Reading, Writing, Rowling

Venture to the ancient past to explore Harry Potter and the Aeneid as foundational texts. Dr. Mitchell Parks (Knox College) joins us to discuss intertextuality and Harry Potter’s dialogue with classical works like Virgil’s Aeneid. In his chapter in The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond, he examines what it means for a text to be “foundational” in various ways – as a work of literature, on a personal level, for identity groups, as a political foundation. While the Aeneid can tell us about Roman society and later periods from readers’ reactions and literary responses, Harry Potter set the tone for young adult literature at the turn of the 21st century. The diversity of responses to Harry Potter compels us to consider how people besides the elite men whose commentary was preserved might have reacted to the Aeneid, which itself draws on Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. Mitchell sees the strongest echoes of the Aeneid in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows because of the darker atmosphere, heroes facing a diffic