Illiteracy in the Potterverse

[lotesse]

Why does the Potterverse come down so heavily on books and reading? It seems counter-intuitive, considering that they're books themselves.

Sure, Hermione reads a lot, but only for the acquistion of knowledge, and sometimes the Authorial Voice can get a bit snippy with her for being a "bookworm." And then there's the "books and cleverness" speech in PS/SS.

Madam Pince, the librarian, is a fearsome figure who really doesn't want anyone to read her books. She's protective of them to the point of insanity, and is quite unwilling to share them with students. She's a crap librarian, really, in that she actively discourages reading out of some obsessive view of herself as the only one who can treat the books in the way that they deserve.

And bewilderingly enough, the WW doesn't seem to have any literature. We've not heard of wizarding poets, and no one reads wizarding novels, not even pulps. Hogwarts has no equivalent of an English or Lit class.

The WW seems to regard books only as vehicles for knowledge, and slightly shady ones at that.

Anyone else think that this is weird?

Comments

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

You know, I never really noticed this when I read it. I'm starting to realize more and more that when I read the Potter series, I imposed my own ideas on it. I just assumed that the Wizarding world would have literature like our own...I never noticed it wasn't mentioned. The librarian, I think, is a caricature of a kind of book-keeper that one finds all too often in the world, the kind that thinks of her collection as her personal property and will go to great lengths to guard it from jealous outsiders, even though the collection is public. Usually one finds this sort of person in antique bookstores, though...you know, the kind of proprietor who glares at you over the counter when he hands your purchase, as though you're robbing him at gunpoint *L* I got a prize illustrated edition of Moby Dick from one of these sorts once ^^

The WW seems to be a very academic society -- there is very little in the way of creativity. Everything is research and study and practice -- do we ever see someone who is an artist? Surely Hogwarts has to have an art program, where students can learn to paint portraits that move, yet none of the characters so much as doodle. None of them write, except Ginny in her diary. None of them really do music either, at least that I can remember.

Most peculiar.

[lotesse]

I know what you're talking about with the collectors, but Pince is a school librarian, ferchrissakes. The collection isn't even really hers--in that I woudl think the books have been there longer than she has, and not many of them are her own choices or purchases for the school.

Yeah, Hogwarts just has sports. Damn jock-ruled universe! It's funny, because we don't notice it the first time round. It's like you said--we find what we think we're going to find. It hink that part of it might be genre. We don't expect to find jocks ruling in fantasy, that traditional province of geekdom. But when you really look around, the WW definitely loves sport above art.

They've got paintings, though. Cept that we don't see anybody making them. I wonder how it's done?

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

Damn jock-ruled universe!

My god, you're right! *is highly disturbed* I guess I never noticed because it was the "geeks", the characters in a fantasy book, that played the sports. But...gah.

It's as though all the artists and writers have died in the WW.

[lotesse]

And so often they're not even geeks. But we just fill that it. Interesting, isn't it? There's so much of a base assumption that fantasy novels are filled with geeks. It's logical for them to be so, because usually they're written and read by geeks. Makes you wonder about HP and JK, doesn't it?

[elderberrywine.livejournal.com]

Quite odd, when you consider the author has made a bundle off of books. You would think she'd be promoting kids who read as teh Koolz kids evah.

And maybe the WW doesn't produce art, music, literature, etc. because you actually have to work at that - no shortcuts. So Muggle.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

The Wizarding World is anti-intellectual in a way that would make even Americans go 'huh?!'

They don't *have* humanities courses, except for Muggle Studies and History of Magic, and both of those classes are treated as jokes. For the rest of the courses, the ones we've seen are practical in the extreme, and read more like vocational/tech school courses to me than anything.

Hogwarts offers an *extremely* practical education. Anything literary would not be 'practical' and thus isn't offered. It's a very sad state of affairs because the combination of relentlessly practical classes and no effective humanities core means that most of the students don't learn to think -- any student who figures out how to be critical and to evaluate information does it purely by chance.

Frankly, I think the Ministry prefers to have the great majority of the population as sheep, but it's quite terrifying that the only real school fosters such an attitude.

This is probably why Wizarding culture seems to be falling in on itself. there is no drive to progress technologically (magilogically?) or socially -- witness the mockery Hermione's S.P.E.W. campaign gets, however ill-thought out her position may be -- but back-biting and unscrupulous behavior is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged. It makes for a society that is more susceptible to internecine warfare than not, which is probably why they've had two Dark Lords threatening Europe in the 20th century, with who knows what happening elsewhere in the world.