The Inheritance And Development Of Modern Fantasy Literature

Harry Potter written by J. K. Rowling is one of the most representative fantasy and magic literary works in the modern world. Since Harry Potter series have been published in1997, they are popular with the world, and beloved by all children and even adults in the world. So the Harry Potter films, a trend of attention on fantasy and magic literature as well as the mythological background has been lasted for a long time and many derivative products on the series and mythology emerge one after another. In the field of literature, since the earliest researches on the series, more and more researches have sprung up like mushrooms that many scholars have paid attention again to explore more on Harry Potter from many perspectives, such as children’s literature, fantasy literature, religion literature, etc.There is natural close relationship between mythology and archetype. What’s more, J. K. Rowling herself has great interest on classical literature, myth, epic and folklore since childhood. Therefore, the author of the thesis believes that there are some inner relationship and connection between the Potter books and archetypal theory. In this thesis, the author mainly analyzes the designing of structure, characters’ archetypes as well as archetypal theme of Harry Potter in the mythological archetypal theory applied by Frye. Previously, though there have been some researches on Harry Potter from the perspective of archetypal criticism, analysis on some typical characters is limited. Not many of them have talked about the designing of structure and studied the theme especially with fusion of modern elements which endows us with spiritual meaning and also which is a typical feature belonging to Rowling and is different from any other fantasy literature work.This thesis is aiming to analyze Harry Potter from the perspective of mythological archetypal criticism. It will mainly discuss author’s designing of structure, character archetypes as well as archetypal theme, which shows that it is archetype theory that makes Harry Potter be full of spiritual meaning and cultural significance and even more. It also concludes how J. K. Rowling’s Potter books become an inheritance and development of modern fantasy literature and more importantly, it shows us the meaning of enlightenment and its importance as well.