The Divine Mirror in Pilgrim’s Progress

January 29, 2009 by 2 Comments

Mirrors are a big part of fantasy literature in the English tradition. It starts in a big way with the Alice classics by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), an Oxford Platonist, Anglican clergyman, and mathematician, when he sends his heroine Through the Looking Glass and it echos through Goudge’s work (as we saw yesterday), Tolkien’s Mirror of Galadriel and Frodo’s Light which is essentially a phial of water taken from the pool-mirror, up to the Godfather mirror fragment that plays such a large part in Deathly Hallows.

The tradition of mirrors in fantasy fiction and its origin in the natural theology and logos epistemology of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is discussed at length in The Deathly Hallows Lectures, chapter 5, ‘The Seeing Eye,’ so I won’t beat that to death again here. What I want to share today is what I think may be the first and what is certainly the most important pre-Coleridge use of a mirror that reflects the ‘I’ that is, as Lewis says, “a sacred name.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Deathly Hallows Lectures, Jonathan Swift, Traditional Symbolism

Elizabeth Goudge: ‘The Well of the Star’

January 28, 2009 by 1 Comment

Much has been made of the influence of Elizabeth Goudge’s Little White Horse on Ms. Rowling’s Harry Potter books — and with good reason. As I detail in the last chapter of Harry Potter’s Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures, beyond Ms. Rowling’s pointing to this fantasy as a favorite of her childhood and saying it was a “direct influence” on her work “perhaps more than any other,” Horse‘s structure, symbols, and anagogical freight would tell us the same. In brief, the model for what Harry represents, the polarities of the magical world, and the alchemical artistry of Ms. Rowling’s work can be found in Ms. Goudge’s classic.

Beth, dear friend of this blog and writer at BookwormJournal, found another Goudge story, a Christmas tale titled ‘The Well of the Star,’ that also seems a potential influence, especially with respect to mirrors and sacred sight (Coleridge’s natural theology, i.e., the hermetic idea of reflection and recognition as the heart of knowledge and Communion). Beth’s helpful comments and citations are here and I recommend them. Little White Horse readers will remember first the well in Merryweather Manor’s walled courtyard where the heroine of that story finds the hidden string of pearls, essentially “those of great price,” that resolve the contraries of the magical valley and then Loveday’s silver mirror, in which Maria sees her golden aura. Goudge is a wonder; as Ms. Rowling said about Horse, it “is a very well-constructed and clever book and the more you read it, the cleverer it appears.” “Clever,” I’m afraid, doesn’t do it justice.

More tomorrow on perhaps the original Logos mirror in English fiction, the Shepherd’s Palace mirror in Pilgrim’s Progress! Thanks to Beth for finding and sharing this neglected Goudge classic.

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

The Secret History of Why Disney Dumped Narnia

January 27, 2009 by 13 Comments

Patrick Goldstein on his L.A. Times ‘Big Picture’ weblog has written what really caused the fallout between Disney and Walden and the break-up of their partnership on the Chronicles of Narnia films. I thought there were three interesting points to Mr. Goldstein’s piece: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Taxonomy of Fantasy and Anne of Green Gables

January 26, 2009 by 24 Comments

Fascinating thought of the day for serious Harry Potter readers: is Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables “series” echoed in Ms. Rowling’s Harry Potter adventures? Bets over at The Anne of Green Gables and L.M.Montgomery Lexicon wrote me last week to say she thinks there are points of correspondence.

She wrote: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Unlocking Harry Potter

President Obama Is a Potter Man

January 25, 2009 by 9 Comments

And it shows, believe it or not, in his policy statements.

Read about how serious he is in following Potter stories in the Daily Telegraph story from 2007, Barack Obama Under the Harry Potter Spell. I’m pretty sure this is credible (as opposed to the campaign claim that President Garfield could write in Latin and Greek — simultaneously, using right and left hands for either language…).

Alison Williams, a friend of this blog, wrote at Harry Potter for Seekers (HT to RHT!) that we can see the Dumbledore influence in his comments about possibly closing the prisons at Gitmo:

“Sometimes we have to choose between what is right and what is easy.” – Albus Dumbledore

“We are willing to observe core standards, not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.” – Obama on closing Guantanamo.

President Obama is not a Fabian Socialist a la Dumbledore, it’s fair to assume, but it’s nice to think we can play “spot the Rowling quote” for several years in the new President’s public statements. How many other authors do you think he has read aloud in the past few years? To the tune of 4100 pages? My bet is “not many.”

Filed Under: Unlocking Harry Potter