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diggMove over, Dickens, JKR wants your seat
The seven volumes of Harry Potter are a triumphant achievement of literary genius.
Joanne Kathleen Rowling is a literary genius. Nothing like her Harry Potter series has ever before appeared in the annals of classical children's literature. In standard literary terms alone her huge, seven-volume, comic novel is as extraordinary as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings; and, unlike Tolkien's magnum opus, it contains a great many active, robust, feisty major characters who are female. The likelihood is that it will be alive and well centuries after all of us have left this earth.
As students with sound literary training have known from the start, Rowling blends fantasy and realism brilliantly, incorporating features of fairy tale, myth, legend, fable, and epic seamlessly to create a magical experience for readers. Her plots are wondrous — so full of surprises, so replete with risks and dangers, that previously reluctant male readers are carried away, riveted.
Her enormous cast of characters—see especially the Harry Potter Lexicon — almost beggars belief, not simply because her protagonists are uniquely rounded and memorable, but because so many relatively minor characters have distinctive qualities that make them immediately recognisable even when all they do is flit past or — like Myrtle — endlessly repeat one or two characteristic actions.
Each major setting — 4 Privet Drive, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Diagon Alley, the Burrow, 12 Grimmauld Place — is vividly present. Linguistically —as translations of the series into Ancient Greek, Latin, Welsh, Parsi, Russian, Hebrew, Hungarian, and goodness knows how many other recondite languages demonstrate — the books are not merely resonant, but preternaturally clever.
PhD theses are likely to be written on the nomenclature: for a start, Dolores Umbridge (a hubristic sad sack), Horace Slughorn, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, Remus Lupin, Filius Flitwick, Stan Shunpike, Cornelius Fudge, Bellatrix Lestrange, Mad-Eye Moody, Minerva McGonagall, Sirius Black (not Aldebaran Raven), Godric Gryffindor, and Hogwarts (a flower, meaning lily; the reverse of the hideous creature the wart-hog).
Puns, witticisms, and multi-faceted allusions abound. In Volume 4, for example, Durmstrang, a Magical Institute, features prominently. Its star athlete, Viktor Krum, who is Bulgarian, has a Germanic manner of speech punctuated by words like 'vas' or 'vat'. The allusion is to the Sturm und Drang literary movement linked with Goethe and Schiller. In Volumes 5, 6, and 7, an idea explored in Oscar Wilde's compelling fairy tale, "The Fisherman and his Soul", is fleshed out and elaborated with Rowling's unique imaginative flair. The Wilde idea — directly linked with the conception of Voldemort — is that a human being cannot detach himself from his own soul without being destroyed.
More unusual still: just as Harry Potter himself moves, volume by volume, from childhood to young adulthood — from age 11 to age 17 — so does the style and subject matter of each book become increasingly complex, adult, and sophisticated (in the positive sense of this word).
Early on, for the sake of verisimilitude and also for the sake of young readers who need unambiguous signals, baddies and goodies are clearly distinguished. Later, as the characters and devoted readers age, it becomes harder to be certain about figures whose motives, impulses, and aims are much harder to read.
Pre-pubescent children from the age of eight upwards who manage the first four volumes with relative ease — whether they pore over them themselves, or whether these volumes are read aloud to them — cannot and should not be expected to handle the darkness of Books 5, 6, and 7 without significant pedagogical input from responsible parents, teachers, and relatives.
Even then, these latter volumes are likely to be over their heads: scary and in key respects incomprehensible. At a local showing of the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which corresponds with Volume 5, I warned a young father sitting next to me (a stranger) that the one-year-old on his lap would probably be scared half to death by it. He was sceptical; but when — roughly midway through — she began to cry and hide her eyes, he took her out. When he did not return, his wife also left the theatre.
Thematically, the Potter series is very demanding. It is deep (many well-intentioned adults just "don't get it"), relying -- in postmodernist terminology -- on a "sub-text" anchored in Old and New Testament wisdom and major works of adult literature, from Sophocles and Aeschylus to Dante to Shakespeare and beyond. The framing quotations for Volume 7 come from The Libation Bearers, by Aeschylus, and a Christian meditation on death by William Penn called More Fruits of Solitude. Ancient ideas about honour, nobility, glory, and self-sacrifice underlie its every twist and turn.
As Jeff Presberg has trenchantly observed elsewhere in MercatorNet, it is fundamentally "about" the Order of Love. The title of my own reflection, taken verbatim from a line in Volume 7, p. 266, marking the Dumbledore family's grave site, was originally Matthew 6: 21.
