by Travis
Philip Nel, author of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels: A Reader’s Guide, contributed an excellent article to The Lion and the Unicorn in 2005. In “Is There a Text in this Advertising Campaign,” Nel argues effectively in favor of the series’ literary merits (contra the position of John Pennington, in particular, and A.S. Byatt and Harold Bloom more generally). I was very happy to find this article a few months ago, not least because it was helpful in shoring up my defense of the series contra Pennington in the second chapter of my book.
Reviewing the article once again last night, I came across a great statement that stopped me in my tracks, which I want to set before the Pub for discussion. Dealing with the criticism that Rowling’s fantasy is not as effective or as full fo wonder as Tolkien’s, Nel instead (I think wisely) chooses to focus on their deliberate differences and take each on its own merit. Pennington makes the criticism that Rowling’s world is not as complete as Tolkien’s, and therefore less effective and believable as a secondary world. Holding in mind the complexities, the fullness, and the differences between Tolkien’s and Rowlings worlds, here is the Nel’s statement in defense of Potter:
Tolkien lets his narrative unfold as a history, and Rowling has her history unfold as a narrative. (p. 255)
Discuss!
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Very interesting…having just read this and not taking any time to digest, here are quick thoughts:
The main difference I see between Tolkien and Rowling is that Tolkien’s world is completely fantastical, whereas Rowling’s IS the world as we know it, just with one major difference (magic is real).
Plus, I think the statement quoted above is dead on: in many ways Tolkien wrote his stories as an excuse to make up new languages and create a mythology. The narrative was secondary to the history. I think Rowling was more interested in telling a ripping good yarn, creating the history to serve the narrative.
First off, I think Rowling’s world is a lot more complete than we think it is, as evidenced in the WOMBATS, interviews, and whatnot ( I suppose we’ll have to wait for the Scottish Book to be sure). But because not all of it was needed, not all of it was shared, which perhaps is what Nel is saying. But also, I think Eric is right in saying that since the magical world is based on a world we are all familiar with, it doesn’t have to be quite as developed to be just as “full.”
In my (admittedly casual) reading of Tolkein, I get the feeling that Middle Earth is his natural home, but it never becomes mine in the way that Hogwarts does. Tolkein’s world may be more complete, but Rowling’s feels more real.
This is all off the cuff, so I don’t know how much sense I’m making…
Agree with your comments, Ned. I think the key is realizing that Tolkien & Rowling present to us two different works & two different worlds. Middle-Earth transports us to a world of myth & fantasy & feels real, in the sense that it has a backstory. It has underpinnings. Rowling keeps us in our real world but shows us a magical side to it, thus at once making it something much more than just the everyday hum drum we may experience.
I think we’ve lost a lot of the enchantment & wonder that our world presents to us & Rowling helps us recover that wonder & enchantment by using the magical world as a lens through which we can see our world.
No fictional world that exists as a hidden world-within-our-own–world can ever be as complete or as coherent as a stand alone fictional universe. This is no less true for Pynchon than it is for Rowling.
You simply have to accept a few inconsistencies when you read a hidden-world novel in order to get the more pointed social commentary and the thrill of cryptic revelations that this genre provides.
I like that statement:
Tolkien lets his narrative unfold as a history, and Rowling has her history unfold as a narrative
My way of understanding it is that Tolkien is an academic first, more interested in sharing facts than telling a story. JKR is a story teller first, more interested in telling her story, although she is a bit of an academic as well, or at least a collector of facts. This is not to say btw that Tolkien is not a good story teller, because he is. But the academic in him is very close to the surface.
I think that the truth of that statement also influences my response to the two worlds. They are both extremely well-imagined. I would argue that Potterverse has the edge on Middle Earth in terms of convincingness for the reasons mentioned above: it is our world, afterall, with the magic thrown in. But when I read Tolkien, I feel that I’m on the outside looking in. When I read JKR, I feel I’m right there, looking around. That may also have to do with the characters – it is easier for me to empathize with an orphaned English school boy than an English greengrocer – but I think it’s also because of the attitude of the authors. JKR writes as if she’s inside her world, looking around. Tolkien writes as if he’s got more objective detachment from his world.
Red Rocker wrote:
“My way of understanding it is that Tolkien is an academic first, more interested in sharing facts than telling a story. JKR is a story teller first, more interested in telling her story, although she is a bit of an academic as well, or at least a collector of facts.”
Great point Red!
