Dr Beatrice Groves, Research Fellow and Lecturer at Trinity College, Oxford, and author of Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, has discovered clues that strongly suggest that Rowling (as well as her friend Sean Harris) had John Keats on her A-Level reading list as the featured poet.
In a Bathilda’s Notebook post, ‘Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and “Harry Potter”,’ Groves shares, in addition to a host of fascinating possible allusions to Keats in Rowling’s work, visible evidence that Rowling is a serious reader of John Keats, namely, a 2017 tweet from the Keats-Shelley House of their July 2015 Visitor’s Log page:
Groves deciphers in her post what Rowling, Neil Murray, and Sean Harris wrote and explains its significance of this discovery, a gem, as she notes, that “has not previously been noticed by anyone in the Harry Potter fandom.” She ends her exegesis with a pointed plea to readers that I wish to amplify here for readers who might not see it on Groves’ Notebook page at MuggleNet:
Rowling has never made an explicit reference to Keats in either her writing or interviews (nothing like the hat-tip to Jane Austen in the naming of Mrs. Norris, for example). This has made it more difficult to argue for Keats allusions than those of her acknowledged influences such as Shakespeare, Collette, or Dickens. But Keats is an absolute stalwart of the English literature curriculum in the UK: I have long suspected that Rowling studied him as part of her English A-level course – and, recently, I finally found the proof [in the 2017 tweet above]! Rowling has indeed long read and loved Keats; she studied him at A-Level, and hence he has been part of her literary consciousness for all her writing life….
I suspect that if we were to track down Rowling’s A-level syllabus, we’d find that “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” Lamia, and The Eve of St. Agnes were all part of the course. (Tracking this down, incidentally, is one of my long-term aims – and it is proving surprisingly difficult! If you or someone you know took English A-level in the 1980s and studied The Winter’s Tale, King Lear, and Keats – the three texts we now know she studied – I’d be very interested to hear from you – especially if you remember what your exam board was or the rest of the syllabus you studied!).
Do read the whole St Agnes post for Groves’ explanation of the importance of this discovery — and, if you have the information about Rowling-era A-Lists in the UK she asks for, please contact her via the email address at her Oxford University home page.
Congratulations to Dr Groves on this important find and an oversized thank you to her for sharing the allusions to Keats embedded in Rowling’s work that only a true Keat-ophile could have spotted! I love the suggestion in the 2017 tweet from the Keats-Shelley house that Rowling chose the phantom ‘K’ initial in her first pseudonym, ‘J. K. Rowling’ (she has no given middle name) as a tribute to the original J. K., John Keats.
Links to all of Dr Groves’ online writings can be found at this HogwartsProfessor.com ‘Beatrice Groves Pillar Post‘ page.
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