter novels, everything from ‘The Problem of Evil’ to ‘The End Times,’ were heavy and examined with all seriousness.

Highly recommended! I’ll be interviewing the author here soon; write out any questions you want me to be sure to ask in the comment boxes below.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Magic in Latin: ‘The Hex in Dactylic Hexameter’

December 17, 2010 by 1 Comment

As a closet Latin teacher, I haven’t enjoyed an article as much I have ‘The Magic of Latin’ in a very long time. It’s by David Baker at his seriously funny Survival of the Fittest weBlog. I provide a piece below as teaser but beg you to read the whole thing:

Think of it. Right now you can’t so much as sharpen a number 2 pencil with French or Spanish, but at Hogwarts you can use Latin to blast through to your locker even with an army of trolls standing in the way. And that’s just in the first year. Once the Hogwarts model becomes more widely adopted in grades 7 through 12, enrollments are going to soar for even the homework-heavy AP classes. If he were around, Caesar himself might sign up.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: HogPro Book Club

HogPro Book Club Re-boot: Jane Eyre On Tap!

December 16, 2010 by 1 Comment

A few months ago, we announced that we’d be doing a Hogwarts Professor Book Club to create opportunities for good conversation on books old and new. We haven’t forgotten about it, of course, but, with our Headmaster’s world tour and two exciting movie releases, well, we just sort of did that thing we often do with a book: we let some other projects pile up on top of it. Now, as winter settles in around us, we’re dusting off the books we neglected, finding where we left off, and  curling up by the fire with a big cup of tea (I’m with C.S. Lewis—books and teacups are never big enough). So we will be re-launching our book club just in time for Christmas break. Details after the jump!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: HogPro Book Club

HogPro Interview with Professor David Downing, Author of Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel

December 16, 2010 by 8 Comments

David C. Downing is a Professor of English at Elizabethtown College and one of the handful of C. S. Lewis scholars whose books reward reading and re-reading. Downing’s  Planets in Peril is the accepted gold standard for understanding Lewis’ Space Trilogy, for example, and his guide to Narnia, Into the Wardrobe, though pre Planet Narnia, is the best of its generation.

Now Prof. Downing has taken up his pen, not to write about one Inkling or to analyze his work, but to write a story involving them all. His novel, Looking for the King (Ignatius, 2010), is subtitled An Inklings Novel and features extended cameo appearances by Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. I read King in one sitting — it’s that good and, to an Inklings junkie at least, something like Turkish Delight — and wrote Prof. Downing some questions. It turned into an interview that he agreed to let me share with you, though it is more of a debate than the usual back and forth between author and reporter. His frankness, good humor, and insights, not to mention his willingness to punch back, made the experience a highlight of my writing for this weBlog.

After the jump, then, the publisher’s fly-leaf summary of the story and the HogPro interview with David C. Downing, author of Looking for the King:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Hog Pro Notes, HogPro Book Club