Nick Jeffery and John Granger met up last Sunday — St David’s Day in Wales and the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy — to talk about John’s first Hallmarked Man names post, ‘The Allegorical Cryptonyms of The Hallmarked Man, Part One: Ten Cratylic Character Names and their Embedded Meanings.’ In addition to reviewing the high points of that post, Nick offered his insights about the first names John tried to decipher and John added context to the ‘Name Game’ Rowling Readers globally have been playing for 29 years now, Saturn return.
Seven high spots of their rollicking conversation:
Nick shared his belief that Rowling creates the character names she does as much for herself as a writer as for her readers. If the character matches the name, as he sees it, then she has a constant reminder of what that imaginary man or woman does, says, or won’t do or say;
John pushed back on that, first because we’ve been told she changed character names while writing them, but more because of what a name is, namely, an image or icon through which the reader experiences the archetypal reference to which Rowling is referring. He thought this was complementary to Rowling’s other Shed tools (alchemy, mythology, ring writing, Christian symbolism, etc.) and argued that, as with the other anagogical artistry, our work in consciously excavating the hidden meaning of names was in keeping with the Hogwarts Professor corrective mission (Eliot’s "We had the experience but missed the meaning" challenge in The Dry Salvages);
Nick through light into John’s American blind spots with respect to Rupert (Army jargon! and a comic strip bear), Jensen (a posh car in the 60’s that had maintenance issues), and the Welsh undercurrents of Tyler, Griffiths, Ian (Ianto!), and Powell. And the River Fleet, a now invisible tributary channel flowing through the heart of London to the Thames!
John supplemented what he wrote in the post about the mythological backdrop to the Lindvall, Powell, and Griffiths names with what he thinks now are Christian symbolism, too, especially with respect to the love Tyler shows to Jolanda/Chloe;
John expanded, too, on Names being another Rowling method of “exteriorization,” a subject he covered at length in his ‘The Christmas Pig: A Quadrigal Reading’ in that epic post’s anagogical section, and the importance of that artistry in working the magic of transformation readers experience in her work;
Nick put John’s mind at ease about ‘Ian Griffiths,’ the name of Hallmarked Man’s sex trafficking, short, psychopathic rape-murderer, being a cipher for ‘John Granger;’ and
The two agree in conclusion, after an intense back and forth about the Peter-John Rule in Rowling Studies as applied to Strike 8, that the first ten names that John discussed in his post seem to confirm the Hogwarts Professor working-hypothesis that the last three books will be a trilogy involving many of the same characters to resolve unresolved questions and mysteries of the first seven book ring-set.
John and Nick both referenced the work of Professor Beatrice Groves: check out her exegetical work on the name of The Silkworm’s ‘Owen Quine’ here, her post about Rowling’s connections with the ‘Never Forget’ Campbell clan, and her chapter on Cratylic Names in Literary Allusion in Harry Potter.
Nick is working on another ‘Rowling Reading’ segment about a Hallmarked Man epigraph source, Matthew Arnold’s Merope: A Tragedy, John has more Strike 8 names in queue to decipher, most notably Danny DeLeon and Oliver Branfoot, John and Nick are both charting Part Nine of Hallmarked in which the meaning of names plays a critical role, and Nick is writing the itinerary for a bonus trip to Rowling’s home town that will be a bonus in the Hogwarts Professor online class in preparation.
As always, thank you for your subscription to Hogwarts Professor as well as thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts in the comment boxes below. Stay tuned!
