Journal article
“Kidlit” as “law-and-lit”: Harry potter and the scales of justice
Law and Literature, Vol.14(3), pp.545-564
2002
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Abstract
As many of his young fans would put it, “Harry Potter is magic!” — “magic,” in this case, being the currently fashionable, Anglo-Commonwealth youth culture adjective of acclaim. And one absolutely a propos here because it speaks as much to our hero’s extratextual in uences as a worldwide publishing phenomenon, as his intratextual practices as a wizard-intraining. From his rst appearance in the kick-off volume of J.K. Rowling’s remarkable series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry has cast a spell as it were, over legions of supposedly print-allergic, digitallydependant children, bewitching them on behalf of the “pleasure of the text,” instead of the spiel of the video. In the series’ second and third follow-ups — Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — Harry and his teenybopper cohort of sorcerer’s apprentices (Hermione, Ron, Neville, Seamus, etc.) have continued to enchant new, largely adult audiences: principally, those Tolkein-, Lewisand Blyton-reared “baby boomers,” long alienated by the exile of “the fantastic” from not only the best-seller lists, but children’s literature. With the publication of the fourth instalment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of the Fire, this broadening of readership, adult or otherwise, continues apace. But it complicates, even contests, some of the un attering and patronising media images of Rowling’s series as escapist whimsy, nostalgic for the conservatism of the Shire, Narnia or Mallory Towers. For, here, in her latest offering, Rowling addresses — so I contend — one of the least whimsical of readerships in terms that are anything but backward-looking or conformist: lawyers. Not that the legal profession directly gures, or is gured in the text’s characterological system in the way, say, journalism is embodied in Rita Skeeter, the odious queen of tabloid tittletattle, or bureaucracy is in the unfortunately monikered Cornelius Fudge, the
Details
- Title
- “Kidlit” as “law-and-lit”: Harry potter and the scales of justice
- Creators
- William P Macneil (Author) - Griffith University
- Publication Details
- Law and Literature, Vol.14(3), pp.545-564
- Identifiers
- 991012847799902368
- Academic Unit
- School of Law and Justice; Law; Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article