ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will use the Harry Potter novels as a master text of children’s literature. Adult normativity-as well as heteronormativity and other conventional values-is tangible in the novels and consistently confi rmed and reproduced. The protagonist is exposed to various forms of adult heroism ostensibly intended to serve as a role model, but also to emphasize adult supremacy. The repeated glorious death of Harry’s parental fi gures is the most tangible example. The subsequent exposure of the heroic adults’ minor faults does not rob them of their high status. It is intriguing to explore the novels in terms of their compliance with or deviation from the conventions of children’s literature; both can, paradoxically, account for their popularity. It is also gratifying to examine them in terms of displacement of myth, in Northrop Frye’s sense (Frye 1957), and of genre eclecticism. In contemporary Western children’s fi ction, most of the child characters seem to appear on low mimetic and ironic levels. The universal appeal of Harry Potter can be ascribed to the fortunate attempt to reintroduce the romantic character into children’s fi ction. The Harry Potter fi gure has all the necessary components of the romantic hero. There are mystical circumstances around his birth, he is dislocated and oppressed and suddenly given unlimited power. His innocence and intrinsic benevolence make him superior to the evil-adult-forces. He bears the mark of the chosen on his forehead, and he is worshipped in the wizard community as the future savior. The pattern is easily recognizable from world mythologies, even though Harry is not claimed to be a god or a son of god, which, in Frye’s typology, disqualifi es him as a genuine mythic hero, displacing him to the level of romance. Yet Harry also demonstrates ambiguity in the concepts of good and evil, gender transgression and other tokens of the postmodern aesthetics. The adult appeal originates from other layers of the books: adult issues, the richness of allusions, elaborate linguistic games, or social satire. Here, the novels illustrate the concept of crossover (Beckett
2008).Yet for most readers, the lure of Harry Potter is his total conformity with the idea of a romantic hero.
