[the_old_crowd] Re: Luna or Diana

[sean dwyer]

On Sat, Sep 11, 2004 at 03:56:13PM -0000, Nora Renka wrote:
> One quick note: you *do* know that White Goddess is pretty much 
> completely and utterly discredited as a work of serious scholarship 
> on myth, right?  It's a fun read, but it's ultimately way more about 
> Robert Graves, his period and their obsession with what myth meant to 
> them and his ideas of poetic inspiration, than anything else.  His 
> kind of wide-spreading structuralist equivalency, and Joseph 
> Campbell's as well, are not taken seriously on the academic level by 
> people who study mythology, particularly classical mythoi, seriously.
> Sure, every figure that has the same overt figures looks related, but 
> only when you wipe out all the background context.

Very well aware, and equally aware that noone except academics give a toss.
They were both operating at a time when the goddess theory was still current,
and both were prepared to look beyond specific contexts, even if their
conclusions were subsequently deemed erroneous. Graves explicitly said
whatever anyone else thought, it was poetically true for him. Campbell did
pioneering work, which is still annoyingly popular, and as yet not outshone.
It has to be said that even background context is the subject of continuing
argument.

Like a good scholar I have not restricted my sources to them; in any case the
detail will end up superfluous as you rightly point out below.
 
> When it comes to myth 'Greco-Roman' is also deeply misleading, as 
> well.  Roman religion and Greek religion are fundamentally truly 
> profoundly different.  The borrowings and adaptations of Greek 
> mythical figures into Roman ideas either 1) put them into a wildly 
> different cosmological scheme 2) took place in an era of witty 
> skepticism fully aware of what they were doing (Ovid, for example).

Very true, I only meant Graeco-Roman in the general sense of the origins and
the borrowing, not that the two were equivalent. But you can emphasise the
differences or the similarities; I think this is what annoys many about
Campbell.

> I don't think it really means much of anything.  JKR uses mythology, 
> sure, but she uses it in a highly idiosyncratic way, and just as 
> often splits things off completely from their source--in other words, 
> she may use a basic and obvious connotation, but I can't think of any 
> cases where it goes deeper.  Remus Lupin is a great example (at least 
> so far); he doesn't have a twin, he's not descended from divinity, 
> and I don't think he's going to be murdered after founding a city.  
> She just wanted the wolf connotations, which are really almost too 
> twee for words, and does give away something to the astute reader.

It's classical allusion, a habit which used to infect English literature to a
nauseating degree. Allusion is never meant to correspond at all points; like
Shakespeare's allusions to the classics, it's meant as a pointer to the
grownup readers. The problem for us is which characteristic is JKR going to
pick? We cannot know beforehand, so must lay out the details.

> Lots of the names have symbolism, but they seem primarily restricted 
> to such within the little world that she's created.  I don't see any 
> future to the intricate schemes of plot detection founded on 
> mythology, or alchemy, or history.  She's definitely a sentimental 
> artist, and not a naive one (to borrow that time-worn yet useful 
> distinction).

Lupin's lycanthropy had no plot implications? Nothing intricate there. No
dog-like loyalty and protectiveness in Sirius? What use would the symbolism
have outside the Potterverse? Now kneasy is pessimistic; I'm optimistic -
whatever her symbolism, Luna is potentially important to the plot. I wouldn't
be interested in the symbolism otherwise.

-- 
"Fascists divide in two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists" -- Ennio Flaiano