3
I am indebted in this discussion to John G. Cawelti’s
Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture
(University of Chicago Press, 1977). I urge the reader to read his brilliant exposition of the cultural and psychological factors that fostered the formula and success of detection fiction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (chapter four, pp. 80-105) as well as his exploration of Christie and Sayers.
4
On detective fiction as moral literature, see W. H. Auden, “The Guilty Vicarage,” in
The Dyer’s Hand
(Vintage, 1948), pp. 146-158.
8
Wright, “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Fiction.”
10
Sayers, Dorothy.
Busman’s Honeymoon,
cited in Barbara Reynolds’s
Dorothy Sayers: Her Life and Soul
(St. Martin’s, 1993), p. 270; thanks to Robert Trexler, editor of
CSL
, for this find.
11
Sayers, Dorothy. Private letter, cited in Barbara Reynolds’s
Dorothy Sayers: Her Life and Soul
, p. 188.
12
Renton, “The Story Behind the Potter Legend.”
13
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.
Biographia Literaria
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868), Chapter 13.
Chapter Two:
Pride and Prejudice
with Wands
Chapter Three: Setting: The Familiar Stage and Scenery Props of the Drama
3
My discussion of the formula and specific elements of the schoolboy novel and
Harry Potter
as an example of same is largely taken from my understanding of Karen Manners Smith’s “Harry Potter’s Schooldays: J. K. Rowling and the British Boarding School Novel,” in
Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays,
ed. Giselle Lisa Anatols (Greenwood Publishing/Praeger, 2003), pp. 69-88, and David K. Steege’s “Harry Potter, Tom Brown, and the British School Story: Lost in Transit?” in
The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter,
ed. Lana A. Whited (University of Missouri Press, 2004), pp. 140-156.
5
Renton, “Wild About Harry.”
6
Mack, Edward C. (1941), quoted in John Reed,
Old School Ties: The Public School in British Literature
(New York: Syracuse University Press, 1964), p. 18; cited in Steege, “Harry Potter,” p. 156.
7
Steege, “Harry Potter,” pp. 143-145.
8
Smith, K., “Harry Potter’s Schooldays,” p. 74.
12
Steege, “Harry Potter,” p. 151.
13
Hughes, Thomas.
Tom Brown’s Schooldays
(New York: Oxford University Press, World Classics, 1989), pp. 374-376.
14
Steege, “Harry Potter,” p. 150.
15
Smith, K., “Harry Potter’s Schooldays,” pp. 69-88.
18
Hughes, from the preface to
Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
24
Lewis, C. S.
A Preface to Paradise Lost
(London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 55.
Chapter Four: Gothic Romance: The Spooky Atmosphere Formula from Transylvania
1
My thanks to Dr. Amy H. Sturgis, Belmont University, for the distinction between real and late gothic preferred in the academy.
2
Tracy, Ann B.
Patterns of Fear in the Gothic Novel, 1790
-
1830
(New York: Ayer Company, 1980), pp. 8-16, 328.
3
Tracy, Ann B. “Gothic Romance,” in
The Handbook to Gothic Literature
, ed. Marie Mulvey-Roberts (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 104.
4
Tracy,
Patterns of Fear in the Gothic Novel,
p. 316.
9
Sage, Victor. “Gothic Novel,” in
The Handbook to Gothic Literature,
ed. by Marie Mulvey-Roberts (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 82.
11
Correspondence with Dr. Amy H. Sturgis. “Ann Radcliffe, in her discussion of ‘The Supernatural in Poetry’: ‘Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them. I apprehend, that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one . . . ’ ”
12
MacDonald, George. Preface to
The Letters from Hell
by Valdemar Adolph Thisted (New York: Funk and Wagnall’s, 1887), pp. vi-vii, viii-ix. (Thanks to Robert Trexler.)
13
Sturgis, Dr. Amy H., ed.
The Magic Ring
by Baron de la Motte Fouque (Chicago: Valancourt Books, 2006), pp. 343-344.
Chapter Five:
Harry Potter
as Postmodern Epic
3
Grossman, “J. K. Rowling Hogwarts and All.”
4
“Living with Harry Potter.” sections of the following postmodern discussion are taken from
The Deathly Hallows Lectures
(Zossima Press, 2009) and used with permission.
7
Grossman, “J. K. Rowling Hogwarts and All.”
Chapter Six: The Satirical
Harry Potter
1
Bloom, Allan, trans.
The Republic of Plato
(New York: Basic Books, 1965), p. 189.
2
Bloom, Allan, trans.
Plato’s Republic
(New York: Basic Books, 1968), VII, 514a-520a, pp. 193-197; VI, 508e, p. 189.
3
Eliade, Mircea.
The Sacred and the Profane
(New York: Harvest Books: 1968), p. 205.
7
“Living with Harry Potter.”
8
Gibbs, “Person of the Year.”
15
Solomon, “J. K. Rowling Interview.”
17
CNN.
“Harry Potter
Author: I Considered Suicide,” March 23, 2008. See
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/03/23/rowling.depressed/index.html
. Jerry Bowyer notes (private correspondence, December 15, 2008): “Rowling is a deeply hurt lady. There’s a great deal of therapeutic material in her books: light to dispel devil’s snare, humor to resist boggarts, happy images to dispel dementors, chocolate to recover. Clearly, she’s had counseling. She’s been hurt, and she associates that hurt with the political right, I think.”