J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series contains numerous references to alchemy. On a symbolic level, both Harry Potter and his archenemy Voldemort can be read as rival alchemists, one pursuing alchemy ...as a spiritual discipline and the other engaged in a purely material quest for physical immortality. Voldemort’s eventual defeat can be interpreted in light of his flawed understanding of the moral and spiritual side of the alchemical work.
Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Brit Lit I Vitale, Kyle Sebastian
Pedagogy : critical approaches to teaching literature, language, culture, and composition,
01/2019, Volume:
19, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Instructors of the literature survey often struggle to help students see past a brisk syllabus toward deeper literary, historical, and cultural concerns. Moreover, surveys often discourage ...participation and assess more historical knowledge like dates and names. This essay invites instructors to consider creative literary approaches to the survey by way of a lesson plan featuring Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, from the world of Harry Potter. Students were tasked in small groups to develop new Hogwarts Houses that embodied literary concerns while connecting course readings to students’ own lives. Students drew from medieval texts and further research to develop a House name, slogan, core virtues, founding story, description of the residence, and famous graduates. By reviewing and rereading texts with an eye to their own designs, students used recall and analysis as steppingstones toward higher-order thinking, including synthesis of medieval and modern ideals and creation of new “texts.” This essay includes the lesson prompt, sample House designs, and analysis of the class discussion that followed student presentations on their collaborative work.
J. K. Rowling’s “ Harry Potter” series (1997–2007) has turned into a global phenomenon and her Potterverse is still expanding. The contributions in this volume provide a range of inter- and ...transdisciplinary approaches to various dimensions of this multifacetted universe. The introductory article focuses on different forms of world building in the novels, the translations, the film series and the fandom. Part I examines various potential sources for Rowling’s series in folklore, the Arthurian legend and Gothic literature. Further articles focus on parallels between the “Harry Potter” series and Celtic Druidism, the impact Victorian notions of gender roles have had on the representation of the Gaunt family, the reception of (medieval and Early Modern) history in the series and the influence of Christian concepts on the world view expressed in the novels.
This thoroughly revised edition includes updated essays on cultural themes and literary analysis, and its new essays analyze the full scope of the seven-book series as both pop cultural phenomenon ...and as a set of literary texts. Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, Second Edition draws on a wider range of intellectual traditions to explore the texts, including moral-theological analysis, psychoanalytic perspectives, and philosophy of technology. The Harry Potter novels engage the social, cultural, and psychological preoccupations of our times, and Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, Second Edition examines these worlds of consciousness and culture, ultimately revealing how modern anxieties and fixations are reflected in these powerful texts.
("DISCLAIMER: This book is not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., or anyone associated with the Harry Potter books or movies.")
Introduction: Fostering Insight through Multiple Critical Perspectives, Elizabeth E. Heilman
I. Perspectives on Identity and Morality
1. Controversial Content: Is Harry Potter Harmful to Children?, Deborah J. Taub and Heather L. Servaty-Seib
2. Harry Potter and Christian Theology, Peter Ciaccio
3. Harry Potter's World as a Morality Tale of Technology and Media, Nicholas Sheltrown
4. Is Desire Beneficial Or Harmful in the Harry Potter Series?, Taija Piippo
5. The Great Snape Debate, Peter Appelbaum
II. Critical and Sociological Perspectives
6. Schooling Harry Potter: Teachers and Learning, Power and Knowledge, Megan L. Birch
7. Comedy, Quest, and Community: Home and Family in Harry Potter, John Kornfeld and Laurie Prothro
8. From Sexist to (sort-of) Feminist: Representations of Gender in the Harry Potter Series, Elizabeth E. Heilman and Trevor Donaldson
9. Monsters, Creatures, and Pets at Hogwarts: Animal Stewardship in the World of Harry Potter, Peter Dendle
10. Harry Potter, the War against Evil, and the Melodramatization of Public Culture, Marc Bousquet
III. Literacy Elements and Interpretations
11. Playing the Genre Game: Generic Fusions of the Harry Potter Series, Anne Hiebert Alton
12. Harry Potter and the Secrets of Children’s Literature, Maria Nikolajeva
13. Harry Potter and the Horrors of the Oresteia, Alice Mills
14. Philosopher’s Stone to Resurrection Stone: Narrative Transformations and Intersecting Cultures across the Harry Potter Series, Kate Behr
IV. Cultural Studies and Media Perspectives
15. Lost in Translation?: Harry Potter, from Page to Screen, Philip Nel
16. The Migration of Media: Harry Potter in Print and Pixels, Anna Gunder
17. Writing Harry's World: Children Co-Authoring Hogwarts, Ernest L. Bond and Nancy L. Michelson
18. Pottermania: Good, Clean Fun or Cultural Hegemony?, Tammy Turner-Vorbeck
Elizabeth E. Heilman is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.