I remember reading a book a few years ago by Thomas Shippey called, ‘The Road to Middle- Earth’. Thomas was a contemporary of Tolkien at Oxford and continued his literary work at Oxford. In this book he points out that Tolkien was a philologist first, a writer second. This is where we see the major differences between all the stories written by Professor Tolkien on Middle-Earth and even other great writers in his day including C S Lewis. The others were, as you pointed out, storytellers first with the facts of their imaginary worlds following behind. Tolkien was just the opposite in his style.
Getting to J K Rowling.
I remember an interview a while back where she stated that she was uncomfortable being compared to the likes of Tolkien, Williams, Austen and Lewis because she never wanted to feel that she was competing or just writing the Harry Potter saga to be in comparison to………..(fill in the blank). Sure she has the academic credentials that give her that skill and backround and we do see some similarities within HP that mirror LOTR at times and Narnia in some character interaction and development, but not in the same story structure as Tolkien.
As JKR has stated on more than one occasion that she wrote the Harry Potter saga for “herself” first and not in a secret desire to compete with the literary greats of the 20th century.
In a way that’s what makes HP work so well with us in this present day. She wrote fiction that relates with our own daily struggles and trials in this world with a touch of the imaginary world of ‘magic’ that gives us (the reader) the joy of relating to both worlds.
This is rather tangential to the argument, but also rather apropos, so I shall share it with you.
I spent several hours this evening putting together a Hogwarts card castle with my 7 year old (it was a present from a well-meaning but childless friend). We had a lot of fun, me because I’ve always liked castles, and my 7 year old because it was Hogwarts and it came with a little Harry Potter action figurine who was storming the ramparts as quickly as I could build them. The conversation included questions about why Umbridge likes to hurt kids (“some people are like that”) and how one of his stuffies “sacrificed himself, like Harry Potter”.
He doesn’t relate the same way to LOTR. The only character from LOTR which is real for him is Gollum, and he not in an entirely pleasant way.
Going off of Red Rocker’s tangent…
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan art junkie. I tried an experiment a while back with some interesting results. I searched for “Hermione Granger” and “Frodo Baggins” on deviantArt (a popular art database). Frodo had about 500 results, approx. 90% of which were based on movieFrodo, and Hermione came up with 1500 results, and only about 10% looked anything like Emma Watson. I know that doesn’t say anything definitive, but it seemed to me to be an indication of the “realness” of the characters. To me, Frodo is a rather vague concept which was given a concrete form by Elijah Wood, whereas Hermione was already real to me before Emma Watson came along- while her portrayal is good, it doesn’t really add much to the character because the character has a full existence outside of the movies.
Red Rocker, it’s great your son can relate so well to Harry Potter at his age. I think maybe as he grows older he might be able to do better relating to LOTR. But even if he doesn’t, there’s nothing that says he has to. I think a lot just depends on the person.
I was introduced to The Hobbit in around 4th or 5th grade & followed up on my own with LOTR. At first it was just a good tale. It took many, many more years for me to see how much depth it really had to it. I also did a lot of Middle-Earth Role Playing, too.
Ned, I remember back in the ’80’s, there was a lot of stuff going on in regard to LOTR, especially after The Hobbit tv movie & the LOTR movie in the late ’70’s. But it was all done then through various home made journals. The Internet was just a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye then.
So, I think there may naturally have been a cooling in the fandom of LOTR, even with the atrocious Jackson movies while Harry Potter is congruous with the Internet age. Just a guess.
Oh, I know, and that’s why I said it didn’t mean anything definitive. It was more just an interesting expression of my own personal conception of the characters
I agree with you there. I can kind of see Radcliffe as Harry but it’s not a really tight association. Grint & Ron, though, that was an inspired piece of casting there. I can’t really see Ron without seeing Grint. I really never see Watson, though, as Hermione. I think fan artists tend to draw Hermione more as she’s portrayed in the books. She’s not ugly but she’s also not a babe. If I do picture Hermione as Watson, it’s Watson from the first two movies.
On a side note, I cannot read LOTR & not see Aragorn as the one voiced by John Hurt in the 1978 animated film. Viggo Mortenson can’t hold a candle to that animated portrayal.
It’s always interesting how individual perceptions differ. For me, Mortenson was exactly how I had pictured Strider/Aragorn. I had more trouble with some of the other characters. But this gets back to what Tolkien gave us with LOTR. His descriptions of the places were so detailed that I never had trouble seeing them, while his character developement was less so.
