A Brand of Fictional Magic: Reading Harry Potter as Literature

I’ve been putting off this blog for a super long time (mostly because I was so overwhelmed with everything I had learned!), and I decided I’m finally going to blog it, so I can start blogging other things, too. :)

The most important thing I must tell you, BEST. CONFERENCE. EVER.

Okay, now to the actual conference. If you’re curious as to the public response to our brilliant conference, you can check out John Granger’s post on it here. What I’m going to give you is my experience of the conference. The first thing you have to understand is that there were lots of awesome things I didn’t get to hear, I only got to go to a few of the sessions. I’ll give you bits and pieces of the little I can read of my notes (what I would give to go back in time and take that tape recorder!!).

Notes from Dr. Maria Nilson’s “From Nerdy Boy to Empathetic Male: Harry Potter’s Development Through the Series” from Linné University.

First she challenged the concept of Harry as a Cinderella figure. She said that he is more of a “changeling.” According to Swedish mythology a changeling is a child that is stolen by goblins (or trolls…I don’t remember). The child then grows up as the servant to the goblin/trolls until one day the child escapes and is reunited with his own family (Dursely=troll, Okay, I dig it). She also nixed the Cinderella theory because Cinderella comes into power; in the beginning of the story, she is powerless, then we cue the magic tree, and bippity-boppity-boo, she’s got some mojo. Unlike Cinderella, Harry always had power, and he never looses it; some argue that he looses his power in Phoenix, but she argues that it isn’t a loss of power he’s experiencing, it’s despair. She spoke a lot about Harry’s growth (obviously); the things that my notes mention the most are the concepts of power, love, and fatherhood. She talked about different levels of masculinity.  She hits on the different father figures for Harry and what they represented to him: James was a bully, Sirius was reckless, Lupin was truthful, and Albus was responsible. She also talked about Harry as a hero because of a collective group effort (Let’s face it, without Hermione, those boys would have been toast pretty early on).

I’d give you more, but that’s all I have. I put my name on a list to get her paper sent to me, but it hasn’t come. Oh well. I have a few notes from Carol Esheleman’s paper. You can facebook her if you want more information. She had a really brilliant thesis; you know, one of those ones that you hear and say “Duh! It’s so obvious! Why did I never see that before?!” …Well I had that experience anyway. Her paper was called “Twin Core: An Exploration of Twins in the Wizarding World”

She talked about the obvious twins (Fred/George, Padma/Pavarti, Harry’s wand core/Voldemort’s wand core), but she also discussed the relationship between wizard/witch and wand (How Harry and his wand have similar personalities, etc…), as well as some of the twins of the books themselves: in the generation before Harry, there was James and Sirius (Patronus: Stag and Dog, respectively), and in Harry’s generation, there was Harry and Ron (Patronus: Stag and Dog, respectively. She even talked about how Harry and Neville were each other’s twin.

I know I left out a ton, but I’m telling you what my notes said. Now, a little of what the conference was like. St. Andrews is a brilliant little town on the coast of Scotland. It’s right next to the ocean, and it was pretty rainy, cold, and windy the whole time we were there (but we weren’t bummed, we were getting the true Scottish experience). The University of St. Andrews was founded in 1413, and—unlike any other university I’ve ever been to—it is the town. The WHOLE town is the University. The English department is on one side of the town, and the Business department is on the other side of town. The best part about this university you ask? Castles. The whole darn thing is a castle! They call St. Andrews the school for the kids that didn’t get into Hogwarts.

I can’t remember if this is the building we were in for the conference, or if it was the one next door, but this gives you an idea of what the building looked like. It was beyond amazing. All these buildings looked like (and were!!) medieval castles, but you walk inside, and it looks just like any other university building. :) I would LOVE to go to school here.

 

 

 

 

Now there were tons of other wonderful papers, some I got to hear, and some I didn’t. There are a lot of notes I didn’t take, and a lot of revelations I wrote down. I will tell you that if you want to know more about the complexity of Rowling’s work, or (if you’re a skeptic) you doubt that there are complexities in Rowling’s work, I suggest you read John Grangers Harry Potter as Ring Composition, and Ring Cycle. I bought it shortly after attending this conference. He gave us the condensed version of his theory in the conference. It’s another one of these brilliant ideas that make you say “Duh! Why didn’t I see it before?”

So the last thing I’m going to give you are a few revelations I had and scratched into the margins of my program:

“Harry’s faith in Dumbledore waivers. He thought Dumbledore was a symbol of goodness, but to become a symbol of goodness, you must know the value of goodness, thus you must go through the bad to understand the good.”

“Harry comes out of ‘the cave’ (referring to Plato’s Allegory) of the Muggle world into the Wizarding world.”

“Was Harry a more complete character because he got to fulfill his role as a father whereas his own father (James), his godfather (Sirius), his temporary father-figure (Remus) and his long-lasting father-figure (Albus) all bit the dust early on in their mentoring positions?”

My last revelation that was so true that it could remain unwritten until this moment: There is so much work to still do on Rowling’s work, and her work and meticulous writing and planning have inspired me in my own writing.

Short story? Harry Potter changed my life. Period.