Legilimens Bell, Christopher E
2013, 2013-12-01
eBook
The current state of scholarship surrounding Harry Potter is both vibrant and varied. One of the reasons scholars continue to be attracted to the series as an artifact is the colossal range of ...disciplinary foci that can find treasures to unearth in its pages and films. In the Harry Potter series, "legilimens" is the spell that allows a wizard to see into another persons mind, reading the subjects thoughts. As such, it is an appropriate moniker for the attempt of scholars to see into the Har.
In the theatre performance Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016), Harry Potter's magical world is revisited from the perspective of an adult Harry, who has grown out of his rebellious youth and ...become a controlling and sometimes abusive parent. Many fans were outraged by Harry's treatment of his son Albus, a Slytherin, whose only friend is Draco Malfoy's son, Scorpius. I utilize cognitive script and schema theory to analyze the play manuscript's ideologies connected to age. I argue that the reactions against the non-sympathetic adult Harry can be conceptualized as a schema disruption of "the Harry Potter literary schema."
Economists argue that tort law promotes an efficient allocation of resources to safety, while philosophers contend that it dispenses corrective justice. Despite the divide, the leading tort theories ...share something in common: they are grounded in an unduly narrow view of tort. Both economists and philosophers confuse the institution of tort law with the rules that are distinctive of it. They offer theories of tort's substantive rules, but for the most part ignore the procedures by which those rules are implemented. As a consequence, both miss and misconstrue much about tort law. The problem is particularly acute for economists. They analyze the impact of tort's substantive rules on accident and accident avoidance costs. Yet, the institution of tort law generates many other costs and benefits for society, and those costs and benefits affect the optimal arrangement of tort's rules. The fact that economists have not factored these additional costs and benefits into their analyses calls into question their descriptive and normative claims about tort. Corrective justice theory is not in as much trouble as the economic approach, but it is troubled still. Philosophers ' neglect of the procedural dimension of tort has caused them to overlook ways that tort does justice between wrongdoers and victims. And it has led them to make misleading claims about the nature of both corrective justice and tort law. This Article draws out the trouble with tort theory through a thought experiment, starring Harry Potter. Potter's magic helps to highlight the features of tort that the leading theories overlook. Once they are in view, the Article considers the ways in which the omissions cast doubt on the claims those theories make, investigates ways they might improved, and offers several observations about the choice between them.
Why not take seriously the claim that Harry Potter's world intertwines with our own? In this timely yet otherworldly volume, more than a dozen scholars of international relations join hands to ...demonstrate how this well-loved artifact of popular culture reflects and shapes our own lifeworld. A wide range of historical and sociological sources shows how Harry's world contains aspects of our own. Practices such as quidditch dovetail quite clearly with "muggle" sports, and the very British-ness of the books has, in translation into languages such as Turkish and Arabic, been transformed to reflect these unique cultures. Chapters on the political economy of the franchise as well as the scholarly problems of studying popular culture frame what is essentially a highly info-taining read.
This essay examines various features belonging to the liminal area between life and death in the world of Harry Potter. Being fantasy novels, Rowling's works are free of the reins of empirical ...thinking. The border they posit between possible and impossible may be displaced; still, it is more or less firmly set.
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