Then there were the things that he chose to not put in the main story (especially the back story of Aragorn and Arwen), which left that relationship flat in the books. She was so underused in the book that I really didn’t care about her and certainly thought that Aragorn could have chosen better. It wasn’t until the third reading of LOTR that I ventured into the appendices and found their long history, which I thought would have made the book better had it been included.
Rowling, on the other hand, has made her characters, even many of the minor ones, so nuanced that I have no trouble seeing who they are, in looks and in actions. As red rocker said, I feel like I’m part of the Harry Potter world, but I never feel that way about LOTR.
It gets to another personal preference thing–I prefer character driven stories over action or place centered ones. I enjoy both, but the books that let me see inside another person’s mind and motivations have a much stronger appeal for me, and Rowling gets top marks for giving me that opportunity.
Pat
I don’t know, Pat. I just never really saw Mortenson’s performance as very kingly. But then maybe that was Jackson’s directing. He had a way of taking noble characters & reducing them to base, craven whiners riddled with doubt.
But most of it does come down to perception. And I’m not really sure it’s necessary to pit Tolkien against Rowling. I get something out of Tolkien that I don’t get from Rowling. And I get something from Rowling that I don’t get from Tolkien. I’m glad to have them both.
Mortensen didn’t work for me as Aragorn either. I don’t know how I had expected Aragorn to appear and act and talk. Probably someone with a bit more presence, even going incognito as Strider. More like Sean Bean, come to think of it. I blame the casting director, who accidentally switched the two names around. Mortensen, on the other hand, made a very good Lucifer to Christopher Walken’s Gabriel in The Prophecy, and an even better Nilolai in Eastern Promises From which I gather that he’s better in the darker, more introverted roles. BTW, don’t take this as a plug for Eastern Promises: I loved the movie but the violence is as extreme and realistic as any I’ve seen this side of 300.
revgeorge, I loved John Hurt’s voice as Aragorn. Very Aragornish. But the animation didn’t do it for me. Mind, I didn’t care for the way most of the people were drawn in the Bakshi movie. The Nazgul were cool though, and Gandalf, of course.
Agree with Pat: Tolkien’s character development was not his major suit, with some notable exceptions: Gollum, Saruman, Wormtongue, Boromir. He does better with the shaded characters, I think, than the purely good or purely evil ones. Hmmm.
And finally, I agree with revgeorge. It’s not necessary to set up one author against another. They are both very good, and they each have their strengths. When I feel like epic myth with a few human touches that ground it in reality, I turn to LOTR. When I want to be moved by a human tale of frailty and redemption, friendship and loyalty, betrayal and deception, and courage and self-sacrifice, I turn to JKR.
I just read the last sentence of my comment. And before anyone beats me to it, I want to say: yes, of course, LOTR is very much about the same subjects. It just doesn’t have the intimate human touch.
I think another key difference between Tolkien and Rowling is that they come to the art form in completely different ways. For Tolkien, the genre of myth itself was fundamental, a beautiful art form – and he remained true to the form. Rowling, on the other hand, did a lot of genre-blurring (fantasy, mystery, gothic, school story). This is not a criticism of one or of the other, but to say they approached the fantasy genre in completely different ways, which result in different reader experiences.
I think I’ve said before – and also noted the irony – that I have a slight preference for LotR on the whole. But I’ve read it far fewer times, mostly, I think, because the intellectual investment in the story is huge.
Oh, and I did actually like Mortenson’s Aragorn, for what that’s worth. I can’t say I’m a huge Elijah Wood as Frodo fan, however.
Yes, the Nazgul in the Bakshi movie were cool. One of the few things I liked about Jackson’s Fellowship movie were the Nazgul. They reminded me of the Bakshi ones. And the scene in Bree where the Nazgul attack the sleeping hobbits (who aren’t really there) seems to be a fairly good recreation of the scene in the Bakshi movie.
And yes, Sean Bean rocked in the Fellowship.
Travis, important point on the different ways Tolkien & Rowling told their stories.
Travis, don’t misunderstand that I’m saying either Tolkien or JKR is a literary genius, nor that you yourself are God-like – except to little Sophia, perhaps – but your comment about how you prefer Tolkien but actually read JKR more often reminds me of the story of the angels and Mozart.
This is how it goes:
When the angels wish to please God, they play the music of Bach. But when they wish to please themselves, they play Mozart, and God listens at the keyhole.