From: bleablah@mume.invalid   
      
   Troels Forchhammer expressed precisely :   
      
   > That, however, does not mean anything in itself with respect to   
   > Rowling's work. She has used many of the various superstitions with   
   > which Men have fooled themselves over time, and she has demonstrated   
   > a very broad (but nowhere very deep) knowledge of a wide range of   
   > common folklore, superstitions and other false beliefs that are, in   
   > modern thought, associated with magic or the supernatural.   
      
   Yes but has been adamant not to express those as her beliefs.   
      
   > There is no doubt that Rowling has been using a bit of alchemical   
   > beliefs when she constructed the Harry Potter stories (just take the   
   > titular object of the first book),   
      
   I see that you have not read the Potter series.   
      
   > but as with so much other literary   
   > criticism (an in my experience particularly source criticism), there   
   > is a sad tendency for those who themselves know something of the area   
   > to exaggerate wildly the influence that it has had on the author.   
   > This can even be found in academic literary critique.   
      
   Yes.   
      
   > It is certainly the case with the influence of alchemical thinking on   
   > Rowling's writings, where I have seen proposals that are ridiculously   
   > far out there.   
      
   I am sure this is true.   
      
   > Yet the people who propose them refuse to see them as   
   > other than perfectly reasonable: they insist that Rowling is as   
   > obsessed about alchemy as themselves and that her reasoning is as   
   > twisted as theirs (and though her reasoning isn't always sound, she's   
   > still far from that level of discontinuous leaps of broken   
   > associations).   
      
   Point?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)