Among the large moral issues explored — eg, the nature of friendship, the proper exercise of authority, bigotry and the most chilling species of tribalism and clubbyness, the inevitability of betrayal in life on earth, the ripple effects of ignorance, incomplete knowledge, and poor judgment, and the claims of innocence versus the temptation to opt for power, status, and total control -- none is more fascinating than the increasingly subtle and complex matter of genuine versus fraudulent authority.
It simply is not true, as rigidly proud or fearful souls without literary talent or knowledge have maintained, that Harry and his closest companions do not "respect" authority. They circumvent rules and regulations, as Antigone and many of her living heirs have done, for the sake of a higher good. Instinctively, they spot key differences between adults in senior positions who can be trusted and those who -- in crucial respects -- cannot be.
Here is an early, germane interchange in Book 7, witnessed by Ron Weasley and other members of his family, between a pompous, influential, shrewd, semi-deluded bureaucrat named Rufus Scrimgeour—the most recent head of the Ministry for Magic—and Harry Potter. Among other things, it reveals JKR's mastery of dialogue, her impeccable timing, and her characteristically vigorous humour:
"'You go too far!' shouted Scrimgeour, standing up; Harry jumped to his feet too. Scrimgeour limped towards Harry and jabbed him hard in the chest with the point of his wand: it singed a hole in Harry's T-shirt like a cigarette.
"'Oi,' said Ron, jumping up and raising his own wand, but Harry said, 'No! Do you want to give him an excuse to arrest us?'
"'Remembered you're not at school, have you?' said Scrimgeour, breathing hard into Harry's face. "Remembered that I am not Dumbledore, who forgave your insolence and insubordination? You may wear that scar like a crown, Potter, but it is not up to a seventeen-year-old boy to tell me how to do my job! It's time you learned some respect!'
"'It's time you earned it,' said Harry."
Especially in this final volume, when they no longer have Albus Dumbledore — an exemplary teacher by vocation — to help and support them, Harry and his closest friends, Ron and Hermione, disappoint, frustrate, and confuse one another. This, Rowling clearly suggests, is what happens in life even to formidably brave, highly intelligent, heroically decent people whose love for one another is bedrock.
Like his father, James, Harry Potter clearly believes that it is a matter of honour to trust one's friends; yet there are times when their utter bewilderment about what it is best to do exceeds his own. Often, in the midst of grave crises, he has NO plan. Slowly, strategies for overcoming evil evolve in him. Heart and mind, united in Harry, unite with the fundamentally reliable minds and hearts of his followers in Dumbledore's Army.
There is more to be said about Rowling's moral vocabulary than a brief reflection, by its nature, can disclose. For the time being, one observation will have to suffice. In the darker volumes, the word "loathing" appears at critical junctures. It is linked, and sometimes synonymous, with the words "revulsion" and "hatred". One telling example is the look on the face of Severus Snape when he uses the Adava Kedavra spell on Dumbledore near the end of Volume 6. What this look means, we don't fully know until the final section of Volume 7 unfurls.
Nowhere does Rowling say directly, either in this volume of her novel or any other, that the only legitimate object of self-hatred for human beings is our own sins. But it would be surprising if she were not on intimate terms with the beautiful medieval hymn, Come Down, O Love Divine. It encapsulates her deepest implicit message -- on burning ardour and the most profound needs of the human soul. And like the series in its entirety, it harmoniously transcends the more usual barriers of time and culture.
Dr Susan Moore has been an inveterate reader all her life. Her PhD on Henry James (University of Sydney 1972) was revised and eventually published as a book in the University of Queensland Press Scholars' Library. For the greater part of her adult life she has taught the 15-25 age group, written books, and published articles on Adult and Children's Literature, Education, religious thought, and the history of ideas. Raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she has lived in Sydney for 40 years, following her marriage to a West Australian theoretical physicist whom she met at Harvard. She has two adult children and, so far, three grandsons.
owling’s asset, for me, is her writing style. Honestly, of the three, she has the more interesting way of writing. If you think of it, the Harry Potter series really has a very simple plot--and to some extent, not really very unique--not really as deep as Tolkien or Lewis. (She borrowed a lot of concepts from Lewis and Tolkien.) But for so simple a plot, she has managed to get people to read her books in one sitting--and really, this is how one feels when reading her books. Not so much because of the plot but her way with words and the characters she has created. (Her greatest masterpiece--Severus Snape). You can relate to them in a very personal way--more than any other character in Tolkien’s or Lewis’ series.
