Very fine essay about types of fantasy

[nancylebov]

Here's a discussion of numinous vs. playful fantasy.

I feel no impulse to defend Harry Potter on the grounds that the books follow this sort of higher fantasy tradition -- frankly, there isn't much in the Potter books that strikes me as numinous. There's nothing there to fill one with the sort of awe you feel in a great cathedral, or when reading of Arwen's death, away from all family and kin, without another soul beside her, Aragorn and immortality both gone. But this seems utterly irrelevant to me. For some reason, Byatt (who ought to know better) completely ignores the "non-numinous tradition" (for lack of a better word) of magic books.

From Alice In Wonderland to James Thurber's delightful fairy tales The Wonderful O and The 13 Clocks, to The Phantom Tollbooth, there is a heady and wonderful ancestry of magical books that Harry Potter fits as easily as a missing puzzle piece.

At the moment, I'm looking at the sense in which wordplay (which is a rather rarified pleasure, or at least not a sensory one) is still part of ordinary life.

(The essay is from 2003--no spoilers for anything current.)

Link from cija in this thread.

Comments

[kressel.livejournal.com]

I assume by context that the author's meaning of "numinous" is evoking religious or inspired feelings. If that's the case, then I felt that in Book V when Luna and Harry talked about what's beyond the veil. That made me cry so much, I had to put down the book and stop reading for a few minutes.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think there's are occasional numinous bits in HP--for some reason, Hagrid's totally irrational love of monsters counts. It doesn't seem like part of the mostly cynical wizarding world.

I'm not sure if it's what hit you so hard, but finding out that ghosts are the people who don't have the nerve to go on gave me the feeling of a larger world than HP usually does.

[kressel.livejournal.com]

That was part of it, but not all of it. The main thing that got me was the existence of a next phase in which people are reunited with the ones they love. It seems to me that JKR has such a religious message in that sense, which is why it is ironic that she has gotten so much criticism from religious people. As you know, I am a religious person, so I read with that POV. Death and the afterlife are HUGE themes in the book. There's a room in the Ministry, which I presume is the room beyond the veil, which Voldemort cannot get to, but Harry will because he is filled with love. That is why Voldemort fears death, thinks there is nothing worse than it, and has a whole group of "Death Eaters" ie death defiers. Dumbledore, on the other hand, is prepared for "the next great adventure."

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Ok, what am i missing in the name Dubledore? I can parse it into Dumb le Doré, but am stumped beyond that.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I don't see the wordplay in Dumbledore, either, so I can't help you out.

[cija.livejournal.com]

It's an antiquated word for 'bumblebee', I believe.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've heard that, but I can't see how Dumbledore is like a bumblebee.

Some of the characters have probably significant names--Dolores (sadness) Umbridge (offended pride), Minerva (goddess of war and wisdom) Gonagle, Sybil (prophetess) Trelawney. I don't know whether the latter two last names signify anything.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Yup. According to the OED, the components 'dumble-' and 'dor' mean "stupid, dull, slow" and "loudly humming insect" respectively.

Perhaps it refers to his outward aspect as a seemingly inoffensive bumbler of a fellow? Not flashy or showy, like the gilded Gilderoy Lockhart?

Potter name etymologies

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

There's a whole Potter Name Etymology website at http://www.theninemuses.net/hp/3.html but it's pretty amateurish (in the deprecatory sense of the term).

The name is celebrated in Cornish history. It originates in a local land unit of Cornwall called a 'barton': the barton of Trelawny, in the parish of Alternun; and another barton called Trelawn or Trelawny in Pelynt parish. Trelaun in turn means 'open town' or 'clean town' in Cornish, according to page 126 of Patronymica Cornu-Britannica, or the Etymology of Cornish Surnames by Richard Stephen Charnock, Ph.Dr., F.S.A., F.R.G.S.; London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1870.