HogsHead: ‘Controversial Topics in Harry Potter’

February 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I will be speaking at Augustana College in April this year and Travis Prinzi will be there as well via interactive electronic media as part of the discussion on that campus about diversity, tolerance, and postmodern morality in general. Richard Priggie, the Augustana professor offering a course on ‘The Postmodern World of Harry Potter,’ has asked Mr. Prinzi and me to help expand the list of controversial topics his students can explore in their term papers. Both of us agreed to post his list and ask readers here and at The Hog’s Head to volunteer their own ideas; Mr. Prinzi, as usual, beat me to this task and did a better job than I would have. Please read the parameters for these thesis paper subjects — one of which is that it has to be a subject discussed at our sister sites! — at the Hog’s Head post and be sure to check out the great subjects already suggested in the comment boxes there.

I’d only note here what is obvious in reading the topics these students will be discussing, namely, that the shared text of the Hogwarts adventures provide a singular and elevated starting place for conversations about literature, morality, and spirituality. We can only hope in the years to come that more professors like Richard Priggie will be using their students’ familiarity with and appreciation of these novels to go “further up and further in.”

Filed Under: Unlocking Harry Potter

Doubled Initials Mean What? Ask P-eter P-ettigrew

February 5, 2009 by 17 Comments

The only literature class I took in college that wasn’t in Latin or Greek was a German literature course in English translation, a graduate seminar on ‘Mann, Kafka, and Brecht’ I signed up for as a freshman. Talk about fire hoses: I still have bad dreams about the week in which I was expected to read The Magic Mountain and Buddenbrooks on top of my other class work. At 17, allowing me to sign up for that class should have cost somebody in the Counseling Office their job. I impressed the teacher with a longish essay on ‘Mother Courage‘ (probably evidence of his charitable side or the low expectations he had for the child in his classroom) and escaped with an ‘A’ to conclude my formal education in better fiction.

David Bevington, Chicago’s resident Shakespeare scholar in those days, told me once at a Hitchcock Hall Sherry Hour that it was his great good fortune never to have taken a Shakespeare class as an undergraduate. Compared to Bevington, of course, my time with Virgil, Homer, and Thucydides and the corresponding absence of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton on my transcripts must mean that I was thrice blessed. I was never exposed to the aesthetic or postmodern schools of literary criticism but got a snoot full of Aristotle and Dante with a dusting of Coleridge and Ruskin. Talk about dodging the bullet.

But somedays I stumble on an item that English literature majors must recognize as a cliche and I blush for the Lake Michigan sized lacunae in my purely providential preparations to one day become a Potter pundit. Today, for example, while reading a list of “50 factoids about the 103 NBA players who have scored 50 points in One Game” (no joke), I ran across this beauty at #43 on the list: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Pride and Prejudice — and Zombies?

February 4, 2009 by 1 Comment

When I describe the influence of Jane Austen on Joanne Rowling to lecture audiences, my pet phrase is that a good way for them to understand the Harry Potter novels is as “Pride and Prejudice with wands.” This hyperbole is more true than not because (1) the Hogwarts Adventures feature narrative misdirection consequent to the voice chosen by the author, a voice lifted straight from Austen’s Emma, (2) the moral message of both authors is anti-empiricist, that is, not trusting unexamined prejudices or “first impressions,” the original title of Pride and Prejudice, and (3) the satirical quality of Austen’s manners-and-morals fiction is a big part of the genre melange the writing of which is Ms. Rowling’s peculiar genius. Inside a Schoolboy novel and gothic thriller, she includes without hiccup a Georgian era romance.

This genre mixing is postmodern “double coding,” which I explain at length in Unlocking Harry Potter. But Ms. Rowling isn’t the only author to include Austen in their genre story mix. Stephenie Meyer has said Twilight, the first book of her ‘Twilight Saga,’ is a re-telling of Pride and Prejudice (if Jane Eyre is behind and within many of that book’s scenes and characters, too). But Meyers and Rowling are way too subtle with their allusions and recasting for the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; it’s time for a real re-telling, straight up, with gothic horror elements on steroids thrown in. Regency romance meets Texas Chain Saw Massacre? You get the idea. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Jane Austen, Postmodern Polly, Unlocking Harry Potter

Hogwarts Professor at NY Public Library – Tonight!

February 3, 2009 by 2 Comments

I will be braving the snow tonight to give a talk at the main branch of the New York Public Library in mid-Manhattan, 455 Fifth Avenue. It’s scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. and I hope if you’re in the City tonight that you’ll drop by (for out of towners, the mid-Manhattan branch is the library across the street from the one with the postcard lions out front). The lecture is titled ‘How Harry Cast His Spell’ and I will be sharing my latest thoughts about setting and allegory as well as the five other keys that unlock the meaning and power of the Hogwarts Adventures. See you there!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Another Dorothy Sayers Hat Tip and More

February 2, 2009 by 2 Comments

Life is too short, frankly, even to try to keep up with the conversations on hundreds of Harry Potter fan web sites, though no doubt there is great value for serious readers that is hiding on the bigger electronic bulletin boards. I am happy and have to be content, given my priorities and projects, with staying current with the goings on here and at The Hogs Head.

Fortunately, friends of this blog often share with me the jewels they have found on other sites. This morning Bob Trexler sent me a posting by Chris at the always interesting and challenging Harry Potter for Seekers yahoo discussion group. The mavens there — and these are very serious readers and students of literary alchemy — are working their way through Deathly Hallows chapter by chapter and have made it to ‘The Muggle-Born Registration Commission’ and Harry’s adventure in the Ministry of Magic.

Chris’ post is worth reading in full (you may have to join the yahoo group to follow that link) but I share the conclusion here to get at three points made there: the reference to Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night (I look forward to Inked’s reaction to this hat tip), the idea of Harry as noetic or spiritual discerning eye, and the thought that ‘Mary Elizabeth’ Cattermole is rescued because of her testifying truthfully in the heart of darkness. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Unlocking Harry Potter