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Hogwarts, Hogwarts,
Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,
Teach us something please,
Whether we be old and bald,
Or young with scabby knees,
Our heads could do with filling,
With some interesting stuff,
For now they're bare
And full of air,
Dead flies and bits of fluff.
So teach us stuff worth knowing,
Bring back what we forgot,
Just do your best
We'll do the rest,
And learn until our brains all rot!



1: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2: Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
3: There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
4: Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
5: Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
6: His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
7: The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
8: The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
9: The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
10: More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
11: Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.
12: Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.
13: Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
14: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Merlin finds Merlin: a Book Review/Plug

I, Merlinus AmBrettus, have just returned from the library here at Fordham with a new little treasure of 430 pages. I was grateful to find our library had it in the stacks. I looked on Barnes and Noble and it runs 108.00 dollars, but at some point I my just go ahead and buy it ... it looks that promising.

The title is Merlin: a Casebook, and it is a collection of essays edited by Peter H. Goodrich and Raymond H. Thompson.

I went to the library after my summer job (having emailed myself the call # from work), which is an editorial assistantship for an academic journal in Medieval Studies called Traditio (a very respected journal in the field, meaning the assistantship is a very good line on my CV). The article I am currently pre-formatting (a bugger with 250 end-notes) is on the Merlin prophecies in some medieval Italian texts (basically prophecies attributed to Merlin concerning the rise of an anti-emperor who will then be thrown down eventually by the coming of a true emperor, but the material was quickly picked up religiously and applied to the Papacy, particularly in regard to Pope Celestine V, formerly a Franciscan hermit, who reigns briefly and is then replaced, and subsequently persecuted, by the "wicked Pope" Boniface VIII [who is, if I remember correctly, heavily criticized in Dante's Inferno] - with those who promulgated the literature under the heading of the papacy putting forth the idea that this new "anti-pope" will soon be replaced by a righteous Pope who will be crowned by angels [thus also known as the "angelic pope"]) ... thus it falls under religio-political thought in Medieval studies.

So that is how I stumbled across the book (in the bibliography for this article ... and sat up and thought "what in the name of Merlin's most baggy Y fronts is this?" - and 50 points to the house of anyone who can identify that reference without looking in the books)

MERLIN:

I'm guessing this will be a very good read, as it has an essay on Merlin in Modern Fiction that begins by discussing the Merlinus Ambrosius character in CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength. More than that, it seems to be an extremely thorough exposition of the entire "canon" of Merlin literature. It is broken down into 2 sections: Evolution of the Legend and Major Motifs and Works. The Former consists of essays on: the Merlin legend in Welsh tradition of prophecy; Prophet and Magician; Merlin and the Ladies of the Lake; Italian Literature; Spanish Lit; German Lit; "New World Wizard"; and Modern Fiction. The latter has: as wise old man; in the Grail Legend; Robert de Boron's Merlin; as Romancier (Paternity, Prophecy and Poetics); Malory's Tragic Merlin; Spenser's Merlin; Druids, bards and Tennyson's Merlin; as Image of the Artist in Tennyson, Dore, Burne-Jones and Beardsley; as Master and Mediator of the natural world.

One of the reasons I am so interested/excited is the whole issue of prophecy (a sort of side interest corresponding to my plan to work on Jeremiah the prophet for my Ph.D. dissertation). I already use Merlin in passing in my Intro to OT course for sophmores. When we get to the books of 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings and the critique by prophets such as Hosea (in all of which the tension between prophet and king is central), I use Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien has a great essay on the anonymous Gawain piece, attached to his own translation of Gawain in a small little paperback - well worth buying and reading) - basically the author of Gawain makes a criticism of the "court" of Arthur, on the light side taking itself and its values way too seriously (a bit like the line "on second thought, let's not go to Camelot ... it is a silly place" in Monty Python's holy Grail - a line which I also use in the classroom), and on the darker side those values tempting Gawain to act directly against real virtue. Hosea specifically says that the "mirth" of the Northern Kingdom will be ended.

