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Is Harry Potter Christian?
Because of the prominence of witches and
wizardry in the Harry Potter books, Rowling’s work has been the subject of debate
and criticism from some religious factions,
“but I think it is very clear that she is not
anti-Christian,” McVeigh said.
He explores these ideas in “Is Harry Potter
Christian?” scheduled for publication in
an upcoming edition of the literary journal
“Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature,” published by Marquette University.
Coleridge, like Lewis an Anglican, saw the
Bible as literature and did not promote a
literalist reading of Biblical texts, McVeigh
said.
“How you read Harry Potter has something
to do with how you read the Bible,” he continued. A reader’s response to the Rowling
books depends in part on whether the reader
accepts wizardry as a metaphoric device or
insists on a literal meaning.
Religion and Literature
McVeigh’s interest in religion and literature
dates back to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where he wrote
his Ph.D. dissertation on the relationship
between Coleridge’s literary theory and
his politics and religion. McVeigh has published a number of articles on the religious
underpinnings of literature and finds that
the themes he has been exploring for years
recently have become “hot” topics in literary circles.
“Does literary theory have religious roots?
How political is literature? These and
related questions are subjects of considerable attention these days,” he said.
By Jennifer Hamlin Church
What do the wildly popular Harry Potter books have
in common with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,”
that classic of 19th century British poetry?
More than you might think, according to
Professor Dan McVeigh, a specialist in the
works of British Romantic poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and a fan of the J. K. Rowling books about the adventures of a young
wizard.
Coleridge, C. S. Lewis (best known as the
author of “The Chronicles of Narnia”) and
J. R. R. Tolkien (creator of the “Lord of the
Rings” trilogy) were all men of faith who
wrote fantasy stories to explore the depths of
the heart and soul.
“Rowling is coming out of the literary tradition established by Coleridge and Wordsworth, and followed by Lewis and Tolkien,”
McVeigh said recently.
Rowling does much the same thing with
Harry Potter, McVeigh explained. “She is
writing in a Christian Romantic tradition
that has a lot to do with children, and magic,
and transformation through imagination.”
Staying involved in the scholarship of his
field is important to McVeigh as a means
of broadening his knowledge and deepening his teaching. “I like to see scholarship as
something that goes along with and complements teaching,” he said.
“Scholarship is often seen to be a kind of
enemy of teaching” at many schools, he
said, especially at large institutions that
reward faculty for research and publication
but provide little incentive for good teaching. “There’s a definite ‘publish or perish’
mentality at a lot of larger schools.”
By contrast, at Siena Heights “we call ourselves a teaching institution, and we are,” he
said. “We place a high value on teaching.”
With typical four-course teaching loads
every semester, however, faculty have less
time for scholarly inquiry.