Titling convention significant?

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 89607

Amy Z wrote:

> I've long thought that the "Harry Potter and the . . . " formula 
was 
> kind of feeble.  IMO, the titles would be more poetic and less 
> childish if they were called, simply, "The Philosopher's 
Stone," "The 
> Chamber of Secrets," etc.--or perhaps the first "Harry Potter and 
the 
> Philosopher's Stone," and then just "The Chamber of Secrets," "The 
> Prisoner of Azkaban," etc.  

Though if the issue were name recognition, the first title might 
have omitted 'Harry Potter' and the later titles included it (think 
of Indiana Jones).
 
> Well, what if that's all a huge setup for the big surprise in Book 
> Seven:  that Harry is not after all the center of the series?  

I can think of a couple of other possibilities.  Perhaps Book 7 is 
to be entitled 'Harry Potter and X Y' where X Y is the name of a 
person - say Severus Snape or Neville or Voldemort or some as yet 
unknown character.  On the assumption that the seven titles were 
then planned in outline (we know GOF was 'Doomspell Tournament' for 
a while so quite what we *can* assume is problematic - it is even 
possible that GOF was always intended but DT was a working title 
used for some obscure security reason), then this might force 
the 'HP and...' formula for the rest.

The other possibility is much simpler, that the titles are meant to 
evoke some other literary series which used a similar formula.  The 
trouble is, I can't think of any plausible ones.

Any ideas?

David