NY Times article

[joym999 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 18661

Todays (May 12) NY Times has an article entitled:

*An Improbable Sequel: Harry Potter and the Ivory Tower*

It is not actually all that interesting, IMHO.  Most of it is about 
an academic conference on the Medieval, and only a little bit on HP, 
but here are the relevant bits.  (I know its a lot, but since it is 
only a small section of a very long article, I dont think I am 
breaking any copyright laws here.):

***START ARTICLE***

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Millions of books after Harry Potter became the 
most beguiling wizard of the modern age, scholars have welcomed him 
into the temple of Muggle academia.

"If you look closely, you see a lot of Arthurian components," said 
Heather Arden, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who has 
drawn parallels between J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories and 
classic medieval legends. "So much of it fits into wonderful ancient 
patterns." 

That a best-selling children's book would be the subject of scholarly 
attention isn't a surprise; after all, academics have delved into the 
finer points of everything from Martha Stewart to table salt. But 
this engagement with the modern world is a hallmark of the 
International Congress on Medieval Studies, a yearly conference held 
at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, which attracted Ms. 
Arden and about 3,000 other scholars earlier this month. 

[snip many paragraphs of blather]

In keeping with the conference's informal atmosphere, the professors 
who discussed Harry Potter assumed roles as witches on the faculty at 
Hogwarts, the school where he studies wizardry. Their paper was in 
the form of a dialogue about Harry's proposed senior thesis comparing 
Hogwarts to the court of King Arthur. The professors, Ms. Arden and 
Kathryn Lorenz, started by noting physical similarities like 
invisible doors, magical animals and the use of parchment, sealing 
wax and coats of arms. From there they turned to thematic devices 
like the ease with which characters move between normal and abnormal 
worlds.

"Like Arthur, Harry is destined to make an exemplary stand against 
the forces of evil and chaos," Ms. Arden said. "The phenomenal 
popularity of the Potter chronicles may be linked to the way they 
reflect the underlying attractions of the Arthurian world. They give 
their readers a picture of a wonderful community centered on a 
superhuman leader and made up of exceptional individuals of whom the 
hero is the most exceptional."

And that explains the continuing hold that medieval themes have on 
people, she added. "The hero himself, whether Arthur, Percivale or 
our own Harry Potter, shows us that a seemingly ordinary orphan child 
can turn out to be an exceptional person. Perhaps the greatest 
quality shared by Harry and the Arthurian hero is to show us the 
power of imagination to transform the established boundaries between 
things and people, to show us the possibilities of other worlds."

--Joywitch