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]

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?