E-Thesis 453 views
THE LAKE AND THE SHED: A TRADITIONALIST READING OF J. K. ROWLING’S WORK / JOHN GRANGER
Swansea University Author: JOHN GRANGER
DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.63233
Abstract
Key figures of Western literature who have portrayed the soul’s struggle to perfection in spirit in allegorical depiction and exteriorized characters include Plato, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, the Metaphysical Poets, William Blake, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and th...
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Swansea, Wales, UK
2023
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Preece, Julian E. and Hollrah, Matthew. |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63233 |
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| Abstract: |
Key figures of Western literature who have portrayed the soul’s struggle to perfection in spirit in allegorical depiction and exteriorized characters include Plato, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, the Metaphysical Poets, William Blake, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Oxford Inklings. This anagogical artistry or psychomachia is central as well to J. K. Rowling’s novels and screenplays and grasping it is essential to an assessment of her achievements as a writer.In this thesis, I position Rowling as a covert and hermetic artist whose aim is the defamiliarization, even the transformation of her readers from a profane worldview to some awareness of the sacred within and around them. In doing so, I contribute the first in-depth discussion of Rowling’s neo-mythological and literary alchemy, going beyond the author’s explicit asides with respect to her intentions and artistry that, to date, have not been more than acknowledged by Rowling scholars; my argument references the uncollected Rowling interview material of the last twenty-five years as well as her published fiction and public statements.The thesis is structured in two parts. The first includes reviews of Rowling’s biography and bibliography of favorite writers respectively to clarify her intention as a writer; the second part is readings of her fiction, with special focus on Deathly Hallows (2007), Troubled Blood (2020) and The Christmas Pig (2021) as psychomachian allegories as such and then as alchemical dramas in which the soul’s transformation is depicted in hermetic symbolism and sequences. The thesis concludes with suggestions for further studies consequent to Rowling’s success as a covert writer of psycho-spiritual allegory especially with respect to her chiastic structural artistry. |
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| Keywords: |
J. K. Rowling |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |