Happy St Valentine’s Day, ye serious readers! I do not have flowers, chocolates, or even a card with cloying sentiment to mark the day but I offer instead something I suspect you will enjoy much more, namely, a work of scholarship and insight about J. K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts film franchise that will challenge and stretch your understanding of what The Presence is up to in her five part movie series. Lana Whited, editor of Harry Potter and the Ivory Tower, a landmark work in the history of Potter Punditry, as well as Critical Insights: The Harry Potter Series, has written an essay that has been posted in two parts at MuggleNet which explores both the traditional symbols of dragons and phoenixes in myth and folklore as well as how Rowling is using them in Fantastic Beasts on the screen.
It would be hard to overstate the importance of these pieces. I was privileged to read them as drafts and begged Professor Whited to publish them at as large a fandom platform as possible; as I told her then, I think she has solved the mystery of the frequency with which Rowling, Yates, and Heyman have mentioned that the more important beasts in Fantastic Beasts are the “beasts within.” I am confident that her discussion and explanation of how Grindelwald is a dragon and Dumbledore a phoenix, natures “closer than brothers” but in diametric opposition, will be referenced in discussion of the films from this point forward, agree or disagree.
Professor Whited spoke last month with Katy McDaniel, me, Megan Kelly of ‘Speak Beasty, and Elizabeth Baird-Hardy at MuggleNet’s Reading, Writing, Rowling podcast about this theory, a discussion that you’ll enjoy when it is posted, I’m sure, but only after your having already read ‘Here Be Dragons (and Phoenixes), Part 1 and Part 2.’ From Beowulf to literary alchemy to Chinese folklore and western mythology, this is comprehensive, wonderful work I know you’ll enjoy — and a delightful way to spend a spare moment this Valentine’s Day. Enjoy!
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