Reading, Writing, Rowling

Literary alchemy provides clues to the romantic pairings in Harry Potter.  Why did Ron and Hermione, Remus and Tonks, and Bill and Fleur end up paired together? Literary alchemy holds the symbolic answers. Katy and John talk this month with Elizabeth Baird Hardy (Mayland Community College) and Beatrice Groves (Oxford University) about the alchemical pairings of elements that reveal themselves in the Harry Potter series and beyond.  John provides a short explanation of literary alchemy and why certain pairings - mercury and sulfur, for example, represented in Hermione and Ron - are seen as critically important. Humoral combinations (phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood) also symbolically represent the resolution of contraries, central to the alchemical idea of transformation through being broken down (solve) and then joining together again anew (coagula). Elizabeth and Bea connect these alchemical weddings to Shakespeare’s comedies (and Romeo and Juliet) as well as Christian tradition. We discuss not