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In my Harry Potter course, my students have completed individual research projects on a variety of predecessors to the series, including Jill Murphy’s work and Neil Gaiman’s. (I also teach different books by Gaiman in other classes.) There’s quite a difference between inspecting ancestor texts and claiming plagiarism, however! Perhaps some people need to reread Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” about the common ingredients shared in the cauldron of story.
Compost, compost, compost. This is why we read books of other eras and books of other cultures. We cannot escape the compost heap of our times. I went to see BEOWULF and had the fact brought home in a unavoidable manner. The culture effect is one we can only become aware of by viewing other cultures effects on their art and stories and literature. Neither JKR nor God escaped the scandal of particularity.
John, Professor, Sir, did you have an advance copy of the PIED PIPER OF ATHEISM by chance? Amazon doesn’t show it. B&N shows pre-order status. Ignatius Press says back-ordered. What’s up with all that. (Though I will pre-order. I have found the trailers on TV to be models of subliminality to the informed about Pullman’s beliefs by Pullman.)
PIED PIPER OF ATHEISM by Peter Vere and Sandra Miesel is in press and will ship shortly. John saw Miesel’s manuscript, not the whole book. A source familiar with the matter tells me so.
Miesel has an article about the pitfalls of Pullman in this week’s OUR SUNDAY VISITOR and in the December CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT.
John — This is the second time in a week that you have given us a hyperlink to an article that references C.S. Lewis’ book, “The Discarded Image.” The first was your wonderful essay on Harry Potter and the Inkings (thank you!). The second was Michael Ward’s also wonderful essay on Narnia’s Secret. Coincidence? Accident? I think not. Having just finished reading “The Discarded Image” myself (coincidentally), I have been mulling over how “medieval” the Harry Potter books are in the use of symbols as a means to communicate to the reader’s imagination/intuition in an extraordinarily powerful way. And it seems to me that Chretien de Troyes’ Grail romance may be analogous. De Troyes in creating his Grail story, not only wrote a great story that was wildly popular, but he also managed, in the process, to transform the courtly romance/adventure genre (which was largely amoral and unspiritual at the time), into a deeply spiritual story of the search for the Grail/God. . . And that reminds me of your recent musings on your hopes for how the Harry Potter stories will influence its readers in turning them toward more spiritual pursuits and thoughts. If the past is any predictor for the future, then I would surmise that Rowlings’ works will live on in people’s imaginations, much as the Grail stories have, while the Pullmans of the world become a footnote. I assume that the analogies between Parsifal and Harry Potter have been examined at length by others, but its a new topic to me and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I cannot thank you enough for HogPro and the way you encourage us to keep seeking and thinking. Blessings on you.
As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. I would add, there are just fresh ways of expressing it. That’s where originality comes in.
As the poem goes, The child is the father of the man. We are all the sum of our influences. How could we be anything else? That doesn’t necessarily make for bad derivation (although there’s plenty of that out there). I agree with Inked, we’re all on a historical, literary, cultural compost heap, a rich wealth to draw from. And Rowling did this in a brilliant way.
I, however, am not mining the cat box…