| From the late20th century, the world literature has always been sluggish. Although the quantity of literary creation is massive, few can leave people with deep impressions. The appearance of Harry Potter is undoubtedly a miracle. It is just like lightening in the night, striking deep into people’s mind. The Harry Potter series novels are initially defined as a children’s literature work, which has fantastic property melting with tradition and modern, reality and fantasy. Due to its specific literary features and ideological contents, it has attracted readers of different ages, from children to grown-ups around the world. It has created a reading upsurge in the Internet Age, and become a household work overnight. After75years, TIME magazine finally featured a children’s book on its cover. With millions of copies in print, the Harry Potter series novels have taken the world by storm.The popularity of Harry Potter has brought about huge market values, and contributes to the development of related industries. The accumulation of wealth is just the external manifestation of the success of Harry Potter, while the cultural significance brought by it is more thought-provoking.The popularity of Harry Potter is not Rowling’s personal achievement. It is the product of the world literature under certain circumstances. In its creative process, the author J.K. Rowling draws inspirations from other cultures continuously, such as the Hebrew culture, the Roman and Greek mythology and so on. She integrates different cultural factors into the characters’portrayal in her work skillfully, and all this makes Harry Potter achieve success beyond the imagination.Harry Potter is a re-interpretation of the mythological epic of human childhood. It is replacement and distortion of traditional religious and mythological archetypes under culture linguistic environment in the modern society. It is the eternal charm of archetypes that makes Harry Potter stand out in the vast majority of modern literary works. In this thesis, Jung’s Collective Unconsciousness and Archetype Theory are mainly applied to analyze the archetypal characteristics of this modern fairy tale in its process of character portrayal, in order to deepen the understanding of this work.The thesis is made up of three parts. They are the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. In the introduction part, the phenomenon of the popularity of Harry Potter series of novels is stated. The current research on the thesis in China and abroad is introduced. Besides, the meaningfulness of the thesis is determined. The essential points of this thesis are elaborated.The main body is composed of three chapters. In Chapter One, starting with the creative background of Harry Potter series of novels, the author illustrates the necessity of analyzing the character portrayal in this work in combination with the archetype theory. The creation of one work is inseparable from its author’s life and emotional experience. Harry Potter’s writer J.K. Rowling’s rags-to-riches story is a fantasy story in itself. The description of its author J.K. Rowling’s life experience serves as the preparation to explore this work. Furthermore, as the most popular contemporary literary work, Harry Potter’s influence on society cannot be underestimated. It has made great achievements and has been generally recognized around the world. And then, in combination with J.R.R Tolkien’s the Secondary World Theory, the author makes a preliminary exploration to Rowling’s magic world, leading people into the fantastic world of Harry Potter, in order to clarify the necessity of character portrayal.In Chapter Two, an analysis on the characters’personalities in Harry Potter in combination with Hebrew Culture and Hellenism is exemplified in detail. Jung’s Collective Unconsciousness and Archetype theory also play important roles in this part. Hebrew culture and ancient Roman and Greek culture can be defined as the cradles of the western culture. They have great effect on Europe and even the whole world. So far, many writers still draw inspirations from both of the cultures in their creative process, and Rowling is of no exception. Numerous mythological archetypes are applied in this work. For example, Minerva McGonagall, name of the vice president of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, represents the goddess of wisdom Athena, also called Minerva in Roman mythology. Argus Filch, whose duty is to monitor students in the school, is not named casually, too."Filch" is a verb equal with another word "steal", and Argus is a monster with three or four or more eyes in Greek mythology, which is sent by Hera to guard a mortal woman Io, a Mistress of his husband Jupiter. The monster always peeps the castles and towers of those Gods in Olympus, and its behavior is such similar to Argus Filch. And in Harry Potter, similar examples are abound. Hebrew culture and Hellenism, serving as a treasure house of human civilization, provide plenty of materials for literary creation, and in turn literary works enrich the connotation of mythology, and give the old myths a new life.In Chapter Three, the impact of Harry Potter on contemporary literature is referred. Harry Potter is different from the traditional literary works in the form of expression. Its author J.K. Rowling cooks up a magical kingdom out of the real world. Everything in this kingdom appears to be fictitious on the surface, but in fact in close connection with the real world. Therefore, it is not a complete subversion of the traditional literature. On the contrary, it is the inheritance and development of the traditional literature. Defined as a fantasy literary work, children’s literary work and also a world literary work, Harry Potter inherits some features from all the three literary forms, and in turn makes some new breakthrough. It injects new fresh blood to them three.In the conclusion part, the author makes a summary of the main part of the thesis, and reveals Harry Potter’s spiritual connotations and cultural significance. Harry Potter evokes people’s attention on the traditional literature and culture. The hero archetypes throughout the whole work reflect the spiritual need of modern people. This work puts its focus on "human" itself, and tries to create an ideal world that takes human as the core and in which the modern people can liberate their constrained mind and complete the return of spirit. An attempt to analyze and interpret this popular contemporary literary work with the aid of religious and mythological archetypes is an effort to return to literature. To reveal the work’s deep meaning and spiritual implication with the help of the archetypal theory is an experiment to arouse the readers to re-recognize the value and power of literature. It is believed that an analysis of the Harry Potterworks can provide some useful insights to the creation of the literary works. |
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