So while Tolkien is able to create a magical world in great detail, representing the real human condition, and Lewis can represent the ideals of Christianity for children to not even notice (in fact, those embedded things are probably what gets some adults interested), there’s Rowling who entertains us with her writing style and characters we can either empathize with or relate to in a very personal way.
But while I do love the Harry Potter series and actually found it to be the most gripping of the series above, there was one recurring theme that I found to be unrealistic and to some extent a bit post-modern. From books 1 to 7, Rowling employed a subtle kind of Kids Rule theme reminiscent of today’s popular media content. Of the various themes in her series, this is one of those, which could possibly affect its timelessness. But it ended well and things were properly concluded so...maybe not. We’ll see. Let’s just hope she stops making surprising revelations outside the 7 series.
I am not surprised why many people tend to compare and put together Rowling, Lewis and Tolkien. Rowling herself has admitted that both Tolkien and Lewis served as inspirations for her series. And yes, all are and were great writers--the fact that people continues to read them and talk about them is testament to this. Various people will always have something to say--but the fact that they are actually spending time to think of what to say about any of them attests to the fact that they are all great writers that will forever--read and discussed by various people of different cultures and all ages.
But each has a very unique and specific contribution. In terms of coming up with a unique and interesting plot with vivid descriptions and detail is definitely Tolkien’s realm. Tolkien successfully gave life to the world of LOTR filled with symbolisms and allegories that represent the human condition—thus, making it timeless and true. (I personally think his works are more timeless and real that Greek Mythology--but that’s another discussion).
Lewis, on the other hand, is quite similar to Tolkien. He simply decided to more specifically target children. Although his series is also full of symbolisms mirroring the Christian faith, to be honest, the writing style and storylines are less exciting and gripping for an adult. You know it’s good when you read it, but it is a bit predictable and you more or less know what will be happening next. It is definitely something that one should read first before Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Reading it last will be anti climatic for an adult. This does not mean, however, that Lewis pales in comparison to Tolkien. It’s just that the Narnia series targets very young children. My kids read it when they were 5 and 6--just last year. It was perfect for them, but a bit of an effort for me. (I, unfortunately, read the series late in life. I read LOTR first, then Harry Potter and the Narnia series last.)
continued…
Compare Rowling to Dickens ... oh my god.....
Rowling to take Dickes ‘seat ??? AH AH AH ......
Poor Dickens, he must move in his grave ...
Poor Rowling who thinks she writes like Dickens ....
I don’t think JKR could measure up to Charles Dickens. It’s not fair to place them side by side and even say Rowling could take Dicken’s place. They’re more than a hundred years apart and I think Rowling’s books should be tested by time first before we could make hasty judgments like that. Everyone’s entitled to her own opinion, so I would not say anything about the article itself. I just don’t think the tag line’s appropriate and fair. Dickens is Dickens. No one and nothing can move his place. Not even a big time bestseller.
IMO, i may not compare rowling with tolkien, but that doesn’t take anyway anything from the fact that she’s a remarkable writer, even a genius. there’s no monopoly to the title of genius, and there are various levels and categories of it. so rowlings may not be in tolkien’s league, but she’s a genius all the same, in a class of her own. Let’s stop this pettiness and give credit where and when it’s due.
if the books books are so bad, why do they have a following of millions of ardent readers/fans (as do tolkien’s books)? i think their witness is testament to rowlings’s talent as a writer. call me ignorant, but no book can make is so far on just pure hype or fluke.
anybody who feels that the potter books are unchristian, even outright satanic, is in for a rude awakening in the seventh book. unfortunately, such critics have probably never opened any of the books, talkless of the last, to learn that truth.
more on david’s posts: if i stand before God on judgement day and i’m asked about reading the potter books, i’ll say with pride that i not only read them, i bought them, and read them over and over- 5 times over, still counting (just like i’v bin doing with LOTR and Silmarillion, btw). they’re that good.
Even though the book uses magic as its underlying foundation, the setting of the whole magic thing has more in common with the mutants of Marvel comics to realworld witchcraft. put in another way, harry potter and his friends are the Xmen- but with magic.
i love the potter books, above all because they make me laugh. rowlings is very witty. having actually read the books, i can say that i found nothing that contradicted my beliefs as a catholic in them. instead i found one single theme that upholds it: love. a taboo in today’s world. not romantic love, but love of neighbour. IMO, rowlings sneaked the bitter pill in the savoury meal, and our secular world did not realize what it was devouring until it had swallowed the message hook line and sinker
Dear Mrs Moore,
Your article was nice but I think it would be unfair to compare Mrs J.R. Rowlings with Professor J.R.R. Tolkein. I have read all books on Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings. In comparison, both had different aims but the Lord of the Rings is richer in terms of culture and imagination. I would gladly recommend Harry Potter to my friends, but I think Tolkein enriches more and has a lasting effect: I will tell you not to cry for not all tears are evil.