In this I also draw on Charles Williams' (friend and colleague of Lewis and Tolkien) exposition of Arthur as the tension between the Pendragon/Logres and King/Britain concepts of kingship (for more on this read Williams' essay on the figure of Arthur in his volume generally referred to as "The Arthurian Torso," if you can find a copy used [last I knew it had not re-entered print in a long time], which contains his 2 volumes of Arthurian poetry, his essay, and an essay by Lewis on Williams' poetry - Williams' also has a novel called "War in Heaven" which centers around the Grail ... but you can also glean alot about the concepts of kingship from Lewis' That Hideous Strength) ... because the idea and role of kingship is central and the Arthur material provides an illustrative comparison from other lit that helps the kids get the ideas

Up until now I have simply thrown in in passing that in the comparison Merlin would obviously be the prophet character (the "king maker and king breaker"), but I have thus far only been able to do this in passing as sort of my own passing extrapolation from the comparison ... now (from this article and this book) I have texts to point to for it.

HARRY POTTER:

The thing that interests me most is how a mage character is thought of as also a prophet character (although it should be noted that in the Gospel accounts, the magi from the East are seen as possessing prophetic lore concerning the coming of a king). In Harry Potter there is the whole issue of divination - and Dumbledore's and McGonnegal's commentary on it. I use that part of HP especially to develop the distinction (most clearly developed by the American Jewish Rabbi Avram Heschel) between prophecy as foretelling (mere prediction) and as forth-telling (socio-religious criticism of present conditions): Harry wonders what the pensieve can have to do with the prophecy - but for Dumbledore examining Voldemort's past so as to understand him better has everything to do with the prophecy.

Anyway, a scholar like John Granger, whose main area is this realm (medieval lit), may have come across this book when it first came out back in 2003, but, being primarily in Biblical Studies, I have just come across it, but am very excited to delve further into such a central character in the magical world that informs the HP novels, and maybe from a distinctive angle of the concerns in studying prophecy in the Hebrew Bible.

PS
I asked yesterday and found out that we editorial assistants receive a complimentary copy of the 2 volumes of the Traditio journal on which we work - which is very exciting to me because last week I just finished pre-formatting an article on "occultic properties" in the "nature" thought of Aristotle (and how it was received by medieval philosophers such as Aquinas and the Muslim Aristotelean philosophers Avicenna and Averroes) - back in the day when thoughts on "magic" and "nature" were closer together and "magic" was thought to draw on "hidden" (the original meaning of the word "occult") properties that were, none-the-less, part of the concrete nature of a thing ... should be interesting stuff.
posted by Merlin at 4:30 PM


Comments on "Merlin finds Merlin: a Book Review/Plug"

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (July 10, 2010 9:18 AM) : 

I would love to see a post developing this idea further:
" back in the day when thoughts on "magic" and "nature" were closer together and "magic" was thought to draw on "hidden" (the original meaning of the word "occult") properties that were, none-the-less, part of the concrete nature of a thing"

 

Blogger Merlin said ... (July 31, 2010 9:34 PM) : 

Dear Anon,

I will see what I can do (it comes from one of the articles in a journal I am working on as an editorial assistant for this summer and next, which article is pretty extensive, so some condensing would be necessary, and probably not best for me to go making direct quotes from the article before publication and without concrete citation) ... but for here I can say that in talking to the friend who is the senior ed assist, who works more directly in medieval than I do, he was saying that much in medieval theology, philosophy and history has been worked over pretty thoroughly now, and medievalists are turning to the relatively less explored field of magical texts - which, because of the way everything was woven together through Aristotle's works, and how everything was connected, including the Physics, the "magical realm" impacts our understanding of the philosophy etc.

For here I will also say that, a great deal was wrapped up in concerns over astrology. It was believed that there were two sides ... astral influence on terrestrial physics and astrological movements as signs and portents of the future. Some thinkers (I believe Albert Magnus was one, but would have to check) were less concerned about the distinction, whereas Thomas Aquinas was very concerned about, while incorporating theory of astral influence, distinctly rejecting astrology as a form of divination.

It is that astral influence on terrestrial physics as it happens (rather than revealing before it happens) that relates to the hidden or "occult" properties in things (if a thing came to be under certain astral conditions, making a talisman under the same astral conditions might help one manage the occult properties)

 

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