Modern vs Post-Modern: An Explanation of Harry Potter

Since a lot of my recent posts have not been following Alchemical symbolism as closely, I thought I would give an explanation of why I think this a fitting way to discuss Rowling's work and why I think it germane to discuss other venues such as popular music (such as U2) and dramatic fiction (such as My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok). I think Rowling's work is based in the medieval, both in the aspect of a strong presence of Christ symbols and in Alchemical structuring. But the work is not therefore, in and of itself, the same thing as a medieval alchemical text. It is a novel (or series of them) by a post-modern writer with post-modern elements. There are really 3 periods - the ancient, the modern, and the post-modern. We are in the third (post-modern); the ancient covers most all literature up until the Enlightenment (thus including the classical and medieval eras); and Modernism (the middle era) is basically the Enlightenment up to the 20th century. Of these 3 the "odd-man-out" is modernism. The Via Moderna was a radical shift from the Via Antiqua (borrowing terminology from Dr Scott Hahn's class lectures - which he borrows from such authors as George Weigel, the author of the best-selling biography of Pope John Paul II) and is really characterized by what a friend of mine from Brooklyn referred to as the "tyranny of reason" (much like the tyranny of pure-bloods). Modernism is characterized by a materialistic attempt to eradicate all forms of the transcendent/mythopoeic, including religion (what Cicero referred to as the virtue of Religio, which is among his 3 highest virtues: Piety, Patriotism, and Religion), by calling these "superstition." Note: I believe, in concurrence with the Professor from whom I heard these classifications, that, while the shift to the via moderna is officially at the Enlightenment, the sources lie at least as far back as the Nominalism of William of Ockham in the 14th century. If you want a really good (and short) work to read on the matter of the via moderna and the via antiqua (although this author does not use these terms) read the section entitled "The Dynamo and the Virgin" from Henry Adams' The Education of Henry Adams (which can be found, if I remember correctly, in the second volume of Norton's Anthology of American Literature ... but don't quote me on that, it was a while ago, and I am stranded carless miles from my personal library LOL) Among many unfortunate developments of the post-modern era (which I believe really to be the fall-out from the inevitable failure of Modernism) one very positive element has arisen in the form of a freedom for artists such as Rowling to go back to the Alchemical and Christological underpinnings of medieval literature without the worry of being call "superstitious" (although Modernism still has a strong foothold today, as evidenced in what Granger calls the "high road" attack on Potter, leveled primarily by "academics"). But, as with all valid developments of tradition, the conscious presence of the past is not a foolish attempt at the impossible of a return to the past; rather it is in the context of a step forward. In the case of Rowling this takes the form of exploration of the inter-penetration with particularly post-modern expressions of common post-modern phenomena such as rampant despair (aka the Dementors) and the possibility of the ravages brought by Fascism as a world-wide force (EG the strong resemblance between the pure-blood ethnic warfare and Hitler's Nazi Germany). Thus I think that to examine music such as U2 and literature such as Potok, in addition to the medieval alchemical background of the Potter books, is actually following Rowling's lead by bringing in post-modern material.