Susan, happily, through this article I have been introduced to some of your essays here on mercator and elsewhere--beautiful, enriching work--what a great service you give to parents and children’s lit! I will pass on.
Go Susan!!!
You Rock! I loved your article. I love the works of Lewis, Tolkien, Dickens and Rowling. Most of all i love how each of these artists speak of universal and timeless themes-proving that the postmodern culture we live in has not totally banished our longing for eternal truths and virtue.
Have been in the US for a week and have just caught up with this site.
For the record: A sentence in my Potter piece refers to the ‘title’ of my reflection, which comes from Matthew. In its published version, the title was altered. My own title was “Where Your Treasure Is, There Will Your Heart be Also.”
Mary Limbers’ remarks about Sturm und Drang were very interesting and useful. Thank you, Mary, for this elaboration.
For the record, David: I have published literary criticism for 33 years, spanning works from Ancient Greece to the present in the fields of World and Children’s Literature in English. I would not use any word lightly, least of all the word ‘genius’.
Nor would I compare Rowling with Tolkien or Lewis in even a passing way if I hadn’t taught Children’s Lit at the tertiary level or written about it for many years. A lot of study has gone into those passing comparisons. Many thanks to Jeff for helping out, and especially thanks for your remarks about northern tales.
For Mary:
It is not the validity of my fondness for a view that should be measured it is the validity of the view itself: Why didn’t you measure it? Anyway to pursue what genius might mean.
You imply you have a meaning for genius by first appealing to its etymology then its evolution and finally to Goethe. Goethe suggests some qualities, things like greatness, passion, creativity. Good for you Goethe! I wonder how they differ in class from other qualities like, for example, transcendence, originality, superiority? There are surely more.
If genius is some characteristic of an individual then what characteristic is it (or are there many)? I suggested some and Goethe has suggested some. What are you suggesting?
To emphasize my concern let’s take the phrase: “time of genius or contemporary period of genius denoting the glorification of the ‘genuine genius’ “ and apply the only definitive thing that you have written in your comment which
is genius being: “characteristic of an individual”. For brevity I’m going to call that “quirkyness”.
We get: “time of quirkyness or contemporary period of quirkyness denoting the glorification of the ‘genuine quirkyness’ “. Odd isn’t it? As an explanation of genius it’s hardly useful.
According to David “Everyone understands only what he or she reasons over.”
I would like to refute many of David’s points regarding J.K.Rowling’s work but I will restrict myself to commenting on one. David says that he is “fond of the view that to be a genius the artist must excel in many ways.” Why are we to take David’s fondness for any particular view as valid? Who in fact determines the meaning of any word? Words,like language,evolve. However the etymology of the word genius is quite interesting and possibly instructive. Its original meaning, from the Latin genius, meant “guardian spirit which watches over each person from birth” and was in frequent colloquial use in Roman times. It was during the renaissance that the word genius evolved to being characteristic of an individual and by the late 1700’s the word had almost entirely transformed to being such.
Wolfgang Von Goethe is perhaps history’s finest example of evangelizing the word in its new context, to Goethe genius was very specifically a quality, and a quality of greatness, a product of passion and mad creativity. It is notable that the school of literary philosophy that Goethe belonged to was called Sturm und Drang as this period was also called a “time of genius or contemporary period of genius denoting the glorification of the ‘genuine genius’ as the original notion of a superior human being and artist, the true creator of art.”
Culture uses language to both reflect on and manipulate society. I wonder if J.K. Rowling had any of this in mind when she used a play on the phrase Sturm und Drang to create the Durmstrang magic school in the Harry Potter books. Or was she perhaps commenting on a typical Sturm und Drang work, where the primary character is driven to action not by pursuit of noble means nor by true motives, but by revenge and greed facilitated by violence, like the Death Eater who was head of Durmstrung. Maybe to David this sort of subtle illusion to other themes is passé but then according to Goethe “Everyone hears only what he understands.”
