From Elfland to Hogwarts, or the Aesthetic Trouble with Harry Potter
2002; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/uni.2002.0008
ISSN1080-6563
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
Resumo"Broaden your minds, my dears, and allow your eyes to see past the mundane!" (277). So explains Professor Trelawney in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in the projected seven-part Harry Potter series. And readers and critics have certainly looked past the mundane: Harry Potter is, quite simply, a crosscultural phenomenon with critical kudos to boot. Janet Maslin, in a review for The New York Times, writes of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: "This time Ms. Rowling offers her clearest proof yet of what should have been wonderfully obvious: what makes the Potter books so popular is the radically simple fact that they're so good" (B1). The New Yorker is equally enthusiastic. In her review, Joan Acocella contends that "the great beauty of the Potter books is their wealth of imagination, their sheer shining fullness" (76). With the impending publication of book five in the series and now the release of The Sorcerer's Stone film, we can imagine that Harry Potter will remain in the forefront of popular cultural taste, defining the parameters for successful children's literature, particularly fantasy literature.1 With continued projected sales, the Harry Potter books may in all likelihood sell more overall volumes than those touchstones of modern fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.
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