engleski

The Power of Mother: Archetype and Symbolism in the Harry Potter series

The importance of family unit, and mothers in particular, has been at the heart of much work in children's literature since the age of oral storytelling. Numerous stories revolved around different aspects of mother(ly) characters, and many were created in honour of mothers. Accordingly, Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl often spoke openly of the beneficial influence their mothers had on their writing. On the other hand, J. M. Barrie's mother's obsession with his deceased brother was the most likely cause of Barrie's psychogenic dwarfism, resulting in one of the most distinguishable characters in children's literature, Peter Pan. Similarly, J. K. Rowling's loss of mother and her status as a single mother at the onset of the Harry Potter series reportedly had a great impact on the development of the novels. This paper, therefore, focuses on the figure of mother, absent, substitute and symbolic, in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. By examining the Jungian mother archetype and its manifestation on various symbolic levels, it will be discussed how Rowling's narrative of loss intensifies vicarious experience on the part of the reader. Furthermore, the author's biographical data and identity as an important part in the construction of the seven novels will be intertwined with the fictional and linked to “orphanhood” and “Otherness” evident in the Harry Potter series. Finally, it will be shown in which way the power of the mother figure has brought into existence the defining of the central characters, institutional structure, spells and magic, as well as creation of original language and neologisms. Taking into account the postmodern and poststructuralist feminist theories, it will be discussed in which way language and literary discourse shape individual experience, the primary reason why the Harry Potter series, a mixture of genres and worlds, constitutes an immensely powerful contemporary work of fiction.

archetype ; symbolism ; Jungian mother archetype ; the symbolic/semiotic ; neologisms ; 'Otherness' ; 'orphanhood'

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