Congratulations on your article about Harry Potter. I agree with (almost) every word, except for the suggestion of the origin of the name “Hogwarts”. I have checked the OED but can only find “hogweed “ and “hogwort”. If, however, you consult “How to be Topp” by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, (London, Max Parrish, 1954) and turn to p.31 in the chapter “How to be Topp in Latin”, you will find a portrait of Nigel Molesworth wearing a laurel wreath and toga, pen poised over a manuscript, sitting in front of a broken pillar which he is using as a desk.
Tandem novum quidem et inauditum consilium capit…
Simple eh hav a hart like all lat. it is just all BOSH.
Sometimes they think they will trick you into liking lat. by having a latin pla. Latin plas are like this -
THE HOGWARTS
by
Marcus Plautus Molesworthus
Sene One. The villa of Cotta at Rome. Enter Corticus a dreary old slave and Radix his mate.
Corticus: (laying a skin of wine on the sideboard) Eheu!
(The headmaster and all lat. masters who watch roar with larffter.)
Radix: Eheu!
(More larffter they are in stitches)
Corticus: Eheu!
Radix: Eheu!
(The curtain falls as the masters roll helplessly in the aisles.)
There is more, on similar lines, but I think the title is conclusive.
Best wishes,
Janet Kovesi Watt
I’m fond of the view that to be a genius the artist must excel in many ways. Some of the hallmarks of genius are originality, superior talents or gifts in the chosen medium or field and a capacity to transcend the work of other artists in the same field.
Does genre have anything to do with genius? I doubt it and the work of artists throughout the ages shows us so.
Shakespeare was a genius, leastways by my understanding of such a label. Shakespeare was both a playwright and a poet, the genre (I loath that word) spanned by his work encompassed everything from tragedy to comedy, but the span of genre would not make Shakespeare a genius. It was his transcendence and his literary gifts that made Shakespeare a genius.
Now I am not comparing Rowling with Shakespeare, that would be unkind to Rowling, but I am making the point that we should not be too free with the word genius.
I have written all kinds of things but - believe me - I am not a genius, even my wife says so.
Does Rowling’s work show originality? That is a hard test. James Joyce showed originality. He was so original I barely had a clue what he was talking about. Was he a genius?
Does Rowling’s work transcend similar work by other writers of the same kind. It is readily disputable. Does she show superior gifts in the use of language? Again that is disputable.
By all means enjoy Rowling’s works. One day the Lord will demand our souls. Then, believe me, when we meet (God willing), I will give you JKR fans curry for calling Rowling a genius.
In response to some of the “responses”: Though working within the tradition of fairy tale, as did Wilde-the motif of separating one’s heart from oneself is found throughout the genre, the northern tale, “The Giant with No Heart in His Body” is an easy reference-Rowling shows her intuitive insight into the issue and refashions the motif in her own way that is profound, works artistically, and sheds light on the meaning behind the image. These are the simple marks of artistic genuis: intuitive insight and refashioning elements of a genre that are unique and work.
To say Rowling is a genuius I think is apt. She brilliantly works within a genre of children’s literature and absolutely has created something unique, and something that speaks to universal and eternal truths, and for both reasons will last (even if David has to reappear as a troubled and annoying ghost). As Tolkien and Lewis work in the same broad genre and have an underling Christian vision or cosmos within their tales, she is correctly compared to them. (If one doesn’t see the underling Christian cosmos in “Potter”, shed the scales--the final place of Harry’s victory and “death"--King’s Cross Station--could help as well as the Gospel references and overarching theme of death being “defeated” by dying, by a paradoxical, self-sacrificing love--the same “magic” as Aslan).
Lewis is drastically different from Tolkien it is expected, as Tolkien works in a more specific genre of epic legend and Lewis works in fairy tale; Rowling works more so in fairy tale but adds elements of epic and the novel--a marriage of Dickens and Lewis of sorts. However, her insights into the nature of things are no less profound, although all their styles differ and Rowling is writing for a modern imagination.
Dr. Moore, thank you for the bold statement and the insightful allusions. (I look forward to the chance to discuss thing literary and “magical” in the states).
I find the Potter books extremely entertaining and engaging, but I cannot help but take issue with your comparison of Tolkein and Rowling. Despite the lack of many female main characters in Lord of the Rings the females that are present play there own parts admirably. There is no need for more female characters, as a woman I am satisfied and consider the Lord of the Rings books to be the best I’ve ever read. Thank you Dr. Moore for the article, it was a good summary of the books, but I am afraid I do not rate Harry Potter nearly as high as Tolkein’s masterpiece.
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