Harfang (Re: Black Family Tree *possible spoilers*)

exodusts exodusts at yahoo.com
Sat Jan 28 22:46:32 UTC 2006


No: HPFGUIDX 147252

> > Juli:
> > >   Has anyone been on The Leaky Lounge Today? Well, there's a 
story 
> > about authors donating sheets of stuff, including our very own 
> > favorite, JKR.
> > 
> > <snip>
> >     
> > >   Check it out at http://www.the-leaky-
> > cauldron.org/images/image.php?
image= 06/01/closeupblackfamtree.jpg
> > 
> > Geoff:
> > Having just taken a look, I spotted a tip of the hat on JKR's 
part.
> > 
> > The bottom RH corner has the name "Harfang Longbottom".
> > 
> > Harfang is the name of the ruined city of the giants in 
> > C.S.Lewis' "The Silver Chair" and, for the first time (slaps head 
> > hard), I've realised that Longbottom, of course, is a name in 
LOTR; 
> > Tobold Longbottom was the first hobbit to plant tobacco in the 
Shire.


The problem with this sort of thing is that I wonder how deliberate 
it is. J.K.R. is *such* a magpie that it makes you wonder if she 
hasn't just plucked the name Harfang out of her own head, without 
realising how it got there and where it came from. This is an 
occupational hazard for writers, I am told.

I'm re-reading the 7 Narnia books at the moment. I've only got 
through The Magician's Nephew and into TLTWATW so far, but every so 
often I read an isolated sentence that mirrors almost exactly a line 
of description from the Potter books. 

Now I don't believe that J.K.R. is writing HP while reading Narnia 
and thinking: "It would be cool to drop in a really subtle reference 
to Lewis by using a line just like that one." She simply soaks it all 
up and it comes out when she writes.

exodusts










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