Does Rowling Merit the Nobel Prize in Literature? The Affirmative Argument

I had a Skype conversation with Nick Jeffery this morning during which I think we figured out where Rowling-Galbraith is going in the Strike-Ellacott series’ last three books. How we got there, though, is a pretty involved argument, a winding path to say the least.

It involves three key steps: (1) understanding Rowling as in essence a writer of detective fiction and the signature element of that kind of story-telling, (2) a review of Rowling’s works for each of the very well hidden ‘Foundation Crime’ out of which her involved stories all spring, and (3) a first look at the Strike-Ellacott books to guess its ‘Foundation Crime’ which will explain the epicycle of the last three mysteries in the series and how Strike 10 will match up with Strikes 1 and 7.

Today, in order to make the point about Rowling as a writer of detective fiction, I will review arguments I made in September 2018 in favor of Rowling’s nomination for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Those arguments all derived from my Junior Varsity attempts as part of my PhD thesis writing to use Russian Formalist tools to interpret her work, a quest I eventually abandoned (at the pointed direction of my Viva Voce readers!). I posted those Formalist arguments, however, here at Hogwarts Professor to make the point at the time of Literature Nobel Prize nominations ever year, that Rowling was an excellent candidate despite the pervasive view in the Academy that she is a hack writer for proles.

Join me after the jump for a quick survey of those arguments — and the one among them perhaps the most important for understanding Rowling’s work crafting her ‘Lake’ inspiration into story in her ‘Shed’!

This was curious series of posts, all four of which were titled ‘Seven Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize.’ Prima Facie, I don’t give seven reasons; there aren’t even seven posts. I’m guessing that the plan was to share extended riffs on examples of Rowling’s formalist artistry in the four posts not included. If you’re feeling charitable, though, you can explain this seeming gaffe as a mistake in counting; there are three reasons to read Rowling through a formalist lens in the introductory post and then four more reasons, this time for arguing Rowling deserves a Literature Nobel Prize in the next three series installments, namely, syuzhet and fabula, poeima, and the twined ‘literariness’ (literatunost) and ostrananie (defamilizarization) in the last.

Then again, why not finish the series of seven posts? Here we go!

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize: An Introduction to a Formalist Reading

I begin the series with a discussion of the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature and an explanation of why I think Rowling, if her works are read through a Russian Formalist lens, is worthy of this Nobel Prize. The reasons for the fit of Formalism to her work are (1) Formalism Focuses on the Work to the Exclusion of All Else, (2) Two of Rowling’s Most Important Influences Were Formalists (VVN and CSL), and (3) Formalist Writers Primarily Write about Writing and the Experience of Reading. Reason #2 here I think is indisputable; I suspect #1 is of no interest to Rowling Readers not neck deep in the waters of modern and postmodern literary criticism, and #3 probably comes as a shock to all but a few of JKR’s international reading audience. But it is perhaps the most important — and the syllogism conclusion of the first two premises.

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize (1) Syuzhet and Fabula: The Planning

In this first post of characteristically Formalist criticism, I introduce the distinction between fabula and syuzhet and give three reasons that Rowling is a writer very well aware of this foundation artistry. In brief, the fabula is the story as told as if it were a police report or a fairy tale (whence ‘fabula’). These are the events of the narrative in chronological order. The writer begins the composition of the story with this understanding which he or she then re-presents as a narrative in which at least one character works to obscure the actual time-line and causation stream and another character labors to figure the actual fabula out. All going well, the reader will have recreated the fabula from the writers obfuscatory artistry, so there are two fabula’s: the one thiter possesses at all times and the reader’s at story end. The three parts of this post are (1) What Rowling Has Told Us About Her Planning (the centrality of planning), (2) Everything Rowling Writes Is About Obscuring Fabula via Syuzhet, and (3) Rowling Embeds the Syuzhet-Fabula Distinction in Her Stories.

The point of my publishing this review as an introduction to ‘Foundation Crimes’ in the works of J. K. Rowling is in the middle of this post, Reason #2 of the three.

