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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