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From the category archives:

Hogwarts School of Literature

Briefly Re-”thinking” Harry’s Walk in the Woods

by Dave the Longwinded on June 20, 2009

THH’s readers are a smart set — well informed and willing to stretch their imaginations. I’ve always imagined that we come from a tremendously wide variety of ages, backgrounds, philosophies and worldviews. I’ve also figured, in the last few days, that many of us have at least been distantly aware of the turmoil in Iran. It is not my intention to get political here, and please do not take this post as such.

But, I sometimes find myself reminded of the power of a word, description, or scene. It’s easy to read a scene like Harry’s walk in the woods with his family to what he knows will be his death, and understand that he has accepted it. But, an honest mea culpa: as much as I love literature, it’s sometimes easy for moments like these to remain somehow abstract in my mind. Again, I understand so well what that scene is after. But, I always tell my students that the true power of literature is its ability to make the reader feel what it’s after. [click to continue…]

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BBC Narnia Code with Michael Ward Online

by Travis Prinzi on April 17, 2009

michael_ward_headshot BBC’s special, The Narnia Code, which is about Michael Ward’s excellent work, Planet Narnia, is available online for another 6 days! I plan to watch it sometime this weekend. Don’t miss the opportunity!

Johnny did an interview with Michael Ward for The Hog’s Head just prior to the release of the Prince Caspian movie.

Find Michael Ward at his website.

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Heroes and Villains

by Dave the Longwinded on April 1, 2009

I wouldn’t normally cite anything from Entertainment Weekly as an especially interesting analysis of things literary, but the most recent issue (3 April 2009) has a piece by Jeff Jensen exploring modern America’s fascination with villains and significantly flawed heroes (”Heroes and Villains”). This passage struck me:

The current state of heroism can be summed up in a word: Lost. Lke the castaways of ABC’s mystery drama, today’s would-be heroes are so flawed or messed up, they need to be saved from themselves before they save anyone else. Some succeed, like Iron Man’s ethically murky Tony Stark. But many others — Anakin Skywalker; the meth-cooking cancer dad on Breaking Bad [an AMC drama]; almost anyone on HBO, Showtime, or FX — find it more empowering to embrace the dark side. These characters reflect a culture that feels powerless and pissed: We desparately want good to triumph over evil, but we can’t staunch our doubts that good is up to the task. [click to continue…]

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Harry Potter Translations

March 27, 2009

At Convention Alley 2008 in Ottawa, Josee LeBlanc gave a fascinating talk on decisions translators of the Harry Potter books have to make. More dilemmas present themselves than you might think.
Here is one particular case study on that subject that you might find interesting.
I recall another example that Ms. LeBlanc gave. Do you translate or [...]

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Dr. Manhattan: “The Superman exists…”

March 9, 2009

“…and he’s American” (IV.13). His backstory comes straight out of a Marvel comic, a company famous for its heroes who are made so by exposure to some form of atomic energy. He begins life as Jon Osterman, a kid predisposed toward ingenuity. He becomes a physicist, working in high-tech tests for the federal government concerning [...]

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Rorschach: Watchmen’s Abyss

March 4, 2009

Rorschach (aka Walter Kovacs) is easily one of the more (in)famous characters from Alan Moore’s world. And Dave Gibbons’s visual take on him has become iconic to many comic fans. Figure 1 demonstrates the film’s desire to be as faithful to his character design as the medium allows. The look clearly seems to draw from [...]

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Watchmen: Getting Started

February 24, 2009

Preliminaries (Updated)
Update: Here’s another link that appeared online: IGN’s “Top Ten Most Memorable Moments from Watchmen“.
First, here are a couple of links to online “annotated” versions of Watchmen (the book):

Watching the Detectives: The site bills itself as “an internet companion” to the book; it’s akin to a Wiki, although the layout is different from anything [...]

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Who will watch Watchmen?

February 21, 2009

I had intentions of posting material on Watchmen in the coming weeks, with the movie’s coming release. But, Red Rocker brought the subject up in the comments section of a post, so I thought I’d give everyone some material to mull over, now.
Watchmen is a radical departure from much of the material we’ve examined here [...]

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Why Twilight Readers Fail (for everyone)

February 18, 2009

Or maybe better, Literary Criticism in the Hands of an Angry Blogger. Or perhaps, Defending Coleridge and Granger.
I wrote a couple of days ago about the out-of-hand dismissal of the idea that authors are actually careful artists who choose their imaginative keys, symbols, and overall approach to literature very deliberately – i.e., they are attempting [...]

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Potter at University

February 6, 2009

Harry Potter classes are popping up at colleges everywhere. I already mentioned the one at Augustana where I’ll be speaking in March. Dr. Danielle Tumminio continues to teach a Potter class at Yale. I spoke last year at Dr. Joel Garver’s philosophy class on Potter at LaSalle. Dr. Amy H. Sturgis is currently teaching Potter [...]

