'Sleep Tight, Evangeline,' Miniature Psalters, and the Head of Persephone: A Conversation with Dimitra Fimi

Last November Nick and John introduced Dimitra Fimi, the magnificent maven of Tolkien Studies and Professor of Fantasy and Children's Literature at the University of Glasgow, to students of J. K. Rowling’s work. In that discussion, ‘Reading Rowling as Myth Maker and Myth Re-Writer: A Conversation with Dr Dimitra Fimi, (substack.com/home/post/p-179122496)’ she shared her thoughts about Rowling’s creative use of mythology in Harry Potter but especially in the Cormoran Strike series.
The Hogwarts Professor team asked her to join us again because of Rowling’s yuletide charm bracelet gift to Strike fandom and the recent announcement of the Strike 9 title, Sleep Tight, Evangeline. Her insights about the Longfellow poem as a possible even likely source of the next book’s epigraphs are engaging, but it is her expertise in the arcane area of miniature books as well as mythology and the light each shines on the two items attached to the last link of the charm bracelet that open up exciting possibilities
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Her idea is that the Psalter on the ninth link of the charm bracelet may actually be, unlike the other tokens on the bracelet’s nine links, an object that will play a part in the story, a miniature book. It turns out that one inch high books were something of an industry as curios in the 19th and early 20th century, a means of demonstrating technological mastery.
Dr Fimi discussed several projects she has been a part of in conjunctions with nano-technologists and the librarians at the University of Glasgow’s special collections division. The one that has the most obvious link to English literature is the ‘Tiny Alice project (tinyalice.gla.ac.uk),’ a contemporary effort to minituarize Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories to unfathomable minuteness:
The Tiny Alice Project has produced one of the world’s smallest books: a tiny reproduction of Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). All 78 pages and 26,764 words of the story have been transposed on to a tiny silicon chip, with each page just the width of a human hair (60 microns). Each individual letter is just two microns high, and made from pure gold!
Click on the icons below to find out more about the tinyalice.gla.ac.uk/project, the tinyalice.gla.ac.uk/technology behind it, and Lewis Carroll and his interest in the minuscule (tinyalice.gla.ac.uk/author). Via the tabs above you can also discover the long tradition of miniature books (tinyalice.gla.ac.uk/miniature-books), and teaching resources (tinyalice.gla.ac.uk/teaching-resources-2).
Clip: Twixter link to tweet above (x.com/UofGlasgow/status/1148184703750610944)
You can read Dr Fimi’s write-up of ‘Tiny Alice’ and the Miniature Book exhibition she curated at the University of Glasgow to highlight their special collection of these treasures at her 2019 blog post about them (dimitrafimi.org/2019/09/05/tiny-alice-and-mini…). Pictures that include annotated miniature books — copies in which their owners made notes in the miniscule margins of the printed pages — can be seen here (flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/albums/721577116…).
Later this week, Nick will be sharing his thoughts on Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book as the Ironbridge Murder story’s template within Hallmarked Man, John, Nick, Sandy Hope, and Ed Shardlow will be parsing the ring within Strike8’s Part Seven, and more about Longfellow’s Evangeline — stay tuned!
The Ten Questions Guiding Today’s Conversation with Dr Fimi with the Necessary Links for Fun Follow-Up:
(Intro) So everything Serious Strikers are thinking and talking about this month made me think of you, Dimitra, and to write you hat-in-hand with an invitation for your return to HogwartsProfessor to share your perspective, knowledge, and first impressions. Thank you for making time to join us!
1. (John) Jumping right in, then, two of the charms on the Strike9 or ‘Evangeline’ bracelet are Fimi areas of unique expertise: the Psalter and the Head of Persephone. I had urged readers to read your Miniature Books in Children’s Fantasy (dimitrafimi.substack.com/p/miniature-books-in-…) at A Kind of Elvish Craft: The Dimitra Fimi Substack Site (dimitrafimi.substack.com) in the links after our conversation here last November but I confess to being surprised still when you asked for the dimensions of the Psalter charm (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/the-christmas…) after Nick and I posted our thoughts on the subject. For those who haven’t read your ‘Miniature Books’ post, please share how one of the world authorities on the writing of J. R. R. Tolkien became interested in the smallest of texts, the ‘Little Books’ of 19th century printing.
2. (Nick) So you asked for the dimensions of the Psalter, you weren’t thinking as we were that the Psalter charms would be a box holding a folded up paper with a psalm, maybe two, inside it. You’re thinking it might actually be a complete Coverdale Psalter? Is that possible?
3. (John) What Nick and I hope to contribute to the nascent field of Rowling Studies, as you know, is a refocusing of the scholarship and the serious reader attention about her work on to her Lake Springs -- the biographical part of story inspiration -- her Shed Tools or intentional artistry, and the Golden Threads, the plot points and themes that run throughout her work, i.e., to bring Rowling Studies more in line with all literary scholarship about notable authors, living and dead.
One of the Golden Threads we talked about in our Kanreki series last summer was the ‘Embedded Text,’ the books inside a book topos that is in almost every book Rowling writes (Kanreki Golden Thread posts one (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/a-lake-and-sh…) and two (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/a-lake-and-sh…)). Detective fiction is always about an embedded text, the narrative ‘written’ by the criminal to prevent the detective from reading the real story of what happened and Rowling-Galbraith often makes this narrative an actual book (Dumbledore Chocolate Frog Card, Tales of Beedle the Bard, Bombyx Mori, Talbot’s ‘True Book,’ The Predictions of Tycho Dodonus, etc.). How do you think a Psalter miniaturized book would appear in a Strike novel?
4. (Nick) Has an author used a miniaturized book before in this way? Were there 19th Century Psalters that people wore as talismans or carried as the original Pocket Books?
5. (John) And what about the Head of Persephone charm on that bracelet? It’s on the ninth and last link, paired with that Psalter. You shared your first thought about the Persephone charm, a hopeful note, on the comment thread here (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/the-christmas…). As our go-to authority on Greek mythology, I’m dying to know more of your thinking about (a) the specific charm and its relation to the Cupid and Psyche myth-template to the Strike series, (b) its pairing with the Psalter, and (c) its position as the last charm on the bracelet. Do you still think it’s a sign that Robin will survive Sleep Tight, Evangeline?
6. (Nick) As someone immersed in mythological studies and more than familiar with Rowling’s use of myth, do you think the Jungian interpretation of that myth as the ‘actualization of feminine identity’ is a better lens through which to read that embedded text or is the Spenserian lens of Eros/Anteros, False Cupid and Cupid more helpful? Or is this not a case of Either/Or but Both/And? Valentines Day Special (hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/p/valentines-da…)
7. (John) Rowling is a close reader and admirer of J. R. R. Tolkien, though that is more evident in the clear pointers to his work in her own work than from her interviews. How …