Johnson-Haddad, Miranda. "Harry Potter and the Shakespearean Allusion." Reimagining Shakespeare for Children and Young Adults. Ed. Naomi J. Miller. New York: Routledge, 2003. 162-170. Print.
Medium: academic article
Genre: William Shakespeare, Harry Potter, literary analysis
Synopsis:
Discusses the derivative nature of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, comparing the way Rowling draws on external sources to Shakespeare's own habit of creative "borrowing."More specifically, this paper examines allusions to Titus Andronicus and Richard III in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Johnson-Haddad's approach is both intertextual and psychoanalytic, incorporating the theories of Bettelheim on the psychology of fairy tales to explain the appeal of both Harry Potter and Shakespeare's plays.
Notes:
"...fairy tales are effective precisely because they evoke deep, unconscious associations within the minds of those reading or hearing the tales, and these associations make the tales resonate on the profoundest level" (163). What happens when you try to explain the phenomenal success of HP in, say, China or Japan? They do not share the same cultural and folk traditions as a Western audience. Is the argument that the basic archetypes upon which fairy tales are built are consistent across cultures and therefore relatable? I'm not a fan of archetypal thinking in general, so this may be my personal bias, but it seems that even if archetypes were present in all cultures they wouldn't necessarily be the same. What about Shakespeare, how does he translate over to a non-Western audience?
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