Course details
Tutors
Aims
This course aims to:
• gain understanding of fantasy as not a genre of writing but an impulse, equal to mimesis, underlying all writing
• gain understanding of the literary and historical contexts of the phenomenal popularity
of Harry Potter
• examine the serious themes of the Potter series, particularly concerns with racism
Content
The Harry Potter phenomenon has waned from the frantic global Pottermania while the books and films were appearing, but the Boy Who Lived remains a strong cultural presence. Yet much that underlies that phenomenon is little-mentioned.
We begin with some questions about fantasy, often denigrated by critics who confuse or conflate a relatively recent marketing label with a mode of narration at least as old as Homer. Far from being escapist, the mode of fantasy allows an author to grapple with things that more realistic fiction elides or refuses to contemplate, and Rowling did so very effectively.
The central sessions walk through the series, considering what are constants and what changes as the age of the nominal target-audience rises with Harry’s own growth, but also how Rowling coped with the knowledge that she would have many younger readers of the later books. Elements of satire and caricature will be considered, particularly in Rita Skeeter and Dolores Umbridge, but also the recurrent and central preoccupation of the series, the racism openly expressed not only in ‘mudbloods’ and ‘muggles’ but by many characters, with the roots of Rowling’s anti-racist concerns.
The plenary session will both offer some overviews and looks at Harry Potter’s evolution from character to trademark to entertainment franchise.
Please note that the problematic politics of transgender rights, in which Rowling has more recently been intermittently embroiled, will not be discussed.
Presentation of the course
Each session will begin with a mini-lecture and PowerPoint presentation, lasting 35–50 mins, and will then be open to question and answer, and contributions by all.
Course sessions
1. Fantasy and Mimesis – a different understanding
There has since Tolkien been a niche marketing genre labelled fantasy, but it does not help and in many ways harms to confuse that with fantasy as a mode of writing, obscuring what that mode can do.
2. Harry Potter 1–3 and the tyrannies of prejudice
The early novels had a lot to do, establishing the series characters and settings, but were also aimed at a narrower and younger age-range than the later novels. Prejudice nevertheless repeatedly rears an ugly head, both among the Dursleys and within the wizarding world.
3. Harry Potter 4–5 and the dark arts of escalation
With a rising readership of many ages the middle novels escalate in horror and violence with the first deaths and the forbidden curses. But the middle books are also dominated by two sadistic women with dark-arts quills, one satirising tabloid journalism and the other calling back to the worst of 20th-century racial history.
4. Harry Potter 6–7 and the end-game
Where various deaths and betrayals come home, complexities writhe, history looms, and good necessarily triumphs, but at a very high cost and to many readers less than satisfactorily.
5. Plenary: Overviews and developments
It is well worth placing the Potter series against the British history that was the backdrop to its writing, with a sustained crisis in race-relations that saw both major reform and a political high-water mark of nationalist bigotry; but the series has also become, with spin-offs and theme parks, as much a commercial franchise as anything literary.
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• to understand the fantastical mode of the Harry Potter series
• to understand some of the contexts of the Potter phenomenon and its evolutions
• to analyse what the series does and does not do, did and did not achieve
Required reading
Please note that watching the films is not a substitute for reading the books!
Rowling, J K, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (US title, … and the Sorcerer’s Stone, (1997, London: Bloomsbury, 2014) ISBN 1408855658, digital edition also available
Rowling, J K, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998, London: Bloomsbury, 2014) ISBN 1408855669, digital edition also available
Rowling, J K, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999, London: Bloomsbury, 2014) ISBN 1408855674, digital edition also available
Rowling, J K, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000, London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
ISBN 1408855682, digital edition also available
Rowling, J K, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003, London: Bloomsbury, 2014) ISBN 1408855690, digital edition also available
Rowling, J K, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005, London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
ISBN 1408855704, digital edition also available
Rowling, J K, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007, London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
ISBN 1408855712, digital edition also available