Zeitgeist Magic
Albus Dumbledore is the first denizen of the magical world that J K Rowling properly describes, down to his “high-heeled, buckled boots”, at the beginning of book one of the Harry Potter series.
Nothing unusual about this fellow, a reader in 1997, when it was published, might have said. He sounds like the standard wizard of Western literature, Merlin perhaps. The appearance of McGonagall in the form of a cat, a few lines later, is no great surprise either. The only novelty so far, in 1997, would have been the matter-of-fact treatment.
The first real surprise is Hagrid, a very large man on a flying motorbike. He’s not quite a giant, and he’s not a familiar figure from the existing cultural cast of magical figures. Cue the sights and sensations of Harry’s first visit to Diagon Alley, and very soon Rowling’s magic has become fundamentally incongruent with the familiar tropes of Western magic.
Superficially, there are beards and pointy hats, broomsticks, owls, goblins, trolls, wands, cats, snakes, dragons, elves. Virtually every ingredient of the post-medieval picture of magic is thrown into the mix. Yet nothing seems quite familiar — which is one reason why Rowling was initially so exciting. She made magic everyday.
It’s positively bourgeois, and her work is brilliantly suited, as fiction, to our modern global, middle-class zeitgeist. Full Story
Related: religion, wicca, pagan, spells
Nothing unusual about this fellow, a reader in 1997, when it was published, might have said. He sounds like the standard wizard of Western literature, Merlin perhaps. The appearance of McGonagall in the form of a cat, a few lines later, is no great surprise either. The only novelty so far, in 1997, would have been the matter-of-fact treatment.
The first real surprise is Hagrid, a very large man on a flying motorbike. He’s not quite a giant, and he’s not a familiar figure from the existing cultural cast of magical figures. Cue the sights and sensations of Harry’s first visit to Diagon Alley, and very soon Rowling’s magic has become fundamentally incongruent with the familiar tropes of Western magic.
Superficially, there are beards and pointy hats, broomsticks, owls, goblins, trolls, wands, cats, snakes, dragons, elves. Virtually every ingredient of the post-medieval picture of magic is thrown into the mix. Yet nothing seems quite familiar — which is one reason why Rowling was initially so exciting. She made magic everyday.
It’s positively bourgeois, and her work is brilliantly suited, as fiction, to our modern global, middle-class zeitgeist. Full Story
Related: religion, wicca, pagan, spells
posted at 10:43 PM
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