User:Victoriaearle/Rowling


 * link to TWL
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links

 * hp
 * Potter tops list of banned books


 * galbraith
 * this NYT article Robert Galbraith NYT
 * Robert Galbraith Guardian
 * Pugh, 116 - Robert Galbraith
 * misc
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Harry Potter series
Harry Potter has been defined as a fairy tale, a Bildungsroman, and a work about the characters' education. Its overarching theme is death. Rowling describes "death and bereavement" as "one of the central themes in all seven books". Characters in Harry's life die and he must confront his own death in Deathly Hallows. In Harry's world, death is not binary but mutable, a state that exists in degrees. The series has a fundamentally existential perspective – Harry must obtain and grow into the maturity needed to accept death. Unlike Voldemort, who chose to evade death by separating and hiding his soul in seven parts, Harry's soul is whole and undamaged, nourished by friendship and love.

Like death, truth is mutable in Harry's world. Although he seeks truth about his family, Harry lies to others. Truth is revealed in pieces hiding greater truths within, which Harry must uncover. Each book follows a similar structure in which Harry unravels increasingly painful truths. Michiko Kakutani writes that the series is an epic about personal independence and free will.

Harry Potter is a fantasy about good vs. evil. It derives from the European tradition of the lost prince with intrinsic character, leadership and heroism. Farah Mendlesohn writes that Harry Potter takes place in a conventional political world, reflecting liberalism in the United Kingdom, which is juxtaposed with anachronisms and aristocratic traditions. Harry escapes the loathsome suburbs for a public school, attended by aristocrats and children descended from the oldest magical families in the land, where social order is imposed by the "sorting hat". It is a world steeped in medieval traditions and artifacts similar to those found in Chrétien de Troyes's 12th-century Arthurian romances.

The series has been viewed as a Christian moral fable evoking the psychomachia tradition, in which stand-ins for good and evil fight for supremacy over a person's soul. Like C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, it contains Christian symbolism and allegory. Children's literature critic Joy Farmer sees parallels between Harry and Jesus Christ, writing that "magic is both authors' way of talking about spiritual reality". There are numerous connections between Harry's story and that of Jesus: Harry is hidden at birth; Professor McGonagall says of him "every child in our world will know his name"; Dumbledore tells Harry "your father ... shows himself most plainly when you have need of him"; and Dobby says "Harry Potter shone like a beacon of hope for those of us who thought the Dark days would never end". Harry carries the protection of his mother's sacrifice in his blood; Voldemort, who wants Harry's blood and the protection it carries, lacks the understanding that love vanquishes evil just as Christ's love for humanity vanquishes death. Voldemort succumbed to temptation, as did Satan, and is beyond redemption. Harry has divine characteristics whereas Voldemort "has quite literally risen from the dead to become a malevolent figure who seems larger than life". Despite the similarities between C. S. Lewis and Rowling's work, the latter received scathing criticism, has been called "Satanic", and thought to advocate witchcraft, which Farmer believes to be a profound misreading.

Rowling excels at characterizations, with simple descriptive writing, according to English professor Anne Hiebert Alton. Pharr writes that the characters seldom consider the philosophical or ethical implications of their actions directly, even the intellectual Hermione Granger. Moral questions are addressed through emotions rather than intellectual consideration. The critic Lakshmi Chaudhry sees this as an aspect of the series's "moral fuzziness", whereas Mary Pharr writes that the absence of moral clarity derives from Harry Potter postmodernism – in the postmodern world, there are no moral absolutes. She explains that Harry as an "epic hero for the postmodern world" fails to adhere to a moral code or religious doctrine. Harry typically acts through empathy towards others despite personal risk, differentiating him from Tom Riddle who became Voldemort. The same group of characters friends and enemies appear throughout the series with new characters introduced in each book, such as the new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher each year who appears in each book. Snape is the antihero; Malfoy is the rival throughout the series, Ron and Hermione are Harry's best friends from the beginning.

Harry's heroism is imbued with modern attributes such as courage and valiance and based on "sympathy and compassion". Love is a dividing line between Harry and Voldemort: Harry is a hero because he loves others; Voldemort is a villain because he does not. Harry reflects the archetype of the returning prince denied his heritage. In modern fantasy the hero's attributes and birthright "are played out, bit by bit, as the journey unfolds" according to Mendlesohn. The hero is shaped during the journey, but Rowling has imbued Harry with a heroic birthright and innate characteristics such as his niceness. The hero's companions possess qualities that Harry lacks; Hermione's intelligence, Ron's faithfulness, and Hagrid's kind strength.

Magic enhances the ordinary, and renders everyday objects as extraordinary. Eva Oppermann believes that Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia (alternate spaces) applies to Hogwarts. The magical and real worlds are parallel yet separate. Rowling lavishes attention to the smallest detail in the magical world: there are a myriad of spells and charms, owls deliver letters, photographs and paintings present live images, places such as Diagon alley, Hogwarts, Hagrid's cottage, objects such as the sorting hat and fancy wands, to give it veracity. John Pennington disagrees, writing Rowling breaks the fundamental rules of fantasy by adhering too closely to the reality.

Contemporary fiction
With the publication of The Casual Vacancy in 2012, Rowling showed that she cannot be identified as exclusively an author of children's books. The critic Tison Pugh writes that The Casual Vacancy and the subsequent Cormoran Strike crime series published under the pen-name Robert Galbraith show Rowling's proficiency in a range of genres. Rowling considers The Casual Vacancy as tragicomedy although it was promoted as a black comedy. The literary critic Ian Parker describes it in The New Yorker as a "rural comedy of manners", a detailed examination of village life reminiscent of Austen's novels and Middlemarch by George Eliot. The Strike series features Cormoran Strike, a disabled veteran of the War in Afghanistan, who has a prosthetic leg. Army veteran and English professor Peter C. Molin suggests Strike represents disabled veterans ignored in a society that focuses on self-aggrandizing celebrities, and he notes that Rowling supports The Soldier's Charity. Although Strike is an example of hardboiled detective fiction, Strike deviates from the genre's stereotypical unattached loner, as Rowling begins to build romance in the series.