On today’s episode of The Literary Life podcast, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks continue their series on Harry Potter: Book 1 by J. K. Rowling. This week we are covering chapters 3-7. Angelina opens the book discussion with an overview of the literary motifs used by Rowling in the Harry Potter books to help modern readers better understand these kinds of stories. One of the motifs she highlights is the identity quest and how we see Harry on a journey of the soul. She also shares some thoughts on the fairy tale “magic” of these stories in contrast to actual witchcraft as well as the symbolism used to show us that this is a fairy world.
Thomas and Angelina talk about the characters we meet in these chapters, including the symbolism of some of their names. Other ideas discussed in this episode include the importance of alchemy, the Gothic literary tradition, the layers of the quest, the rise of the fantasy genre, and so much more!
Visit HouseofHumaneLetters.com for updates on classes with Angelina, Thomas, and other members of their teaching team.
The Literary Life series on Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Commonplace Quotes:
It is very often a man’s digressions that reveal his true character and interests.
T. R. Glover, from Springs of HellasI am not suggesting that all works of literature are much the same work or fit into the same general scheme. I am providing a kind of resonance for literary experience, a third dimension, so to speak, in which the work we are experiencing draws strength and power from everything else we have read and may still read. And, second, the strength and power do not stop with the work out there, but enter into us.
Northrop FryeWalking Away
By Cecil Day-Lewis
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
Book List:
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
MacBeth by William Shakespeare
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
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Connect with Us:
You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
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