[HPforGrownups] Re: Freudian/Lacanian Support for H/H (long)

[Aberforth's Goat]

No: HPFGUIDX 7436

> I'm reminded of what Martin Gardner wrote in his preface to the
> Annotated Alice (fabulous book ....

Fabulous quote, too! I'd like to track it down--could you give the title?

But, although I'm not big on Freud, I think freudians--and other movements
that use an author- (rather than text- or reader-) centered hermeneutic
(=interpretive strategy)--have a valid point: why *did* the author happen to
choose one particular palatte of words instead of some other palatte?

Was it her conscious intent? (She wanted to get back at journalists, so she
created Rita.) Was it coincidence? (She sees a fly on her desk and writes
"flew into a rage.") Was it cultural-linguistic norms? (The hero is called
Harry, rather than Hermione, because our culture sets the default gender
value of young antagonists to male.) Was it a conscious but unexpressed
drive? (She thinks fortune tellers are humbugs, so she makes Trelawney a
nutcase.) Was it an unsconscious desire, drive or deficit? (She's troubled
by her id, or "inner Harry"; hence she hooks up Hermione--her literary
personification--with the safe Ron, yet leaves a certain ambiguity about
Hermione's feelings.)

I'm not taking a stand for or against any of the examples above. (Well,
except for Rita Skeeter, which Jo denies.) But all four approaches can be
valid, if employed with a pinch of salt. We write the way we write because
of the kind of people we are and the kind of circumstances we write under.
Assuming psychoanalysis can tell us something about who we are (which is
admittedly debatable, especially when applied to people we don't even know
outside of their books), it has a place in lit. crit.

BTW, Ebony, I loved your post! I've nothing but breathless admiration for a
human being who has read Lacan and lived to tell about it. I'd rather read a
PGP encryptation of the phone book. Heck, I'd even rather read James Joyce.
And I think your theory is fascinating, too, even though I don't blow with
the winds of H/H shipping--but it's bedtime for sleepy goats.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray)
http://profiles.yahoo.com/aberforths_goat

P.S. This post should not be construed as condoning anything profitable or
sane.