Is this the post that we think was from JKR?

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 120738


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:
> 
>  Carol earlier:
>SNIP<> 
> Carol responds:
> Actually, no, that's not correct (except in the distinction between
> author and narrator). The voice that narrates "The Hobbit" is that 
of
> an avuncular storyteller who says things like "I don't know what 
river
> it was, but it was a rushing red one"--clearly not the voice of 
Bilbo
> turned into a third-person narrator. Nor is the narrator of "Lord of
> the Rings," who knows things that none of the hobbits know, a
> composite of their voices and that of, say, Aragorn (who has no time
> to write books after becoming king) or Gandalf (who, so far as we
> know, never committed his vast knowledge to writing before sailing
> into the Uttermost West). Tolkien poses as a historian retelling the
> stories, using Bilbo's diary and Frodo's and Sam's accounts in the 
Red
> Book of Westmarch along with other materials as sources, often 
writing
> from the perspective of the hobbits but not necessarily using any
> particular hobbit as his POV character. The Pippin/Merry first-
person
> segments of the story are noticeably different from the rest because
> they reflect those characters' personalities, especially Pippin's,
> which is distinctively lively and, well, hobbitish.
> 
> In contrast, JKR is writing *mostly* from Harry's perspective (see 
my
> other posts on this topic) and almost never from Dumbledore's. Even 
in
> chapter 1 of SS/PS, we are seeing DD and MacGonagall from the 
outside,
> not privy to their thoughts. Neither the perspective nor the *voice*
> is Dumbledore's. JKR *could* be using *Harry* as a third-person
> narrator relating his own adventures in the future using the third
> person to trick us, but there's nothing recognizably Harryish about
> the voice, and in any case, that would be a bit of a cheap trick.
> Instead, she's using an ordinary anonymous personalityless
> third-person limited omniscient narrator who clearly is not one of 
the
> characters in the books, or even a historian. "Newt Scamander" and
> "Kennilworthy Whisp," the personae she adopted for FBWT and QTA, 
have
> distinctive voices. The nameless narrator of the HP books does not. 
If
> it were Dumbledore's voice, we would recognize it, if only by the 
puns
> and the eccentric dry humor. In any case, a character/narrator is
> always identified as such by the author, if only through a pose like
> the one Tolkien takes in his Preface and Appendices.
> 
> If you don't understand what I mean by "voice," read the narrative
> portions of the books aloud. The "voice" of the narrator changes
> perceptibly between SS/PS and OoP, but it never sounds like 
Dumbledore
> or any other character whose style of speaking we might recognize 
(Ron
> or Snape or MacGonagall, for example). The narrator of the HP books 
is
> not a character but a device (which occasionally changes to fit the
> needs of the plot). And JKR, if she talked about the narrator at 
all,
> would know that.
> 
> Carol, with apologies for the schoolmarmish "voice" of this post, 
for
> which you can blame my twenty years of teaching college English


I think your analysis is very impressive.  The question though, is 
would JKR see things this way?  If she says, for the sake of 
argument, that the books are by Dumbledore and hence he is the 
narrarator, I guess that sort of answers the question by fiat, 
whether it's a correct use of the terms in view of literary analysis 
or not.

Incidentally, I don't think this is the case, and I really don't 
think the Mooseming posts are by JKR.  However, it is important to 
remember that the rules of literary analysis are "descriptive," 
not "proscriptive."  JKR can do whatever she wants, and if she wants 
to proclaim a certain character the narrarator -- even if that 
doesn't make much sense in terms of voice, style, etc. -- then nobody 
can stop her.

Like I say, though, I don't think she will.


Lupinlore