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Controversial Topics in Harry Potter

February 5, 2009

I’ve managed to make my way back into the college classroom – only this time, I don’t have to be present, turn in assignments, or take tests. Richard Priggie, professor at Augustana College, has selected my book, Harry Potter and Imagination: The Way Between Two Worlds, as well as John Granger’s book, The Deathly Hallows [...]

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Stephen King: Lovecraft, Rowling, Meyer and More

February 3, 2009

Stephen King recently gave an interview to USA Weekend in which he made some interesting comments about Richard Matheson, H.P. Lovecraft, J.K. Rowling, and Stephanie Meyer:
King, whose Stephen King Goes to the Movies collection came out last week, doesn’t know how much of an influence he had on Meyer, but he does know that Rowling [...]

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Monday Magical Musings: Children Only?

January 26, 2009

Discuss:
“The artist…must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns and all the lovely creatures which our world put in a box and marked Children Only. ~ Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

Why are supernatural beings considered kids’ stuff?
What benefit does the adult derive from these “lovely creatures”?
What do you say to people who [...]

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Books About Harry Potter

January 24, 2009

Of course you own the seven Harry Potter novels. Some of you are odd, like me, and own 2 copies of each. Three, if you count the audiobooks. But I’m wondering if anyone else also has a pile of books about or related to the novels documenting the life of our favorite boy wizard. Here’s [...]

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Ginny Weasley

January 18, 2009

I’ve always found Ginny Weasley fascinating, given her ever evolving role in the story and the lives of other characters. In 2004, Rowling hedged her bets on Ginny in an online chat session:
Field: Do you plan for Ginny to take on a major character role in [...]

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Railroads and Magic

January 8, 2009

I’m willing to bet a few lines from one of J.K. Rowling’s favorite authors, Edith Nesbit, went through her mind as she was imagining all the magical happenings around trains and railroads while writing Harry Potter.
First, from a quote I posted from The Enchanted Castle a few days ago:
“I think magic went out when people [...]

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Theories and Stories

January 4, 2009

Warning: The following contains an unpopular theological belief. I don’t want to get into a big theological debate here, so please keep the discussion to Kreeft’s thesis and not his example.
Peter Kreeft:
“Theories lie more readily than stories. That is why our psychologists tell us we are good but our novelists tell us we are [...]

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Imagination as “Third Characteristic” of Humanity

December 26, 2008

In between the strict rationalism of the scientific fatalist and the elusive, esoteric musings of gnostic spiritualism, and as a necessary alternative to both, is “Myth.” Clyde S. Kilby writes,
We intellectualize in order to know, but paradoxically, intellectualization tends to destroy its object. The harder we grasp at the thing, the more its reality moves [...]

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Harry Potter and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

November 21, 2008

A couple weeks ago on The Classic Tales, B.J. Harrison did an excellent reading of my favorite childhood story, “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” by Rudyard Kipling. Before and after the story, he mentioned Harry Potter, noting the name link between Nagini and Nagaina, the evil female snake in the story.
I admit I had completely forgotten the names of [...]

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“I see with a myriad eyes”

November 9, 2008

A great C.S. Lewis quote courtesy of The Kibitzer:*

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I [...]

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Debate on Harry Potter: Travis Prinzi vs. Richard Dawkins

October 29, 2008

OK, so that’s not really happening. But my book, Harry Potter & Imagination: The Way Between Two Worlds, opens with a chapter on the importance of mythological and fairy-tale thinking as opposed to what G.K. Chesterton called “scientific fatalism.” Richard Dawkins has decided to write the opposite book, positing the possibility that fairy tales are potentially [...]

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Four Houses, Four Types of Readers?

October 22, 2008

Professor Stephen Brown of Ulster University, after conducting an interview study of readers ages 7 and up, says there are four types of Harry Potter readers, and they correspond to the four houses:

His research found ‘Hufflepuff’ readers take the tales at a slow, steady and systematic pace and enjoy re-reading the books over and over.
‘Gryffindor’ [...]

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“The Fall of the House of Usher”

October 14, 2008

In America, we’re trained from a young age to equate Edgar Allan Poe with both terror and Halloween. In my experience, reading Poe in an English class was something of a yearly ritual, even if the rationale for the exercise was rather forced. Poe clearly enjoys a better literary reputation than our other horror master, [...]

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

October 4, 2008

Even though we now consider Alice as perhaps the monumental book of children’s literature, it has been steeped in controversy. Yes, much of that controversy has to do with it’s enigmatic author, Lewis Carroll (ne the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson).
The conspiracy theories swirl around Carroll’s apparent fondness of children, particularly young girls. Those theories are [...]

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Voldemort is a Failed Character (Part II)

August 8, 2008

by Dave
Part I of this series: Why Joker Succeeds and Voldemort Fails
“Behind the scenes” is a trope of long standing tradition in many forms of literature. In a recent essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Terry W. Thompson argues that the violent deaths occur off the page as a direct result of Shelley’s love of classical [...]

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