A Hogwarts Itinerary

Hi All! (I meant to have this up a couple of days ago; I should have known that was a bit idealistic.) Here's a reading schedule for this summer:

8 June – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

22 June – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

6 July – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

20 July – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

3 August – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

17 August – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

 

Note that this schedule allows two weeks for each book, with the noted exception of the first two books which are relatively short.

The next job for me is to create a meeting schedule. What would really help is if you all would email me telling me which week(s) you'll be in town, which day(s) you'd be available to get together, and where you'd like to do that. I'd like to have that up by this Friday, so if you could just take a minute and send me that info I would really appreciate it.

On a more personal note, I blew through the first book in a couple of evenings late this past week—don't remember them going down that smoothly! This is a blast, and I've got some things to write on, but I need to do a little background research first.

Warmest and fondest,

Aaron

Ordered Possible Worlds

I've come to literature with several critical assumptions:

1. All knowable worlds are fundamentally logical and therefore linguistically expressible;
   
2. As such, language is the avenue by which we cross the barriers between our world and other worlds;
   
3. Because our world often lacks the things we find in other worlds (e.g., hippogriffs), we can call these other worlds "possible worlds" (as opposed to our "actual world"), by which we mean simply that the contents of these other worlds is logically possible; if it weren't we couldn't imagine it (imagine, for instance, a world with a square circle… good luck with that);
   
4. Our world is one possible world among many, but we call it "actual" because it's where we originated;
   
5. Contradictions break the spell that the author of an alternate possible world casts on the reader;
   
6. Well constructed possible worlds are devoid of contradictions;
   
7. One must take care to distinguish between true contradictions and apparent contradictions: apparent contradictions are essential to mystery and hidden meaning, and are always resolved by the introduction of a previously unknown statement.
   

Additionally:

1. Literature scholars tend to either love or hate what they research (i.e., we don't do research on things that don't interest us);
   
2. Most research is (albeit covertly) dedicated to justifying a scholar's reaction to a work (no, I'm not cynical).
   

I tend to prefer 'contemporary medievalism' to the modern novel primarily because so much of the former is authored with a penchant for order within the possible worlds that are created. Conclusions are usually resolutions rather than disjunctions. Some do not believe that the actual world is this way; I like to think it is. But even if I happen to be mistaken on that point, I prefer to cross into well-ordered possible worlds, even if I don't discover how well they are ordered until I reach the end of a tale that occurs therein.

My preference having been thus baldly stated, look for me to justify it on this blog this summer.

All the best,

ALong

Welcome, ‘Ickle Firsties’

Hi Friends!

Usha and Julia and I have been talking about this for more than a semester now, and we're really excited about it.

There are a lot of discussions in the literature field already, but I think a discussion of "SF/F" (Science Fiction/Fantasy) has great potential for coming generations of researchers. The works that fall into these categories often have a penchant for utopic and dystopic comment on society's potential or status quo, and seek a variety of explanations for and solutions to problems that confront us today, including religion, science, technology, art, and a host of others.

Moreover, because the possible worlds (see my upcoming post on that topic) of SF/F are so fantastically foreign to ours, the reader enters the world in awe and wonder and is taken by the social commentary of the author, often totally unaware. It is in this that realism and constructivism meet: the author is able to construct meaning by giving the reader a sense of having discovered it among a world that is so convincingly real. If for no other reason than this slight-of-hand alone, SF/F is truly an art, and may be the last vestige of the 'spells' that medievals once feared so much.

I'd like to think that those of us who have already read Harry Potter are immune to the power of the spell we're about to have cast upon us. For those of you who have not, enjoy the ride. Consider this a formal invitation to scholarly discourse surrounding these works. Rowling is obviously a very educated, very talented writer, and we would do her a disservice to assume that there is nothing for us here but entertainment. As for what's beneath the thrills of monsters and magic, I've honestly no idea; I've never looked for anything else. But let's see what we can find, shall we?

Taking a running start at what looks to be a wall (are you coming too?),

Aaron Long