Hogwarts Professor

PDF Transcript of Is Harry Potter a Schoolboy Novel? A Parody?

This talk, first posted at PotterPundits.com, is the fourth in a series about the unexamined ideas about Harry Potter that shape and, as often as not, restrict our thinking about the series.

Today we discuss the idea that Harry Potter’s adventures are best understood as Schoolboy fiction, say, something like Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown Schooldays or Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers, or a combination of this genre and one other, maybe ‘fairy tales’ or ‘High Fantasy.’

They are, of course, all that — but not just that. Have a look-and-listen or read the transcript above — and then let me know what you think in the comment boxes below!

Tomorrow, I’ll be talking about Fate and Free Will in Harry Potter and whether ‘Choice’ is the be all and end all many think it is. And I’ll be sharing news and dates for the Potter Pundit Summer Camp, four free classes in which I answer your questions about the world’s best selling novels. Talk with you then!

Potter Pundits Summer School, four free online classes with yours truly and a live webinar for Q&A, will be rowling out in a little over a week. To get you ready for that, I’ll be posting my PotterPundit.com videos here at HogwartsProfessor this week. Look for a survey about what you want to be sure I cover in those classes in your inboxes later this week!

We started a conversation last week about unexamined and prevalent Harry Potter ideas that shape our understanding of The Boy Who Lived’s seven adventures while also obscuring other ways of seeing them. That first post in the series revealed the obvious advantages and the not-so-obvious disadvantages of looking at the series as Children’s Literature (‘Kid Lit’). Check it out here if you are joining us mid-stream and missed that.

Today let’s talk about the idea of Harry Potter as seven distinct, stand-alone novels. We know there’s an over-arching story that connects them, especially after the return of the Dark Lord in Goblet of Fire, but is it really, as Rowling has said, just one story in seven parts? What does the predominant idea of the books as a seven part series obscure in the artistry and meaning of the work?

Quite a bit actually! Let me know what you think by shooting me an email at John at HogwartsProfessor dot com or just writing a comment in the boxes below.

Click Here for pdf of ‘Seven Books or One? Transcript

For pdf of ‘Top Twelve Rowling Story Sources Every Potter Pundit Needs to Read (and Re-Read)’ simply move cursor to side of screen for LeadBox Form

Premiere Potter Pundit and Friend of this Blog Dr. Amy H. Sturgis has edited a special issue of Apex, “a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine featuring original, mind-bending short fiction from many of the top pros of the field.”

Prof Sturgis, as many of you know, is a published authority on Rowling, Tolkien, and Lovecraft, on American history, on dystopian and science fiction, all things Star Wars, fandoms and cross-media adaptations, and Native American subjects. Which is to say, the closest thing to a Renaissance scholar I know.

She was a frequent guest on MuggleNet Academia because her areas of expertise were relevant in every other episode we recorded (not to mention that she is brilliant, funny, and super savvy about what works on podcasts). The MNet show, ‘Harry Potter and the Indian in the Cupboard,’ which featured her insights about Rowling’s gaffes in her PotterMore ‘History of Ilvermorny’ was the most down-loaded show in that popular program’s history.

I learned today about and spent the morning reading the special issue of Apex mentioned above (and listening to Dr Sturgis read a short story by Allison Mills as well), an issue devoted to Indigenous American fantasists. Why is that worth your time? From the introduction:

Native voices are not safe. They may be beautiful and thought-provoking and wise; they are also inherently disruptive, because by existing they are inconvenient, even threatening, to the comfortable stories told in and by the mainstream.

I see the rise of Indigenous futurism today as a natural development, because the First Nations have always looked forward; that is why they have survived all attempts to erase them. For that matter, genre fiction has always stood at the periphery, observing and critiquing the majority and the mundane. The marriage is a natural one.

I finished reading Killers of the Flower Moon last night, the history of the reign of terror that the Osage Nation in Oklahoma suffered from 1918 to at least 1931. No doubt reading about a nightmare in the early years of my adopted home’s statehood colored my thinking about and my agreement with Dr Sturgis’ thesis about Native voices and their “natural marriage” with fantasy fiction. I recommend the issue to you with the hope, almost an expectation, that you will enjoy the challenge and depth of it as I have.

Get your copy here.

I received a note this morning from the lead person of the Edinboro Harry Potter Festival with some details about my travel and lodging (I’m speaking and hope to see you in the great northwest of Penn’s Woods this September!). He said in an aside that he was heading to Volant, Pennsylvania, about an hour down the road, for their ten hour ‘Potter Fest’ today. [Here is the Volant Fest Facebook page and a newspaper article telling all about it.]

Could there be a better town for a Potter Fest than one named ‘Volant’? There is a Potter County in Pennsylvania, “God’s Country,” but no Potter municipality or ‘Dark Lord Ville.’ Volant is the greatest by default. Curiously, the article and the Facebook pages don’t spell out the connection. ‘Volant’ is a name that plays an important part in the Hogwarts Saga.

Jo Rowling’s mother’s maiden name was ‘Anne Volant.’ Beatrice Groves, in her Literary Allusion in Harry Potter (p 138), quotes Rowling as having said that, because of the blow her mother’s death was to her, “she [Rowling] took the inspiration for Voldemort’s name from her mother’s maiden name because Volant (‘flying’) was the first French word she knew,” i.e., mort de Volant.

There is more to this choice than that — but there is that! I suspect someone in town gets the Dark Lord connection because the Fest is named “The Festival That Shall Not Be Named.” As it is planned in conjunction with a bar crawl down the small town’s Main Street provocatively called “Fantastic Drinks and Where to Find Them,” perhaps after a few Potter Potions the truth about Volant’s relationship with Lord Thingy will be spoken aloud…

Wish I could be there! Happy Harry Potter Birthday weekend, everyone, especially those celebrating at the Fests in Volant and Aurora, and the Literary Conference in London!