Jordan College is a fictional college. It exists in the Oxford in a parallel universe to our own, and is the home of the trilogy's young heroine Lyra Belacqua (or Silvertongue).
The location and layout of Jordan College in the parallel universe is analogous to the location of Exeter College, Philip Pullman's alma mater, in the real city of Oxford. However, unlike the fictional college, Exeter College is not the oldest (it is the fourth-oldest), nor is it the richest college of the University of Oxford.
As described by Pullman, the college is something of an exaggerated version of a real Oxford college, rambling above and below ground in a motley selection of buildings, cellars and tunnels constructed over several centuries:
- What was above ground was only a small fraction of the whole. Like some enormous fungus whose root-system extended over acres, Jordan (finding itself jostling for space above ground with St Michael's College on one side, Gabriel College on the other, and Bodley's Library behind) had begun, sometime in the Middle Age, to spread below the surface. Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for some yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above; Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone.
(Pullman, Northern Lights)
Read more about this topic: Locations In His Dark Materials, Locations
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