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize (2) CSL’s Poeima: Genre and Influence

I introduce C. S. Lewis’ ideas of forma and poiema with an explanation of how they resemble and differ from Syuzhet and Fabula. The three pieces of this argument are: (1) Rowling Simultaneously Conforms To and Adapts Genre Conventions, (2) Rowling’s Core Genre is Classical Myth, and (3) Rowling’s Creative Relationship with Genre Conventions is Parody more than Influence.

This was written in September 2018 so it does include the 2021 posy laying out Rowling’s re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth with the Strike-Ellacott series: ‘A Mythological Key to Cormoran Strike? The Myth of Eros, Psyche, and Venus.’ (Related posts) That’s important, especially in a post about this particular myth because Lewis’ Til We Have Faces is a re-imagining of the same story.

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize (3) The ‘Literariness’ of Her Work

Literaturnost! This is perhaps the most challenging of the ‘7 Reasons’ because it has as its premise that writers are writing about writing and about the experience of reading. The Russian Formalists held as their foundation belief that writing was about always reminding the reader that he or she is reading. The three arguments here are (1) ‘Literariness’ is More than Aesthetic Language, (2) Rowling’s Character Names Scream ‘Literariness,’ and (3) The Literariness of Rowling’s Intertextuality or ‘Literary Allusions.’

My Harry Potter’s Bookshelf and Beatrice Groves’ Literary Allusion in Harry Potter are mentioned, as you might expect.

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize: (4) ‘Defamiliarization’

Ostrananie or ‘defamiliarization’ or the Estecean ‘estrangement’ is the principle that real literature is meant to stretch readers well out of their mental ruts and to re-imagine the world. Four Hogwarts Professor posts on this subject are:

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize: (5) ‘Literary Alchemy’

Now we arrive at the three ‘shed’ posts about ‘Literary Alchemy,’ Rowling’s signature hermetic story sequencing to effect the transformation — really the ‘enlightenment’ or ‘illumination’ of each person’s soul as it enters the imaginative alembic. You can read a host of posts on this subject at the ‘Literary Alchemy’ Pillar Post and a summary explanation of the art at Literary Alchemy: Sacred Science, Sacred Art, and ‘The Alembic of Story’.

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize: (6) ‘Ring Composition’

Once more, the ‘form of Rowling’s writing is chiastic, what anthropologist called ‘Ring Composition,’ the universal story form. Check out the ‘Ring Composition’ Pillar Post for a collection of posts on this subject and my ‘Index of Running Grave Structural Analysis, which, if I say so myself, is an expansive and exhaustive reading of Strike 7’s structure, it’s parts, as a whole, and within the seven book series.

7 Reasons Rowling Deserves Nobel Prize: (7) ‘Traditional Symbolism’

My first book on the Harry Potter series was 2002’s Hidden Key to Harry Potter, which I wrote to debunk the Christia Potter Panic. It included explanations of Literary Alchemy, the ‘soul triptch,’ or psychomachia, as well as explanation of the tradition Christian iconography in the books. Tghe best introduction to all that is Traditional Symbols in Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike: A Perennialist View Four psychomachian posts include:

Okay! That’s a bunch of reasons to nominate Rowling for the Literature Nobel Prize. What are the chances of Rowling being nominated today? Much lower than they were in 2018. I’d say there “slim to none” because of her world changing stance contra the madness of “transgenderism.” The people who nominate writers for the Nobel Prize are mostly academics — and Gender Theory Extremism captured university faculty almost completely. If they nominate Rowling, they are implicitly saying that trhat their partipation in the madness for the greater part of ten years was not only wrong but devastating to women, adolescent girls, and the academy’s dedication to real science and the truth.

Which may happen in about fifty years when all the current department chairs and gender zealots are long retired (and, of course, Rowling will also be dead).

Racing back to the beginning of this post for my reason for bringing it together today? The importance of this exercise in Formalist critique for understanding the Strike-Ellacott series is that we do not yet understand the Foundation Crime of Robin and Cormoran’s adventures, the obscured alpha point of the fabula which Rowling’s syuzhet is designed to conceal until the Big Reveal of the last chapter or here the last novel in the fixed series of books.

Tomorrow we will take a deep dive into the Foundation Crimes of each of Rowling’s previous books and even of some of the Strike-Ellacott mysteries. See you then!