This article [broken link! Sorry!] fascinated me, ironically because I had just read Ursula K. Le Guin’s “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” (1973) right before I started reading this article. It managed to articulate a lot of my personal anxieties about the Harry Potter books in a way I hadn’t been able to pinpoint before. I think what I latched on to the most was the idea of the “tradition” of fantasy literature and Rowling’s place outside of it. Eliot’s essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” discusses the importance of absorbing the tradition into which you want to enter, and while she seems reminiscent of a lot of authors, Rowling hasn’t been referential or respectful of them. (Look at Pullman’s references to the tradition in the His Dark Materials trilogy. He’s aware of his fantastical forebears — like Susan Cooper, and especially John Milton — and tells us that he’s aware.)

This article has led me to exploring Tomashevsky now, as well as looking further into Jack Zipes, whom I encountered about two and a half years ago when researching for a separate project on early children’s fantasy literature (namely Peter Pan, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the like). I look forward to reading more of their criticism.