HARRY POTTER OUTLINE q Author q Hogwarts q

HARRY POTTER

OUTLINE q Author q Hogwarts q Main Characters q Themes q Literary criticism q Adaptations

AUTHOR: J. K. ROWLING q Rowling was born in Yate, United Kingdom in 1965, to Peter and Anne Rowling q She attended secondary school at Wyedean Comprehensive, where she told stories to her fellow students. q Rowling studied for a BA in French and Classics at the. University of Exeter

q She wrote a short essay titled "What was the Name of that Nymph Again” q Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language. . While there she married Portuguese TV journalist Jorge Arantes. q They had one child, Jessica(1993), before their divorce in 1995 q Idea for Harry Potter came to her on a train, she wrote first book “Harry Potter and the Pilosopher's Stone” on lunch breaks and while unemployed.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was a huge success. The sales made her a multi-millionaire. Genres Fantasy, (Harry Potter Series) tragicomedy, (The Casual Vacancy) crime fiction (The Cuckoo’s Calling) Awards : J. K. Rowling has received numerous honors and awards: Booksellers Association Author of the Year - 1998 and 1999[8] Author of the Year - 1999[8] Order of the British Empire (OBE) - 2001[8]

QUOTE "If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped to change. We do not need magic to transform the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. "

GENERAL SUMMARY q Story of young boy who lives with his aunt along with her husband son, they treated him in a bad way. q He discovers that he is a wizard, destined to fight evil, covering the seven years (age 11 -18) that he spends at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

HHOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY

HARRY POTTER q Harry Potter – Main character of the series, son of James Potter and Lily Evans. q Ordinary hero: He's an orphan who doesn't remember his parents q q Harry is stuck living in the spiderinfested closet under the stairs. Because of the Dursleys, he's had to grow up fast and learn to look after himself.

q Extraordinary: But Harry's not your everyday kid, and he's not even your everyday wizard. Harry's surrounded by mystery. q He's the one person Voldemort (one of the evilest and most powerful wizards) could not kill, and he's the only known survivor of a "powerful, evil curse" (4. 107). q Nobody knows why Voldemort's magic didn't work on Harry, or how he survived a curse that killed both his parents and destroyed his house. For that matter, no one seems to know why Voldemort was after Harry in the first place. Even though he was just a baby when Voldemort attack him, his survival makes him an instant celebrity in the wizarding world. q he's famous in the wizarding world as “The Boy Who lived”

CHARACTERS: RON WEASLEY q q q Harry's close friend youngest Son of Arthur and Molly Weasley Ron comes from a long line of wizards on both sides of his family, making him a pureblood. q He's grown up steeped in magic and speaks the language of magic too well q Ron wants to be a Gryffindor because it's the house that his whole family has always been in q school prefect

HERMIONE GRANGER q When we first meet Hermione, Harry and Ron think she's super annoying. Ron hopes that she won't. He tells Harry, "Whatever house I'm in, I hope she's not in it“ q According to some of the characters “Because Hermione is from an entirely Muggle family, she shouldn't be that good at magic, or even be allowed to do magic” q She's loud and bossy and butts in all the time. She's your typical know-it-all, q q This character in the Harry Potter Series is closest in personality to J. K. Rowling

THEMES: DEATH "My books are largely about death. ” J. K Rowling They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it. "[6]

THEMES: LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP Dumbledore has always said that something Voldemort will never have is friendship and love, that he has blocked out his emotions. Love is the only way to beat voldemort Harry, Ron, and Hermione have always been inseparable friends since the middle of the first book. They have stuck together through death, and destruction, and some hateful exchanges of jealousy between them. They are the stable in the book, even more than Hogwarts, which we do not see in the 1 st half of Deathly Hallows.

RECEPTION: LITERARY CRITICISM Ø Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, attracted attention from the Scottish newspapers, such as The Scotsman, which said it had "all the makings of a classic“ Ø The Guardian called it "a richly textured novel given liftoff by an inventive wit". Ø By the time of the release of the fifth volume, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the books began to receive strong criticism from a number of literary scholars

Ø Ø Ø Harold Bloom raised criticisms of the books' literary merits, saying, "Rowling's mind is so governed by clichés and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing” Michael Rosen, a novelist and poet, advocated the books were not suited for children. Author Fay Weldon, while admitting that the series is "not what the poets hoped for", nevertheless goes on to say, "but this is not poetry, it is readable, saleable, everyday, useful prose". [106]

Ø The literary critic A. N. Wilson praised the Harry Potter series in The Times, stating: "There are not many writers who have JK's Dickensian ability to make us turn the pages, to weep—openly, with tears splashing—and a few pages later to laugh, at invariably good jokes. . ” Ø Stephen King called the series "a feat of which only a superior imagination is capable"

Ø King has also joked that "Rowling's never met an adverb she did not like!" Ø I think Harry will take his place with Alice, Huck, Frodo, and Dorothy and this is one series not just for the decade, but for the ages".

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