Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 19:39:51 +0100 From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl> Subject: [fyi] Harry Potter on the couch HARRY POTTER'S OEDIPAL ISSUES by Kelly Noel-Smith -------- "Lily, take Harry and go! It's Him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off-". The sound of someone stumbling from a room-a door bursting open - a cackle of high-pitched laughter. "Not Harry! Not Harry! Please not Harry!". "Stand aside, you silly girl ... stand aside, now . . "Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead-Not Harry! Please ... have mercy ... have mercy". (Rowling, 1999, pp. 134 and 178). -------- The Harry Potter books are extraordinarily successful. In May 2000, each of the first three books by J. K. Rowling occupied a place within the top five of The Times' best-sellers' list. The first edition of the fourth book, published in July 2000, was the largest ever for children's books: a million hard-back copies were published in the UK and 3.8 million in the US. The books are equally successful elsewhere, having been translated into more than twenty-five languages. The phenomenon of their success has generated debate: in Britain, for example, Anthony Holden, a Whitbread book prize judge, threatened to resign in June 2000 if Rowling received the prize for Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban instead of Seamus Heaney for his translation of Beowulf; Holden wrote a scathing article in The Observer in which he claimed Rowling's 'story lines are predictable, the suspense minimal, the sentimental cloying every page (Did Harry, like so many heroes before him, have to be yet another poignant orphan?) (The Observer, 25 June 2000). Holden' s comments triggered one of the largest collections of written responses to an article ever received by the Observer. In America, too, the books' success has provoked reaction. Some American parents have suggested that the Harry Potter books should be withdrawn from schools because of their content: they believe that identification with Harry Potter and his experiences of death and magic will encourage children to explore violence, murder and the occult. Full text: http://human-nature.com/free-associations/harrypotter.html This paper appeared in Psychoanalytic Studies 3: 199-207, 2001. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005