Let’s talk about Rowling’s use of traditional chiastic structure, what anthropologist Mary Douglas called ‘Ring Composition.’ John travels to his backyard Mongolian ger, the archetypal circular architectural form, to deliver a firehose introduction to the four essentials of ring writing. He uses slides to depict the structure of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as his brief ‘for instance’ of how Rowling chooses to organize her stories and he provides a list of links (below!) for further reading. Enjoy!

New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here’s what we’re doing:

On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.

Tomorrow? John and Nick act on the reader suggestion that we give a Lake and Shed reading of Tales of Beedle the Bard. Can the Hogwarts textbook, Fantastic Beasts, be far behind? Stay tuned!

Links to posts mentioned in today’s Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:

* The Hogwarts Professor Ring Composition Pillar Post

* The Ring Inside the Ring of Order of the Phoenix: The Department of Mysteries Gauntlet

* Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle (Lulu.com)

* J. K. Rowling’s ‘G-Spot’ and ‘Triple Play:’ The Lake & Shed Secret of Her Success

The Running Grave’s Structure: A Master Class in Ring Composition

* Running Grave: Ring Reading Index

* Reading 'Running Grave' as the End of the Strike Series (A)

* Reading 'Running Grave' as the End of the Strike Series (B)

* Reading 'Running Grave' as the End of the Strike Series (C)

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